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LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 




OF 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



EDITED BY HIS SON, 



THE REV. CHARLES CUTHBERT SOUTHEY, M.A., 



CUHATE OF PLUMBLAND, CUMBERLAND. 





NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

329 & 3 3 1 PEARL STREET, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 



*1 'J.M. 



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L 5 1917 



PREFACE, 



For the delay which has taken place in bringing forth this work I am not respons- 
ible, as it has chiefly arisen from the circumstance that no literary executor was ex- 
pressly named in my father's latest will, and, in consequence of the difficulties which 
thus arose, it was not until the spring of 1848 that the materials, as far as they had 
then been collected, were put into my hands. I have, since then, made what speed I 
might in the preparation of them for the press, amid the engagements of other busi- 
ness, and with my hand often palsied by causes over which I had no control. 

It were useless to endeavor to refute the various objections often made to a son's 
undertaking such a task ; yet one remark may be permitted, that although a son may 
not be a fit person to pass judgment upon a father's character, he yet may faith- 
fully chronicle his life, and is undoubtedly, by a natural right, the most proper person 
to have all private letters submitted to his eye, and all family affairs intrusted to his 
judgment. 

With this feeling, and with the full conviction that I am acting in accordance with 
what would have been my father's own wish, I have not thought it right to shrink 
from an undertaking for which I can not claim to have in other respects any peculiar 
qualifications. Accordingly, my object has been, not to compose a regular biography, 
but rather to lay before the reader such a selection from my father's letters as will give, 
in his own words, the history of his life ; and I have only added such remarks as I 
"judged necessary for connection or explanation ; indeed, the even tenor of his life, 
during its greater portion, affords but little matter for pure biography, and the course 
of his literary pursuits, his opinions on passing events, and the few incidents of his 
own career, will all be found narrated by himself in a much more natural maimer than 
if his letters had been worked up into a regular narrative. 

My father has long been before the public, and has obtained a large share of praise, 
as well as of censure and misrepresentation ; he has yet, however, to he fully known; 
and this I have a good hope will be accomplished by the publication of these volumes ; 
that in them all his mind will appear — in its playfulness as well as its gravity, in its 
joys and its sorrows, and the gradual progress of its opinions be fairly traced, from the 
visionary views of his early youth, up to the fixed and settled convictions of his riper 
years ; and if I have inserted any letters or passages which relate principally to his 
domestic life, and the affairs of the family circle, it has been with the conviction that 
he himself would not have wished them to be excluded, and that, although without 
them the events of his life might have been recorded, these would have formed only 
the outlines of the picture, which would have wanted all those finer touches that give 
to human nature its chief interest and its highest beauty. 

I must now make my acknowledgments generally to those friends and correspond- 
ents of my father who have most kindly placed their letters at my disposal, and in 
particular to Mrs Henry Bedford for those addressed to Grosvenor Charles Bedford. 



x PREFACE. 

Esq., from which I have drawn my chief materials for this volume, and which I have 
used largely throughout the work ; to William Rickman, Esq., for those addressed to 
his father, the late John Rickman, Esq. ; to the Right Hon. Charles W. W. Wynn ; 
to John May, Esq. ; to J. G. Lockhart, Esq., for those addressed to Sir "Walter Scott ; 
to Joseph Cottle, Esq. ; to Mrs. Neville White and the Rev. James White ; to the 
family of the late Sharon Turner, Esq. ; to Walter Savage Landor, Esq. ; to the 
family of the late Dr. Gooch ; to the family of the late Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot ; to 
Mr. Ebenezer Elliott ; to Mr. Ticknor, of Boston ; to Miss Elizabeth Charter ; to 
Mrs. Hodson ; to John Kenyon, Esq. ; to Mrs. H. N. Coleridge ; to William Words- 
worth, Esq., Poet Laureat ; and to Henry Taylor, Esq. 

Other communications have been promised to me which I shall take a future op- 
portunity of acknowledging. 

While, however, my materials from these sources have been most extensive, there 
must still be many individuals with whom I have not been able to communicate, 
who have corresponded with my father upon literary subjects ; and, should this meet 
the eye of any of these gentlemen, they would confer a great obligation upon me by 
permitting me the use of any of his letters to them, which are likely sometimes to 
possess an interest different from those addressed to intimate friends and frequent cor 
respondents. 

I may say, in conclusion, that whatever defects these volumes may possess, I have 
the satisfaction of feeling that they will verify my father's own words — words not 
uttered boastingly, but simply as the answer of a conscience void of offense both 
toward God and man — " I have this conviction, that, die when I may, my memory 
is one of those which will smell sweet, and blossom in the dust." 

Charles Cuthbert Southey. 



CONTENTS, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EARLY LIFE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ., 
LL.D., WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 



LETTER I. 
Hi3 AncestME— The Cannon Southeys— His Father sent to 
LondonSRemoved to Bristol Page 17 

LETTER II. 
The Hills— The Bradfords— William Tyler— Anecdote of 
him— His Grandfather's Death 19 

LETTER III. 

Recollections of the Hills— Parson Collins 20 

LETTER IV. 
His Mother's Birth and Childhood— Her Marriage— His 
own Birth 21 

LETTER V. 
First going to School— Birth of Brothers and Sisters- 
Miss Tyler 23 

LETTER VI. 
Description of Miss Tyler's House at Bath — Inoculation — 
Miss Tyler's Friends and Acquaintances 25 

LETTER VII. 
Bath and Bristol Theaters — Removed to another Day 
School — Thence to a Boarding School at Corston — De- 
scription of School and Schoolmaster 27 

LETTER VIII. 

Recollections of Corston continued 30 

LETTER IX. 
Recollections of his Grandmother's House at Bedminster 
— Love for Botany and Entomology 32 



LETTER X. 
Is placed as a Day Boarder at a School in Bristol — Early 
Effort in Authorship — Love for Dramatic Authors-** 
Miss Palmer — School Recollections — Opinion on Pub- 
lic and Private Education Page 35 

LETTER XI. 
Mrs. Dolignon — Early Love for Books— Miss Tyler takes 
a House in Bristol — Further Recollections of his Uncle 
William— His Death 3S 

LETTER XII. 
His Recollections of School at Bristol — His Schoolmaster 
and Schoolfellows 41 

LETTER XIH. 

Visitors to his Schoolmaster 43 

LETTER XIV. 
Is sent as a Day Scholar to a Clergyman in Bristol— Early 
Poetical Efforts v 46 

LETTER XV. 
Character of Miss Tyler — His Mother — Shadrach Weeks 
— His Brother Henry placed with Miss Tyler — Hi3 Sis- 
ter's Death 49 

LETTER XVI. 

Is placed at Westminster— Schoolfellows — First Holidays 

— Anecdote of George III. — Latin Verses 52 

LETTER XVII. 
Recollections of Westminster continued 54 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



CHAPTER I. 
School Friendships— The Flagellant— Is compelled to leave 
Westminster— Wreck of his Father's Affairs and his 
Death — Is refused Admittance at Christ Church, and 
enters at Baliol College, Oxford — College Life — His 
Studies — Philosophical Speculations — Excursion to 
Herefordshire — Visit to Brixton — Joan of Arc — Return 
to Bristol — Letters on a University Life, etc. — Fits of 
Despondency — Poetry and Philosophy — -Mr. Lovel — 
America— Number of Verses destroyed and preserved. 
A.D. 1791-1793 Page 59 

CHAPTER II. 

Opinions, Political and Religious— Schemes of future Life 

— First Acquaintance with Mr. Coleridge— Pantisocracy 

—Quarrel with Miss Tyler— Letter to Thomas Southey. 

—1793,1794.... 69 

CHAPTER in. 
Pantisocracy proposed to be tried in Wales — Letters to 
Mr. G. C. Bedford— Difficulties and Distresses — Histor- 
ical Lectures — Death of Edmund Seward — Mr. Cottle 
purchases the Copyright of Joan of Arc— Pantisocracy 
abandoned — Misunderstanding with Mr. Coleridge — 
Letters to Mr. G. C. Bedford— Meeting with his Uncle, 
Mr. Hill— Consents to accompany him to Lisbon— Mar- 
riage — Letters to Mr. Bedford and Mr. Cottle.— 1794, 
1795 Page 76 

CHAPTER IV. 

Letters to Mr. Lovel and Mr. Bedford from Lisbon— 

Return to England— Death of Mr. Lovel— Letters to 

Mr. Bedford— Literary Employments and Intentions.— 

!796 1 85 



CHAPTER V. 
Goes to London to Study the Law — Letters from thence 
— Takes Lodgings at Burton in Hampshire — Letters to 
Mr. May and Mr. Bedford — Goes to Bath — Lines by 
Charles Lamb — Returns to London — Letter to Mr. 
Wynn — Visit to Norfolk — Letters from thence — Takes 
a House at Westbury, near Bristol — Excursion into 
Herefordshire.— 1797 94 

CHAPTER VI. 
Residence at Westbury — Dramatic Plans — HI Health — 
Goes to London to keep the Term at Gray's Inn — Madoc 
completed— Excursion into Devonshire— Letters from 
thence — Goes again to reside at Burton — Severe Illness 
—Returns to Bristol— Thalaba— Project of establishing 
Beguinages — Poem in Hexameters, on Mohammed, 
commenced — Continued ill Health — Makes Arrange- 
ments for going to Lisbon.— 1799, 1800 103 

CHAPTER VII. 

LETTERS FROM PORTUGAL. 

Voyage and Arrival — Visits— Anecdotes — Description of 
Lisbon — Romish Customs — Description of the Country, 
Processions, etc. — Account of a Bullfight — Proposed 
Monument to Fielding — Thalaba finished — Letters from 
Cintra — Lent Plays — Wine — Laws— Monastic Supersti- 
tions—Bad Roads— Advice to his Brother Henry as to his 
Studies — Attachment to Cintra— Account of Mafra ; its 
Church, Convent, and Library— Pestilence at Cadiz — 
Description of Cintra ; Scenery, etc.— Directions for the 
Publication of Thalaba— Projected History of Portugal 
— Excursion to Costa— Fishermen— Image by the Road 
Side— Journey to Pombal— Torres Vedras, etc.— En- 



CONTENTS. 



glish Politics — Thalaba— Madoc — Kehama — Probable 
Invasion of Portugal — Account of Journey to Faro. — 
1800,1801 Page 121 

CHAPTER VHL 
Return to England— Thinks of going down to Cumberland 
—Letter from Mr. Coleridge, describing Greta Hall — 
Thoughts of a Consulship — The Law — Lyrical Ballads 
— Conspiracy of Gowrie — Madoc— Difficulty of meeting 
the Expense of the Journey to Keswick — Letter to Mr. 
Bedford — Unchanged Affection — Goes down to Kes- 
wick — First Impressions of the Lakes — Excursion into 
Wales — Appointment as Private Secretary to Mr. Cor- 
ry — Goes to Dublin — Letters from thence — Goes to 
London — Account of his Official Duties. — 1801 144 

CHAPTER IX. 

His Mother's Death — Melancholy Thoughts— Resigns his 
Secretaryship — Edition of Chatterton's Works — Thinks 
of residing at Richmond — At Keswick — Well-known 
Persons met in London — Negotiates for a House in 
Wales — Chronicle of the Cid — Review of Thalaba in the 
*' Edinburgh" — Negotiation for House broken off— Want 
of more Books — Alarum of War — Edinburgh Review — 
Hayley's Life of Cowper — Recollections of Brixton — 
Early Difficulties— Amadis of Gaul — The Atlantic a good 
Letter-carrier — Home Politics — Scottish Border Bal- 
lads — Cumberland's Plays — Plan for a Bibliotheca Bri- 
tannica.— 1802-1803 153 

CHAPTER X. 

Death of his little Girl — Arrival at Keswick — Postpone- 
ment of the Bibliotheca Britannica — Stagnation of Trade 
— Madoc — Scenery of the Lakes— History of Portugal 
— Hazlitt's Pictures of Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Words- 
worth — Wants Information concerning the West Indies 
— Literary Occupations and Plans — The Annual Review 
— Politics — The Yellow Fever— New Theory of such 
Diseases — Description of Scenery reflected in Keswick 
Lake — Specimens of English Poets projected — Course 
of Life at Keswick — Visit from Mr. Clarkson — Habits 
of Mind — Madoc— Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Godwin — Di- 
rections to Mr. Bedford about Specimens — Regret at 
Mr. Coleridge leaving England — Modern Critics — Mr. 
Coleridge's Powers of Mind — Letter to Mr. Bedford on 
Habits of Procrastination — Literary Employments — 
Specimens of English Poets — Goes to London — Letters 
'rom thence— Returns — Spanish Books — The Mabino- 
^ien — Sir H. Davy — Mr. Sotheby — William Owen, etc. 
- Change of Administration — Progress of Historical 

'.abors.— 1604 162 

CHAPTER XL 

K .nily Details — Politics — He wishes to edit Sir Philip 
Sidney's Works — Dr. Vincent — The West Indies — 
Spanish War — Wishes to go to Portugal with Sir John 
Moore — Use of Reviewing— Early Poems, why written 
— Travels in Abyssinia — Steel Mirrors — Sir W. Scott's 
new Poem — Madoc — The Compass, when first used — 
The Diving Bell — Uses of Printing — Changes in the Crit- 
ical Review — Loss of the Abergavenny — Endowment 
of the Romish Church in Ireland — Translations from 
the Latin — Reasons for not going to London — English 
Poetry — Publication of Madoc — Duty upon foreign 
Books a great Hardship— Story of Pelayo — The Butler 
— Madoc criticised and defended — Reviewing — Liter- 
ary Remarks — Lord Somerville — Suggestion to his 
Brother Thomas to collect Information about the West 
Indies — The Moravians — Visit to Scotland and to Sir 
W. Scott at Ashestiel — Renewals of Madoc — Espriella's 
Letters.— 1805 182 

CHAPTER XH. 
Advantages of Keswick as a Residence — Opinions, Po- 
litical, Social, and Religious — The Language of Madoc 
defended — Foreign Politics — Curious Case of Mental 
Derangement ameliorated — Hobbes's Theory of a State 
of Nature combated — Mr. Coleridge — Mr. Wordsworth 
— Mr. Duppa's Life of Michael Angelo — Details of Him- 
self and his Literary Pursuits and Opinions — Political 
Changes — Literary Labors — Congratulations to Mr. 
Wynn on the Birth of a Child — Remarks on the Effects 
of Time— Bristol Recollections — Beausobre's History 
of Manicheism — Goes to Norwich — The Annual Re- 
view—Jesuitism in England — Brief Visit to London and 
Return — Quaint Theory of the Origin of Languages — 
Thalaba — Urges Mr. Bedford to visit him at Keswick — 
Directions about Specimpns of English Poets — Kehama 
— Death of his Uncle John Southey — Lines upon that 
Event — Mountain Excursions — Reviews of Madoc — 
Epic Subjects suggested— Translation of Palmerin of 
England— Paners concerning South America — Memoirs 
of Colonel Hutchinson.— 1806 198 



CHAPTER XHI. 
He undertakes to edit " Kirke "White's Remains"— Details 
of his settling at Greta Hall — Grant of a small Pension 
— Opinions on the Catholic Question— Progress of 
" Kirke White's Remains" — Heavy Deductions from hia 
Pension — Modern Poetry — Politics — Predicts severe 

Criticisms on the " Specimens of English Poetry" 

Recollections of College Friends — Remarks on Classical 
Reading — The Catholic Question — Spanish Papers 
wanted — Mr. Duppa's " Life of Michael Angelo" — Mo- 
tives for editing "Kirke White's Remains" — Best Sea- 
son for visiting the Lakes — Effect upon them of Cloud 
and Sunshine— Theory of educating Children for spe- 
cific Literary Purposes — Probable Establishment of a 
New Edinburgh Review— Playful Letter to the late 
Hartley Coleridge — New Edition of Don Quixote pro- 
jected—Plan of a Critical Catalogue— Palmerin of En- 
gland—Lay of the Last Minstrel — Chronicle of the Cid— 
Morte D' Arthur— Pecuniary Difficulties — Sale of Es- 
priella's Letters — Specimens of English Poetry— Over- 
tures made to him to take part kfthe EdAurgh Re- 
view — Reasons for declining to do so. — 1807.. Page 213 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Brazilian Affairs— Dislike of leaving Home— Condemns 
the Idea of making Peace with Bonaparte — The Inqui- 
sition — The Sale of his Works — Grateful Feelings to- 
ward Mr. Cottle — Thoughts on the Removal of his 
Book3 to Keswick — Meeting with the Author of Gebir 
— Remarks on Marmion — Political Opinions — Kehama 
— His Position as an Author — On Meters— Population 
of Spain — Conduct of the French at Lisbon — Remarks 
on diseases — Physical Peculiarities — Spanish Affairs — 
Present of Books from Mr. Neville White — Account of 
Floating Island in Derwentwater — He predicts the De- 
feat of the French in the Peninsula — Portuguese Liter- 
ature—Infancy of his little Boy — Poetical" Dreams — 
Chronicle of the Cid — Doubts about going to Spain — 
Anecdote of an Irish Duel — Literary Employments — 
Advice to a young Author — The Convention of Cinrra 
— Spanish Ballads — Politics of the Edinburgh Review — 
The Quarterly Review set on Foot — The Chronicle of 
the Cid— Kehama— Articles in the Quarterly Review- 
Spanish Affairs.— 1808 230 

CHAPTER XV. 
Cowper's Translation of Milton's Latin and Italian Poems 
— Kehama — History of Brazil — Politics— Literary Ad- 
vice — Sketch of Mr. Rickmans Character — Pleasure at 
seeing his Writings in Print — Spanish Affairs — The 
Quarterly Review — Excursion to Durham — Freedom 
of his Opinions — The Cid — Sensitive Feelings — Gebir — 
Bad Efl'ect of Scientific Studies — Anxiety about his lit- 
tle Boy — Mr. Canning wishes to serve him— Application 
for Stewardship of Greenwich Hospital Estates — Mr. 
Wordsworth's Pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra— 
Eclogue of the Alderman's Funeral — The Quarterly Re- 
view — Sir John Moore's Retreat — Death of his Land- 
lord — Mr. Canning's Duel — Morte D'Arthur — Eclectic 
and Quarterly Reviews — Dr. Collyer's Lectures — Mr. 
Coleridge's "Friend" — The Soldier's Love — Kehama 
finished— Pelayo— War in the Peninsula.— 1809 248 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Engagement with Ballantyne for the Edinburgh Annual 
Register — Roderic begun — Professor Wilson— De Quin- 
cey — The Friend— Politics — Madoc defended — Monthly 
Review — Lord Byron — William Roberts — Review of 
the Missionaries — History of Brazil — Declining Love of 
Poetical Composition— The Lady of the Lake — Roman- 
ism in England -Poem of Mr. E. Elliott's criticised — 
Portuguese Literature— Edinburgh Annual Register — 
Spanish Affairs — Doubts about the Meter of Kehama — 
Oliver Newman projected — Kehama — Comparative 
Merits of Spenser and Chaucer — Evil of large landed 
Proprietors — Remarks on Writing for the Stage — Lan- 
dor's Count Julian — Political Views — Gifford wishes to 
serve him— Progress of the Register — L. Goldsmid's 
Book about France— Pasley's Essay— New Review pro- 
jected—Death of his Uncle Thomas Southey — Lucien 
Bonaparte.— 1810-1811 266 

CHAPTER XVn. 
Scott's Vision of Don Roderic — Advice to a young Friend 
on going to Cambridge — Bell and Lancaster Contro- 
versy — Plan of the Book of the Church — Wishes to as- 
sist Mr. W. Taylor in his Difficulties — Prospect of being 
summoned to the Bar of the House of Commons — 
Shelley at Keswick— Ugly Fellows— Oxford— Herbert 
Marsh — Testamentary Letter — Application for the Of- 
fice of Historiographer — Catholic Concessions — Murder 
of Mr. Perceval— State of England— Edinburgh Annual 
Register — Excursion into Durham and Yorkshire 



CONTENTS. 



Xlll 



Visit to Rokeby — The Quarterly Review— The Register 
—Moralized Sketch of Thalaba— 1811-1812 ..Page 277 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Present Happiness— Affairs of the Edinburgh Annual Reg- 
ister embarrassed— Life of Nelson— Roderic — Thanks 
to Sir W. Scott for Rokeby — Regrets ueing compelled 
to Periodical Writing— Politics— Mr. Coleridge's Trage- 
dy brought out— Remarks on the Loss of youthful 
Hopes— Destruction of the French Army in Russia — 
Life of Nelson completed — Literary Plans — Reasons 
for s\ibmitting to Gilford's Corrections — Letters con- 
cerning Mr. James Dusautoy — Gloomy Political Fore- 
bodings — Paper in the Quarterly Review on the State 
of the Poor — Naval Reverses in the War with America 
— Expected Death of his Brother-in-law Mr. Frieker — 
Montgomery's Deluge — Animated Horse-hair — Play by 
Mr. W. S. Landor — Visit to London — Appointment as 
Poet Laureate— 1813 287 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Laureate's First Ode— Restrictions upon his Free- 
dom of Speech— Complaints of Gifford's Corrections — 
Bonaparte — Conduct of the Austrian Government to- 
ward Hofer — Anxiety respecting his Children's Health 
—Thinks of an Ode on the expected Marriage of the 
Princess Charlotte — Repulse of the British at Bergenop- 
Zoom — Quotation from George Gascoigne concerning 
the Dutch — Feelings on the News of the Success of the 
Allied Armies — Poetical Plans — Lord Byron's Ode to 
Bonaparte — Remarks on Mathematical Studies — On 
Clerical Duties — Ridiculous Poem— Portrait and Mem- 
oir wanted — Laureate Odes — Spanish Affairs — Hum- 
boldt's Travels — Roderic — Mr. Coleridge — Domestic 
Anxieties— Advice on College Studies — Children's Joy 
— Hospitals badly conducted — Political Speculations — 
— Barnard Barton — Mr. Wordsworth's last Poem — Lit- 
erary Plans — The Ettrick Shepherd — Laureate Odes 
still required — Foreign Politics — Mr. Canning — History 
of Brazil — Expects nothing from Government — A crazy 
Compositor — Grave of Ronsard at Tours — Roderic — 
Oliver Newman— Thoughts on Death— Bonaparte— His- 
tory of Brazil— New Year's Ode expected — The Prop- 
erty Tax— The Squid Hound— Lord Byron — Roderic — 
Difficulties of Removal — Inscriptions and Epitaphs — 
Evil of going to India — Murat — History of Portugal — 
His Son's Studies — Dr. Bell's Lndus Literarius — Ques- 
tion of Marriage with a Wife's Sidter — Rejoicings at the 
News of the Battle of Waterloo.— 1814-1815 300 

CHAPTER XX. 
Feelings of rejoicing at the Termination of the War with 
France — Journey to Waterloo — Account of Beguinages 
at Ghent— Notices of Flanders— Of the Field of "Battle- 
Purchase of the Acta Sanctorum — Detention by the Ill- 
ness of his Daughter at Aix-la-Chapelle — Return Home 
— Picture of his Domestic Happiness in the Pilgrimage 
to Waterloo — Multitude of Correspondents — Meeting 
with Spanish Liberales in London— Rapid Flight of 
Time — Declining Facility of Poetical Composition — Pol- 
itics — Regiets for the Death of young Dusautoy — The 
Pilgrimage to Waterloo— Scott's Lord of the Isles— The 
History of Brazil — Evils in Society — Want of English 
Beguinages— Early English Poetry— Death of his Son 
— Poetical Criticism — Feelings of Resignation — Circum- 
stances of his Early Life— Geology and Botany better 
Studies than Chemical and Physical Science — Thom- 
son's Castle of Indolence — Youthful Feelings — Owen of 
Laaark— Remarks on his own Fortunes and Character 
—College Life— Wordsworth's Poems.— 1815-1816.318 

CHAPTER XXL 
Changes in his Political Opinions — Causes which made 
him a Political Writer — He is requested to go to Lon- 
don to confer with the Government— Reasons for de- 
clining to do so — Gloomy Anticipations — Measures nec- 
essary for preventing a Revolution— He is hated by the 
Radicals and Anarchists — Thoughts concerning his 
Son's Death— Plan of a Work upon the State of the 
Country— Proposed Reforms — Efforts to assist Herbert 
Knowles to go to Cambridge — Letter from him— His 
Death — Fears of a Revolution — Literary Employment 
and Hopes— Sympathy with a Friend's Difficulties- 
Motives for Thankfulness— Melancholy Feelings— Blind- 
ness of Ministers.— 1816 337 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Surreptitious Publication of Wat Tyler— Consequent Pro- 
ceedings—Is attacked in the House of Commons by 
William Smith— Offer of a Lucrative Appointment con- 
nected with the Times Newspaper— Tour in Switzer- 
land—Letters from thence— Account of Pestalozzi— Of 
Fellenberg— Impressions of the English Lakes on his 



Return — High Opinion of Neville White — Norfolk Scen- 
ery — Speculations on another Life — Life of Wesley in 
progress — Curious News from the North Pole — Liner 
on the Death of the Princess Charlotte— Cure for the 
Bite of Snakes.— 1817 Page 346 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Retrospect of Life — Reviewing — Life of Wesley — Uses 
of Affliction — Edinburgh Annual Register — Westmore- 
land Election — Humboldt — Paper on the Poor Laws 

— Cobbett — Nutritive Qualities of Coffee — Milman's 
Poem of Samor— Offer of Librarianship of the Advo- 
cates' Library, Edinburgh— Scarcity of Literary Men in 
America — Ritchie — Mungo Park— Recollections of his 
Tour on the Continent— He is attacked from the Hust- 
ings at a Westmorel and Election — Wishes to print his 
Poems in a cheaper Form — Mob Meetings — Congratula- 
tions to Mr. Justice Coleridge on his Marriage — Litera- 
ry Advice — Habits of Asceticism not unfavorable to 
long Life — Mr.Wilberforce visits Keswick — School Re- 
bellion — Remarkable Season — Comparative Happiness 
of Childhood and riper Years — Changes in the Criminal 
Laws wanted.— 1818 360 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Nervous Feelings — Anxieties for the Future — Recollec- 
tions of early Journeys — Prudence of anticipating Popu- 
lar Opinion— Ode on the Queen's Death— Haydon— 
Wordsworth— Life of Wesley— Home Politics — Switz- 
erland — Criticisms on a Volume of Poems by Mr. E. 
Elliott — Birth of a Son — History of Brazil — Rising Poets 
— Waverly Novels — Reasons for declining to attend the 
Westminster Meeting — College Recollections — Religion 
necessary to Happiness — Notices of the Lake Country 
— Mr. Wordsworth's "Wagoner" — Advises Allan Cun- 
ningham on Literary Pursuits — Lord Byron's Hostility 
— Probable Reception of the History of Brazil — Crabbe's 
Poems — Peter Roberts — Literary Employments — Colo- 
nization necessary — Tour in Scotland — Desirableness 
of Men of mature Years taking Holy Orders — John 
Morgan in Di/nculties — Literary Occupations — Project- 
ed Journey.— 1818-1819 369 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Opinions on Political and Social Subjects — Curious Be- 
quest from a Lunatic — Letter to him — Dislike of the 
Quakers to Poetry— Life of Wesley— Colloquies with 
Sir Thomas Moore — Sir Howard Douglas — The King's 
Death — Prospects of Society — Rev. Peter Elmsley— 
New Fashion of Poetry of Italian Growth — Don Juan- 
Political Forebodings — Parallel Roads in Scotland — 
Death of the Duke de Berri — Beguinage Scheme— En- 
glish Sisterhoods— His Brother Edward— John Morgan 

— Laureate Odes — The Life of Wesley — Letter in 
Rhyme from Wales — Account of his receiving the 
Honorary Degree of D.C.L. at Oxford— Return Home 
— Congratulations to Neville White on his Marriage — 
Opinions on the Life of Wesley — Excuses for Idleness 
— Occupations — Letter from Shelley — Projected Life of 
George Fox— Mr. Westall and Mr. Nash — The Vision of 
Judgment— Classical Studies — Roderic translated into 
French — Biographical Anecdote — Death of Miss Tyler 
—Birth-day Ode— Portuguese Affairs.— 1820-1821 ..379 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
The Vision of Judgment — Lord Byron — Mr. Jeffrey's 
Opinion of his Writings— Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical 
Sonnets — State of Spain — Scarcity of great Statesmen 
— The Eikwv Baci\iKT] — Hobbes's Behemoth — Failure 
of an Attempt to recover some Family Estates — Lonely 
Feelings at Oxford — The Vision of Judgment approved 
by the King — American Visitors — Disapproval of the 
Language of the Quarterly Review toward America- 
American Divinity— Account of Netherhall— Bohemian 
Lottery — Hampden— A new Candidate for the Protec- 
tion of the Game Laws— State of Ireland— Sir Edward 
Dering — Decree of the Long Parliament — Spanish 
America — Humboldt's Travels— State of Italy, of Spain, 
and of England. — 1821 395 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Religious Feelings— The Book of the Church — History of 
the Feninsular War— Lord Byron— Spanish Affairs — 
Mr. Landor's new Work— Improvements in London- 
Effects of general Education— Visit from Mr. Lightfoot 
—Dr. Channing and the Reverend Christopher Benson 
—General Peachey—D wights Travels— Editorship of 

• the Quarterly Review— The Laureateship— Ways and 
Means — The Peninsular War — Course of his Reading- 
Catholic Emancipation— Illustrations of Roderic— Post- 
humous Fame — The Quarterly Review — American 
Visitors — Wordsworth's Poetry— Mr. Morrison— Owen 
of Lanark— Danger of the Country— Blanco White - 



XIV 



CONTENTS. 



The French in Spain — Journey to London — Rowland 
Hill — The daily Study of the Scriptures recommend- 
ed.— 1823-1823 Page 496 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Plan for uniting the Wesleyan Methodists with the Church 
— Amusing domestic Scene — Opinions of the Book of 
the Church — Roderic translated into Dutch Verse — Ef- 
fects of the Nitrous Oxide — Enmity more active than 
Friendship — Odd Books in reading — Lord Byron's 
Death — Cause of the Delay in the Publication of the 
Peninsular War — Estimate of Human Nature — The j 
Book of the State— Wishes to procure the Publications 
of the Record Committee — Reasons for declining to be 
named one of the Royal Literary Associates — Preva- I 
lence of Atheism — History of the Monastic Orders — 
The Doctor, &c. — Love of planning new Works — Habit 
of reading while walking — Wesleyan Methodists — 
Long Life not desirable — Mr. Telford — Lord Byron — 
The Quarterly Review — Plan of Oliver Newman — 
State of Ireland — He is attacked in the Morning Chron- 
, icle — Bible and Missionary Societies — Evils of severe 
Reviewals — Smedley's Poems — Mr. Butler's Reply to I 
the Book of the Church — Reasons for not visiting Ire- 
land — Literary Obligations — Vindicise Ecc. Anglicanas j 
in Progress — Wishes to make a Tour in Holland — Want j 
of Readiness in Speech— Hayley.— 1824-1825 419 ! 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
Tour in Holland — He is laid up at Ley den at Mr. Bilder- 
dijk's — Rev. R. Philips — Mr. Butler — Mr. Canning — Mo- 
tives for choosing Friends — Visitors to Keswick — Tend- 
ency of his Ecclesiastical Writings — Sisters of Charity 
— The Quarterly Review — Metaphysics — Rules for 
Composition — Knowledge of History the first Requisite 
for a Statesman — The Bullion Question — Jacob Cats — 
Wishes to write a Continuation to Wharton's History 
of Poetry — Mr. Bilderdijk — Dangers of the Manufactur- 
ing System — Effects of Time upon the Mind — His own 
religious Feeling3 — Short Tour in Holland — Death of 
his youngest Daughter — Wishes as to posthumous Pub- 
lications — Letter to his Daughters on the Death of their 
Sister.— 1825-1826 432 



CHAPTER XXX. 



Ele is returned to Parliament for the Borough of Downton 
— Declines to take his Seat — Growth of his Opinions — 
His Autobiography — Emigration — The Edinburgh An- 
nual Register a useful Occupation to him — Sharon 
Turner's History of England — Ambition — Fruitless Ef- 
forts to induce him to sit in Parliament — Reasons for 
declining to do so — Fortunate Course of Life — Different 
Modes of preaching necessary to different Congrega- 
tions — He is requested to undertake the Editorship of 
the Garrick Papers — Illness of Mr. Bilderdijk — Death of 
Bard Williams — A Quaker Album — Domestic Afflic- 
tions — State of Holland — Death of Lord Liverpool — 
Dislike of Political Economy — Foreign Quarterly Re- 
view — State of the Scotch Kirk — Politics, Home and For- 
eign — Relative Happiness of Nations — Decreasing Sale 
of his Works— National Education.— 1826-1827 . . . .444 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
Visit to Harrogate — Album Verses — Lord Colchester — 
Constitutional Bashfulness — The Prospect of another 
Life the only solid Foundation for Happiness. — Pro- 
poses to collect his Political Essays — Mr. Canning — 
Home Politics — Projected Life of Wolfe — Ground of 
his Opinions — Mr. May — Mr. Cottle — Mr. King — Inter- 
course with Mr. Wordsworth's Family — The Quarterly 
Review — Desirableness of putting an end to Imprison- 
ment for small Debts — Disagreeable Duties required 
from Public Officers — Ancient Statutes — Undertakes to 
edit the Verses of an old Servant— Bishop Heber — Dif- 
ficulties of a Removal— The Peninsular War— Engages 
to contribute to the Keepsake — Urges Mr. Bedford to 
visit Keswick — Goes to London — Sits to Sir Thomas 
Lawrence and Sir F. Chantrey — Translation of Davila 
not likely to succeed— His Uncle's Death — Choice of a 
few standard English Works — His Son's Studies — Jack- 
son's Sermons — Life of Nelson — Declining Sale of his 
Works — Visit from Lieut. Mawe — Interest in Mr. May's 
Affairs — Remarks on the Annuals — New Theory of the 
Weather — Literary Employments— Intended Visit to 
the Isle of Man.— 1827-1828 454 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
!< «rsonal Appearance — Habits of Daily Life— Excursions 
— His House and Library — Eleemon — Growth of his 
Opinions — The Catholic Question— Controversy with 
Mr. Shannon— Ballads from Romish Legends — Renew- 
ed Health and Powers — Mr. Wordsworth — Verbeyst, 



the Brussels Bookseller — Politics— His Health— Visit to 
Netherhall — Literary Employments — The Co-operative 
Association — Dr. Phillpotts — Some Results of his Collo- 
quies — Allan Cunningham's Lives of the Painters — Ar- 
ticle in the Quarterly Review upon Portugal — Prospects 
of Society at Home — Michael T. Sadler — Ignatius Loyola 
— Carlisle — Heraud— Desirableness of Men in later Life 
taking Holy Orders— The Colloquies — Church Meth- 
odism—Mrs. Opie — Mr. Hornby — Institution for train- 
ing Nurses opened — Causes of its Failure— Marriage of 
Miss Coleridge — Literary Employments — Mr. Landor — 
Mr. Wordsworth — Recommendation of Berkeley's Mi- 
nute Philosopher — Visit to Mrs. Hodson and Col. How- 
ard.— 1829 Page 465 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
The Co-operative Societies — Literary Employments — 
Death of his Brother Henry's Wife— Evils of our Com- 
mercial System — Cure for Lumbago — Galignani's Edi- 
tion of his Poems — Miller's Sermons — Bishop Hacket — 
The Reform Bill— Dr. Gooch's Death— The Evangelical 
Clergy — Literature of Denmark — Renews the Lease of 
his House — Art of Composition — Hone's E very-day 
Book, &c— Politics— John Jones — Mr. Sadler— Litera- 
ry Employments — Pauper Colonies — The March of In- 
tellect — Denmark — Life of Bishop Heber — State of 
France — Mr. Fletcher — Ellis the Missionary — Dr. Bell — 
PoUtics.— 1830 485 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
Journey to London — Engagements there — National Edu- 
cation — Goes into Hampshire and to the West of En- 
gland — Correspondence with Lord Brougham respect- 
ing the Encouragement of Literature and Science — Ad- 
vice as to the Choice of a Profession — Miss Bowles- 
Joanna Baillie— Politics — Necessity of National Educa- 
tion — The Observance of the Sabbath — The Reform Bill 
— Prospects of the Country — Ivan Vejeeghan — Journey 
to Cheltenham on Dr. Bell's Affairs— Sir Walter Scott- 
Mr. Wordsworth — Strange Notion of Anastasius Hope's 
— Death of Mr. Duppa— Mr. Kenyon — Mr. Poole — Gen- 
eral Peachey — His Prospects not so good as formerly — 
The Cholera — Literary Employments — State of Feeling 
in the Country — Journey to Liverpool, Manchester, <fec. 
— Is invited to stand for a Professorship at Glasgow — 
Regrets Mr. May's Removal from Bristol — Riots in that 
City — The Cholera — The Exchequer likely to be abol- 
ished—Publication of his Political Essays*.— 1830-1831 

495 

CHAPTER XXXV. 
Fears of a Revolution — The Cholera Morbus — Mary Col- 
ling — Charles Swain — Dr. Bell's Death — Political Appre- 
hensions — Offer of Professorship at Durham — Few Men 
known thoroughly — Comparison between Public and 
Private Education — Opinion of Mr. Swain's Poetry — 
Knowledge not the first thing needful — History of Port- 
ugal—Review of Bowles's St. Johu in Patmos — Mary 
Colling — Visit to Lowther — Lord Mahon — Prince Polig- 
nac— Political Prospects— Lord Nugent — Lord Brough- 
am—The Corn-Law Rhymer— Dangers of the Country 
—The Factory System— Lord Ashley— American Divin- 
ity—The Church of England— Alison's History of Eu- 
rope — Death of a favorite Cat— History of Brazil — Dr. 
Bell— Allan Cunningham's Lives of the Painters— French 
Politics— Ebenezer" Elliott — Prospects of the Country 
— The Doctor — Marriage of his eldest Daughter— The 
Corn Laws — Habits of daily Life — Henry Taylor's 
Plays— Zophiel — B.emonstrance in a Case of Crusty. — 
1832-1834 503 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 
Personal Recollections — Mode of Tuition — His Wife's Ill- 
ness and Removal to York — Feelin^r. under Affliction — 
Evil Effects of Anxiety upon his Health— Correspond- 
ence with Sir Robert Peel concerning the Ofler of a 
Baronetcy — Journey to Sussex— Return to Keswick — 
Grant of an additional Pension— Literary Employments 
—The Doctor— Death of Miss Hutchinson— Mr. Wy- 
on's Medallions — Present Feelings and Employments — 
Spanish Literature — Westminster School — Causes of 
its Decline— State of his Spirits — Jackson's Works- 
Feelings of Thankfulness for his new Pension— Novel 
Mode of Book-binding— Literary Employments— Rec- 
ollections of C. Lamb — Singular Effects of Sound and 
Light— State of the Church— Life of Cowper— Difficulty 
of leaving Home — Is subpoenaed to a Trial at Lancaster. 
—1834-1836 520 

CHAPTER XXXVn. 
Journey in the West of England — The Life of Cowper 
— Literary Advice to a Lady— His Son's Prospects- 
New Edition of his Poems— Prospects of the Country 



CONTENTS. 



XT 



—Lamb's Letters— The Doctor— Failure of the Publish- 
ers of the Life of Cowper— Thanks to Dr. S. Macken- 
zie for reviewing the new Edition of his Poems — 
Certainty of a Future State— Death of his Wife.— 1836- 
1837 Page 542 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
Melancholy Thoughts — Intended Movements— Reflec- 
tions on his Wife's Death— Letter from Mr. Bedford — 
The Copy-right Bill — Review in the Examiner — His 
Wife continually brought to Mind— Weak State of his 
Health and Spirits— Miss Edgeworth — Invitation to C. 
Swain — Letter to his Son on commencing a College 
Life — State of his Health and Spirits— Literary Occupa- 
tions— Froude's Remains— The Doctor — Tour in France 



— Return Home— Great Storm— Savonarola— Chatter- 
ton— Marriage with Miss Bowles— Failure of Mind — 
His Death.— 1837-1843 Page 552 

APPENDIX. 

Extract from Mr. Wm. Smith's Speech in the House of 

Commons, March 4, 1817 565 

A Letter to Wm. Smith, Esq., M.P., from Robert Southey, 

Esq 565 

Two Letters concerning Lord Byron, published in South- 

ey's Essays, 2 vols., Murray, 1832 570 

The Gridiron — a Pindaric Ode 575 

List of Publications 576 

Letter from Prince Polignac to R. Southey 578 



The editor is requested to correct a misstatement in the Autobiography, p. 38. It is there said 
that "Mr. Dolignon, in some delirium, died by his own hand." This is an error; Mr. Dolignon 
having died of paralysis in the prime of life, " in the full enjoyment of domestic happiness and 
worldly prosperity." 



THE 




LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 

OF 

ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EARLY LIFE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, 

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF, IN A SERIES OP LETTEES TO HIS FBIEND, MB. JOHN MAY. 



LETTER I. 

HIS ANCESTORS THE CANNON SOUTHEYS HIS 

FATHER SENT TO LONDON REMOVED TO BRIS- 
TOL. 

Keswick, Wednesday evening, July 26th, 1820. 

My DEAR FRIEND JOHN MaY, 

So:\ie old divine has said that hell is paved 
with good resolutions. If Beelzebub has a 
tesselated pavement of this kind in one of his 
state-rooms, I fear I shall be found to have con- 
tributed largely to its unsubstantial materials. 
But that I may save one good resolution at least 
from being trodden under hoof by him and his 
imps, here I begin the performance, hoping, 
rather than promising, even to myself, that I 
may find leisure and courage to pursue it to the 
end — courage, I mean, to live again in remem- 
brance with the dead, so much as I must needs 
do in retracing the course of my life. There are 
certain savages among whom the name of a de- 
ceased person is never mentioned ; some super- 
stition may have attached to this custom, but 
that the feeling in which it originates is natural 
I know both by experience and observation. My 
children never speak of their brother Herbert, 
and I never utter his name except in my pray- 
ers, unless some special cause acts upon me like 
a moral obligation. 

I begin in the cloudy evening of a showery, 
louring, ungenial day : no desirable omen for 
one who is about to record the recollections of 
six-and-forty years, but a most inappropriate one 
in my case, for I have lived in the sunshine, and 
am still looking forward with hope. 

I can not trace my family further back by the 
Church registers than Oct. 25, 1696, on which 
day my grandfather Thomas, the son of Robert 
Southey, and Ann, his wife, was baptized at 
Wellington, in Somersetshire. The said Robert 
Southey had seven other children, none of whom 
left issue. In the subsequent entries of their 
birth (for Thomas was the eldest) he is desig- 
nated sometimes as yeoman, sometimes as farm- 
er. His wife's maiden name was Locke, and 
B 



she was of the same family as the philosopher 
(so called) of that name, who is still held in 
more estimation than he deserves. She must 
have been his niece, or the daughter of his first 
cousin. The register at Wellington goes back 
only to the year 1683. But I have heard that 
Robert's grandfather, that is, my great, great, 
great grandfather (my children's tritavus), was 
a great clothier at Wellington, and had eleven 
sons, who peopled that part of the country with 
Southeys. In Robert's days there were no fewer 
than seven married men of the name in the same 
parish. Robert himself was the younger of two 
sons, and John, his elder brother, was the head 
of the family. They must have been of gentle 
blood (though so obscure that I have never by 
any accident met with the name in a book), for 
they bore arms in an age when armorial bear- 
ings were not assumed by those who had no 
right to them. The arms are a chevron argent, 
and three cross crosslets, argent, in a field sable. 
I should like to believe tKat one of my ancestors 
had served in the crusades, or made a pilgrim- 
age to Jerusalem. 

One of them has left the reputation of having 
been a great soldier; in the Great Rebellion I 
guess it must have been, but I neither know his 
name, nor on what side he fought. Another 
(and this must have been the Robert with whom 
my certain knowledge begins) was, as the phrase 
is, out in Monmouth's insurrection. If he had 
come before Judge Jeffries in consequence, Nash 
would never have painted the happy but too 
handsome likeness of your god-daughter, which 
I have risen from my work ten times this day to 
look at in its progress, nor would you have re- 
ceived the intended series of these biographical 
letters. The entail of my mortal existence wa-s 
in no small risk of being cut off by the execu- 
tioner. My father had the sword which was 
drawn (not bloodied, I hope) in this unlucky 
quarrel, but it was lost in the wreck of his af- 
fairs. 

John, the elder brother of this bold reformer 
I and successful runaway, settled as a lawyer in 



18 



EARLY LIFE OF 



Taunton, and held the office of registrar for the 
archdeaconry. He married the heiress of the 
Cannon family, and upon the death of her father 
fixed his residence at the manor-house of Fitz- 
head, in Somersetshire, which was her property. 
By this marriage he had one son and two daugh- 
ters. John Cannon Southey, the son, practiced 
the law; one daughter married the last of the 
Periam family, and survived him : the other mar- 
ried one of the Lethbridges, and had only one 
child, a daughter. That daughter married Hugh 
Somerville, then a colonel in the army, and broth- 
er to James Lord Somerville ; she died in child- 
bed of John Southey Somerville, her only issue. 

My grandfather settled at Holford Farm, an 
estate belonging to his uncle John, in the parish 
of Lydiard St. Laurence, about ten miles north 
of Taunton, under the Quantock Hills. This 
removal was made when John obtained posses- 
sion of his wife's property ; the first use he made 
of it, therefore, seems to have been to befriend 
his nephew* And I have discovered another 
good indication concerning him : his name ap- 
pears among the subscribers to Walker's Suffer- 
ings of the Clergy, a presumption, at least, that 
he had some regard for books, and a right way 
of thinking. He was very much respected and 
beloved. My grandfather regarded him with 
the greatest reverence, as one from whose judg- 
ment there could be no appeal ; what his uncle 
said or thought was always sufficient authority 
with him. Lydiard St. Laurence is a very re- 
tired hamlet, containing only three farm-houses, 
and having no other habitations within two miles 
of it. My grandfather brought his grandmother 
there, and there she died at the great age of 
102. A maiden sister lived with him. She had 
a small estate held upon three lives; two of 
them fell, and the third, a worthless profligate, 
contrived from that time almost to support him- 
self upon it. Knowing that my poor aunt Han- 
nah was now dependent upon his life, he would 
never strike a stroke of work more. When his 
debts became troublesome, away went his wife 
to the poor old woman with a tale about writs, 
bailiffs, the jail, and jail fever ; and in this man- 
ner was she continually fleeced and kept in con- 
tinual fear, till the rascal died at last of close at- 
tention at the ale-house. This story is worthy 
of insertion in an account of English tenures. 

The removal from Wellington to a lonely ham- 
let seems to have brought my gi'andfather with- 
in the pale of the Established Church, for he had 
been bred up as a Dissenter. (The old sword, 
therefore, was probably pursuing its old courses 
when it went into the field in rebellion.) Aunt 
Hannah, however, though an inoffensive, kind- 
hearted woman in other respects, retained so 
much of the essential acid of Puritanism in her 
composition, that she frequently chastised her 
niece Mary for going into the fields with her 
j\}aymates on a Sunday : she and her brothers and 
sisters, she said, had never been suffered to go 
out uf the house on the Sabbath, except to meet- 
ings.. 

My grandfather did not many till he was 



forty-five ; probably he could not have maintain- 
ed a family before he was settled upon his un- 
cle's farm. His wife's name was Joan Mullens. 
They had three sons, John, Robert (who was 
my father), and Thomas, and two daughters, 
Hannah and Mary, all born at Halford. The 
boys received what in those days was thought a 
good education. The elder, being designed for 
the law (in which his name and family connec- 
tions would assist him), learned a little Latin; 
he lived more with Cannon Southey than with 
his parents, both in his boyhood and youth, as 
his sister Mary did with Madam Periam or 
Madam Lethbridge (this was in the time when 
that title was in common use in the West of En- 
gland), being always with one or the other as 
long as they lived. But Cannon Southey's house 
was a bad school for him. He was looked upon 
as the probable heir of the family after the birth 
of young Somerville, who was always a weakly 
child. The two younger brothers were qualified 
for trade. My father had preserved his cipher- 
ing-book, and I would have preserved it too, as 
carefully as any of my own manuscripts, if it 
had not been lost at the household wreck at his 
bankruptcy. If you will look in that little treat- 
ise of mine upon the " Origin, Nature, and Ob- 
ject of the New System of Education," you will 
find a passage at p. 85, 86, written in remem- 
brance of this ciphering-book, and of the effects 
which it produced upon me in early boyhood. 

When my uncle John was about to begin busi- 
ness as an attorney in Taunton, Cannon Southey, 
who was then the head of the family, lent him 
66100 to start with. " That hundred pounds," 
he used to say, with a sort of surly pride, " I 
repaid, with interest, in six months, and that is 
the only favor for which I was ever obliged to my 
relations." Cannon Southey, however, though 
not very liberal to his kin, had a just regard to 
their legal rights, and left his property in trust 
for his great nephew, John Southey Somerville, 
and his issue, with the intention that if he, who 
was then a child, should die without issue, the 
estates should descend to the Southeys ; and, 
that the whole property might go together, he 
willed his leasehold estates (which would else 
have been divided among the next of kin) in re- 
mainder, upon the same contingency, to my un- 
cle John and his two brothers, and to the sons 
of each in succession, as the former branch 
might fail. 

Robert, my father, was passionately fond of 
the country and of country sports. The fields 
should have been his station instead of the shop. 
He was placed with a kinsman in London, who, 
I believe, was a grocer somewhere in the city 
— one of the eleven tribes that went out from 
Wellington. I have heard him say, that as he 
was one day standing at this person's door, a 
porter went by carrying a hare, and this brought 
his favorite sport so forcibly to mind that he 
could not help crying at the sight. This anec- 
dote in Wordsworth's hands would be worth as 
much as the Reverie of poor Susan. Before my 
father had been twelve months -in- Lm Ion, bis 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



19 



master died ; upon -which he was removed to 
Bristol, and placed with William Britton, a lin- 
en-draper in Wine Street. The business at that 
time was a profitable one, and Britton's the best 
shop of its kind in the town, which is as much 
as saying that there was not a better in the West 
of England. This must have been about the 
end of George the Second's reign. Shop-win- 
dows were then as little used in this country as 
they are now in most of the continental towns. 
I remember Britton's shop still open to the 
weather long after all the neighbors had glazed 
theirs ; and I remember him, from being the 
first tradesman in his line, fallen to decay in his 
old age, and sunk in sottishness, still keeping on 
a business which had dwindled almost to noth- 
ing. My father, I think, was not apprenticed 
to him, because, if he had served a regular ap- 
prenticeship, it would have entitled him to the 
freedom of the city, and I know that he was not 
a freeman : he lived with him, however, twelve 
or fourteen years. Among the acquaintance 
with whom he became intimate during that 
time was my half uncle, Edward Tyler, then em- 
ployed in a Coventry warehouse, in Broad Street, 
belonging to the Troughtons. This introduced 
him to my grandmother's house. 



LETTER II. 

THE HILLS— THE BRADFORDS WILLIAM TYLER 

ANECDOTE OF HIM HIS GRANDFATHER^ 

DEATH. 

Tuesday, August 1st, 1820. 

Mrs. Hill, my grandmother, was, at the 
time of which I am now writing, a widow ; hv,™ 
maiden name was Bradford. I know nothing 
more of her father than that he was a Hereford- 
shire man, and must have been of respectable 
property and connections, as appears by his hav- 
ing married into one of the best families in the 
county, and sending a son to college. His wife's 
name was Mrs. Margaret Croft. I have it writ- 
ten in gold letters, with the date 1704, in a 
copy of Nelson's Festivals and Fasts, which de- 
scended as a favorite devotional book to my 
mother. They had three children : Herbert, so 
named after the Croft family ; another son (Will- 
iam, I think, by name), who was deaf and dumb, 
and just lived to grow up ; and my grandmother 
Margaret. 

My grandmother was very handsome : little 
Georgiana Hill, my uncle sa} r s, reminds him 
strongly of her ; and I remember her enough to 
recognize a likeness in the shape of the face, 
and in the large, full, clear, bright brown eyes. 
Her first husband, Mr. Tyler, was of a good 
family in Herefordshire, nearly related I know 
he was, and nephew I think, to one of that name 
who was Bishop of Hereford. He lived at Pem- 
bridge. The seat of the family was at Dilwyn, 
where his elder brother lived, who either was 
not married or left no issue. I have hardly 
heard any thing of him, except that on his wed- 



ding day he sung a song after dinner, which 
could not be thought very complimentary to his 
bride ; for, though it began by saying, 

" Ye gods, who gave to me a wife 
Out of your grace and favor, 
To be the comfort of my life, 
And I was glad to have her" 

(thus much I remember of the rhymes), it endea 
with saying that, whenever they might think fit, 
he was ready to resign her. It happened, how- 
ever, that the resignation was to be on the wife's 
part. He died in the prime of life, leaving four 
children, Elizabeth, John, William, and Edward ; 
and his widow, after no very long interval, mar- 
ried Edward Hill, of Bedminster, in the county 
of Somersetshire, near Bristol, and was trans- 
planted with her children to that place. 

Edward Hill was the seventh in succession 
of that name. His fathers had lived and died 
respectably and contentedly upon their own lan&s 
in the beautiful vale of Ashton, the place of all 
others which I remember with most feeling. 
You see it from Clifton, on the other side of the 
River Avon ; Warton has well characterized it 
in one of his odes as Ashton's elmy vale. The 
Hills are called gentlemen upon their tomb- 
stones in Ashton church-yard, where my father, 
two of my brothers, my three sisters, and my 
poor dear cousin Margaret, are deposited with 
them. Edward Hill, the seventh, was a lawyer 
and a widower ; he had two children by his first 
marriage, a son, Edward, the eighth, and a 
daughter, old enough, I believe, at the time of 
his second marriage, for the daughter to be 
married, and the son very soon to hold a com- 
mission in the marines. He was a fine, hand- 
some man, of considerable talents, and of a con- 
vivial temper. I have heard him spoken of 
with admiration by persons who were intimate 
with him in their youth. He could make verses, 
too, after the fashion of that age. I have some- 
where a poem of his, in his own writing, which 
came to my mother after her mother's death, 
and, in like manner, descended into my posses- 
sion : it is not, therefore, without a mournful 
feeling that I recall to mind the time when it 
was first shown to me, and the amusement which 
it then afforded me. It was a love poem, ad- 
dressed to my grandmother during the days of 
courtship : it intimated some jealousy of a rival, 
who was called Strephon, and there was a note 
at the bottom of the page upon this name, ex- 
plaining that it meant "the young justice." 

William Tyler, the second brother, was a re- 
markable person. Owing to some defect in his 
faculties, so anomalous in its kind that I never 
heard of a similar case, he could never be taught 
to read ; the letters he could tell separately, but 
was utterly incapable of combining them, and 
taking in their meaning by the eye. He could 
write, and copy in a fair hand any thing that 
was set before him, whether in writing or in 
print ; but it was done letter by letter, without 
understanding a single w T ord. As to self-gov- 
ernment, he was entirely incompetent, so much 
so that I think he could hardly be considered 



20 



EARLY LIFE OF 



responsible as a moral being for bis actions ; yet 
he had an excellent memory, an observing eye, 
and a sort of half -saved shrewdness, which would 
have qualified him, had he been born two cen- 
turies earlier, to have worn motley, and figured 
with a cap and bells and a bawble in some bar- 
on's hall. Never did I meet with any man so 
stored with old saws and anecdotes gathered up 
in the narrow sphere wherein he moved. I still 
remember many of them, though he has been 
dead more than thirty years. The motto to 
Eehama,* as the Greek reference, when the 
abbreviations are rightly understood, may show, 
is one of my uncle William's sayings. When 
it was found impossible to make any thing of 
him by education, he was left to himself, and 
passed more time in the kitchen than in the 
parlor, because he stood in fear of his step-father. 
There he learned to chew tobacco and to drink. 

Strange creature as he was, I think of him 
very often, often speak of him, quote some of his 
odd, apt sayings, and have that sort of feeling 
for his memory that he is one of the persons 
whom I should wish to meet in the world to 
come. 

The man of whom he learned the use, or, 
rather, the abuse of tobacco, was a sottish serv- 
ant, as ignorant as a savage of every thing 
which he ought to have known — that is to say, 
of every thing which ought to have been taught 
him. My mother, when a very little girl, re- 
proved him once for swearing. " For shame, 
Thomas," she said; "you should not say such 
naughty words ! for shame ! say your prayers, 
Thomas !" " No, missey !" said the poor wretch, 
' : I sha'n't; I sha"n't say my prayers. I never 
said my prayers in all my life, missey; and I 
sha'n't begin now." My uncle William (the 
Squire he was called in the family) provoked 
him dangerously once. He was dozing beside 
the fire with his hat on, which, as is still the 
custom among the peasantry (here in Cumber- 
land, at least), he always wore in the house. 
You, perhaps, are not enough acquainted with 
the mode of chewing tobacco to know that in 
vulgar life a quid commonly goes through two 
editions ; and that, after it has been done with, 
it is taken out of the mouth, and reserved for a 
second regale. My uncle William, who had 
learned the whole process from Thomas, and 
always faithfully observed it, used to call it, in 
its intermediate state, an old soldier. A sailor 
deposits, or, if there be such a word (and if there 
is not, there ought to be), re-posits it in his to- 
bacco-box. I have heard my brother Tom say 
that this practice occasioned a great dislike in 
the navy to the one and two pound notes ; for 
when the men were paid in paper, the tobacco- 
box served them for purse or pocket-book in lack 
of any thing better, and notes were often render- 
ed illegible by the deep stain of a wet quid. 
Thomas's place for an old soldier between two 
campaigns, while he was napping and enjoying 
the narcotic effects of the first mastication, was 



* I have heard my father say that this proverb was ren- 
dered into Greek by Mr. Coleridge. — Ed. 



the brim of his hat, from whence the Squire on 
this occasion stole the veteran quid, and substi- 
tuted in its place a dead mouse just taken from 
the trap. Presently the sleeper, half wakening 
without unclosing his eyes, and half stupefied, 
put up his hand, and taking the mouse with a 
finger and thumb, in which the discriminating 
sense of touch had been blunted by coarse work 
and unclean habits, opened his mouth to receive 
it, and, with a slow, sleepy tongue, endeavored 
to accommodate it to its usual station between 
the double teeth and the cheek. Happening to 
put it in headforemost, the hind legs and the tail 
hung out, and a minute or more was spent in 
vain endeavors to lick these appendages in, be- 
fore he perceived, in the substance, consistence, 
and taste, something altogether unlike tobacco. 
Roused at the same time by a laugh which could 
no longer be suppressed, and discovering the 
trick which had been played, he started up in a 
furious rage, and, seizing the poker, would have 
demolished the Squire for this practical jest, if he 
had not provided a retreat by having the doors 
open, and taking shelter where Thomas could 
not, or dared not follow him. 

Enough of uncle William for the present. 
Edward, the remaining brother of the Tyler side, 
was a youth who, if he had been properly brought 
up, and brought forward in a manner suitable to 
his birth and connections, might have made a 
figure in life, and have done honor to himself and 
his family. He had a fine person, a good un- 
derstanding, and a sweet temper, y»~hich made 
him too easily contented with any situation and 
any company into which he was thrown. My 
grandfather has much to answer for on his ac- 
count. Except sending him to a common day- 
school, kept by a very uncommon sort of man 
(of whom more hereafter), he left him to him- 
self, and let him grow and run to seed in idle- 
ness. 

My grandfather would have acquired consider- 
able property if he had not been cut off by an 
acute disorder. He had undertaken to recover 
some disputed rights for the church of which he 
was a parishioner, at his own risk and expense, 
on condition of receiving the additional tithes 
which might be eventually recovered during a 
certain number of years, or of being remunerated 
out of them in proportion to the cost, and hazard, 
and trouble of the adventure. The points were 
obstinately contested ; but he carried them all, 
and died almost immediately afterward, in the 
year 1765, aged sixty. 



LETTER III. 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE HILLS PARSON COLLINS. 

Nov. 16th, 1820. 
My grandmother's jointure from her first hus- 
band was d£200 a year, which was probably 
equivalent to thrice that sum in these days. 
The Tylers had from their father d£600 each. 
Miss Tyler lived with her uncle "Bradford, of 
whom and of her I shall speak hereafter. I 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



21 



must now speak of the Hills. My uncle (it is 
so habitual to me to speak and write of him, and 
of him only by that name, nar' kijoxvv, that I 
' will not constrain myself to use any further des- 
ignation) — my uncle, and his brother Joseph, 
and Edward Tyler, went by day to a school in 
the village kept by one of the strangest fellows 
that ever wore a cassock or took up the trade of 
tuition. His name was Collins. He was clever 
and profligate, and eked out his ways and means 
by authorship — scribblii% for inclination, and 
publishing for gain. One of his works I recol- 
lect among my uncle's books in Miss Tyler's 
possession ; its title is " Hell's Gates open ;" but, 
not having looked into it since I was a mere boy, 
I only know that it is satirical, as the name may 
seem to import. I sent for another of his publi- 
cations some years ago from a catalogue, not as 
any thing of value, but because he had been my 
uncle's first schoolmaster, and I knew who and 
what he was. It is to be wished that every per- 
son who knew me would think that a good rea- 
son for buying my works : I should be very much 
obliged to them. It is a little book in the un- 
usual form of a foolscap quarto, and because it 
contains one fact which is really curious as mat- 
ter of history, I give its title* at the bottom of 
the page. This publication is in no respect cred- 
itable to its author, and, on the score of decency, 
highly discreditable to him. But the fact, which 
is well worth the two shillings I gave for the 
book (though but a halfpenny fact), is, that, as 
late as the end of George the Second's reign, or 
the beginning of George the Third's, there were 
persons in Bristol who, from political scruples 
of conscience, refused to take King William's 
halfpence, and these persons were so numerous 
that the magistrates thought it necessary to in- 
terfere, because of the inconvenience which they 
occasioned in the common dealings of trade and 
of the markets. William's copper money was 
then in common currency, and, indeed, I myself 
remember it, having, between the years 1786 
and 1790, laid by some half dozen of his half- 
pence with the single or double head, among the 
foreign pieces and others of rare occurrence 
which came within my reach. 

Devoid as his Miscellanies are of any merit, 
Parson Collins, as he was called (not in honor of 
the cloth), had some humor. In repairing the 
public road, the laborers came so near his garden 
wall that they injured the foundations, and down 
it fell. He complained to the way-wardens, and 
demanded reparation, which they would have 
evaded if they could, telling him it was but an 
old wall, and in a state of decay. " Gentlemen," 
he replied, " old as the wall was, it served my 
purpose ; but, however, I have not the smallest 



* Miscellanies in Prose and Verse ; consisting of Essays, 

Abstracts, Original Poems, Letters, Tales, Translations, 

Panegyrics, Epigrams, and Epitaphs. 

" Sunt bona, sunt quasdam mediocria, sunt mala plura ; 

Quae legis hie aliter non fit, abite, liber."— Martial. 

" Things good, things bad, things middling when you look, 

You'll find to constitute, my Mends, this book." 
Ry Emanuel Collins, A.B., late of Wadham College, Ox- 
ford. Bristol: printed by E. Farley, in Small Street. 1762. 



objection to your putting up a second-hand one 
in its place." This anecdote I heard full five- 
and-thirty years ago from one of my schoolmas- 
ters, who had been a rival of Collins, and was 
satirized by him in the Miscellanies. His school 
failed him, not because he was deficient in learn- 
ing, of which he seems to have had a full share 
for his station, but because of his gross and scan- 
dalous misconduct. He afterward kept some- 
thing so like an ale-house that he got into a 
scrape with his superiors. 

One of his daughters kept, a village shop at 
Chew Magna, in Somersetshire, and dealt with 
my father for such things as were in his way. 
She used to dine with us whenever she came to 
Bristol, and was always a welcome guest for her 
blunt, honest manners, and her comical oddity. 
Her face was broad and coarse, like a Tartar's, 
but with quick dark eyes and a fierce expression. 
She was one of those persons who could say 
quidlibet cuilibet da quolibet. 

I perceive that I should make an excellent 
correspondent for Mr. Urban, and begin to sus- 
pect that I have mistaken my talent, and been 
writing histories and poems when I ought to have 
been following the rich veins of gossip and gar- 
rulity. All this, however, is not foreign to my 
purpose ; for I wish not only to begin ab ovo. but 
to describe every thing relating to the nest ; and 
he who paints a bird's nest ought not to repre- 
sent it nakedly per se, but in situ, in its place, 
and with as many of its natural accompaniments 
as the canvas will admit. It is not manners and 
fashions alone that change and are perpetually 
changing with us. The very constitution of so- 
ciety is unstable ; it may, and in all probability 
will, undergo as great alterations, in the course 
of the next *wo or three centuries, as it has un- 
dergone in the last. The transitions are likely 
to be more violent and far more rapid. At no 
very distant time, these letters, if they escape 
the earthquake and the volcano, may derive no 
small part of their interest and value from the 
faithful sketches which they contain of a stage 
of society which has already passed away, and 
of a state of things which shall then have ceased 
to exist. 



LETTER IV. 

HIS MOTHER'S BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD HER 

MARRIAGE HIS OWN BIRTH. 

My mother was born in 1752T She was a re- 
markably beautiful infant, till, when she was be- 
tween one and two years old, an abominable 
nurse-maid carried her, of all places in the world, 
to Newgate (as was afterward discovered), and 
there she took the small-pox in its most malig- 
nant form. It seemed almost miraculous that 
she escaped with life and eyesight, so dreadfully 
severe was the disease ; but her eyebrows were 
almost destroyed, and the whole face seamed 
with scars. While she was a mere child, she 
had a paralytic affection, which deadened one 



22 



EARLY LIFE OF 



side from the hip downward, and crippled her 
for about twelve months. Some person advised 
that she should be placed out of doors in the 
sunshine as much as possible ; and one day, when 
she had been carried out as usual into the fore- 
court, in her little arm-chair, and left there to 
see her brothers at play, she rose from her seat, 
to the astonishment of the family, and walked 
into the house. The recovery from that time 
was complete. The fact is worthy of notice, 
because some persons may derive hope from it 
in similar cases, and because it is by no means 
improbable that the sunshine really effected the 
cure. The manner by which I should explain 
this would lead to a theory somewhat akin to 
that of Bishop Berkeley upon the virtues of tar 
water. 

There are two portraits of my mother, both 
taken by Robert Hancock in 1798. My brother 
Tom has the one ; the other hangs opposite me, 
where I am now seated in my usual position at 
my desk. Neither of these would convey to a 
stranger a just idea of her countenance. That 
in my possession is very much the best : it rep- 
resents her as she then was, with features care- 
worn and fallen away, and with an air of mel- 
ancholy which was not natural to her; for never 
was any human being blessed with a sweeter 
temper or a happier disposition. She had an 
excellent understanding, and a readiness of ap- 
prehension which I have rarely known surpass- 
ed. In quickness of capacity, in the kindness 
Of her nature, and in that kind of moral magnet- 
ism which wins the affections of all within its 
sphere. I never knew her equal. To strangers 
she must probably have appeared much disfigured 
by the small-pox. I, of course, could not be 
sensible of this. Her complexion was very good, 
and nothing could be more expressive than her 
fine, clear hazel eyes. 

Female education was not much regarded in 
her childhood. The ladies who kept boarding- 
schools in those days did not consider it neces- 
sary to possess any other knowledge themselves 
than .that of ornamental needle-work. Two sis- 
ters, who had been mistresses of the most fash- 
ionable school in Herefordshire fifty years ago, 
used to say, when they spoke of a former pupil, 
v; Her went to school to we ;" and the mistress 
of which, some ten years later, was thought the 
best school near Bristol (where Mrs. Siddons 
sent her daughter), spoke, to my perfect recol- 
lection, much such English as this. My mother, 
I believe, never went to any but a dancing- 
school, and he^ state was the more gracious. 
But her half sister, Miss Tyler, was placed at 

one in the neighborhood under a Mrs. , 

whom I mention because her history is charac- 
teristic of those times. Her husband carried on 
the agreeable business of a butcher in Bristol, 
while she managed a school for young ladies 
about a mile out of the town. His business 
would not necessarily have disqualified her for 
this occupation (though it would be no recom- 
mendation), Kirke White's mother, a truly ad- 
mirable woman, being in this respect just under 



like circumstances. But Mrs. might, with 

more propriety, have been a blacksmith's wife, 
as, in that case, Vulcan might have served for a 
type of her husband in his fate, but not in the 
complacency with which he submitted to it, 
horns sitting as easily on his head as upon the 
beasts which he slaughtered. She was a hand- 
some woman, and her children were, like the 
Harleian Miscellany, by different authors. This 
was notorious : yet her school flourished not- 
withstanding, and she retired from it at last with 
a competent fortune, and was visited as long as 
she lived by her former pupils. This may serve 
to show a great improvement in the morals of 
middle life. 

Two things concerning my mother's childhood 
and youth may be worthy of mention. One is, 
that she had for a fellow-scholar at the dancing- 
school Mary Darby (I think her name was), then 
in her beauty and innocence, soon afterward no- 
torious as the Prince of "Wales's Perdita, and to 
be remembered hereafter, though a poor poet- 
ess, as having, perhaps, a finer feeling of meter, 
and more command of it, than any of her co- 
temporaries. The other is, that my mother, 
who had a good ear for music, was taught by 
her father to whistle ; and he succeeded in mak- 
ing her such a proficient in this unusual accom- 
plishment, that it was his delight to place her 
upon his knee, and make her entertain his visit- 
ors with a display. This art she never lost, and 
she could whistle a song tune as sweetly as a 
skillful player could have performed it upon the 
flute. 

My grandmother continued to live in the house 
at Bedminster which her husband had built, and 
which, after his death, had been purchased by 
Edward Tyler. It was about an hour's walk, 
ev&va avdpl, from Bristol ; and my father, hav- 
ing been introduced there, became, in progress 
of time, a regular Sabbath guest. How long he 
had been acquainted with the family before he 
thought of connecting himself with it, I do not 
know ; but in the year 1772, being the 27th of his 
own age, and the 20th of my mother's, they were 
married at Bedminster Church. He had previ- 
ously left Britton's service, and opened a shop 
for himself, in the same business and in the same 
street, three doors above. Cannon Southey had 
left him c£l00; my mother had a legacy of 
d£50 from her uncle Bradford : my father formed 
a partnership with his younger brother Thomas, 
who had such another bequest as his from the. 
same quarter ; perhaps, also, he might have saved 
something during his years of service, and the 
business may have begun with a capital of c£500 ; 
I should think not more. Shop signs were 
general in those days ; but the custom of sus- 
pending them over the street, as is still done at 
inns in the country, was falling into disuse. My 
father, true to his boyish feelings, and his pas- 
sion for field sports (which continued unabated, 
notwithstanding the uncongenial way of life in 
j which his lot had fallen), took a hare for his de- 
vice. It was painted on a pane in the window 
on each side of the door, and was engraved on 



Mi at. 2-6. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



23 



his shop-bills. This became interesting when he 
told me of his shedding tears at the sight of the 
hare in the porter's hand in London ; and I often 
think of having one cut upon a seal, in remem- 
brance of him and of the old shop. Bryan the 
Prophet told me, in the days of Richard Broth- 
ers, that I was of the tribe of Judah — a sort of 
nobility which those prophets had the privilege 
of discovering without any assistance from the 
Herald's Office. Had he derived me from Esau 
instead of Jacob, my father's instincts might 
have induced me to lend a less incredulous ear. 
The first child of this marriage was born 
August 1, 1773, and christened John Cannon. 
He lived only to be nine or ten months old. He 
was singularly beautiful ; so much so, that, when 
I made my appearance on the 12th of August, 
1774,* I was sadly disparaged by comparison 
with him. My mother, asking if it was a boy, 
was answered by her nurse in a tone as little 
favorable to me as the opinion was flattering. 
" Ay, a great ugly boy !" and she added when 
she told me this, " God forgive me ! when I saw 
what a great red creature it was, covered with 
rolls of fat, I thought I should never be able to 
love him." 



LETTER V. 

FTRST GOING TO SCHOOL BIRTH OF BKOTHERS 

AND SISTERS MISS TYLER. 

March 20th, 1821. 
The popular saint of the democratic cantons 
in Switzerland, St. Nicolas de Hue (to whom I 
paid my respects in his own church at Saxeln), 
remembered his own birth, knew his mother 
and the midwife as soon as he was born, and 
never forgot the way by which he was taken to 
be christened, nor the faces of the persons who 
were present at that ceremony. But he was 
an extraordinary child, who, though he neither 
danced, nor sung, nor preached before he was 
born (all which certain other saints are said to 
have done) , had revelations in that state, and saw 
the light of heaven before he came into the light 
of day. It has pleased the metaphysico-critico- 
politico - patriotico - phoolo - philosopher Jeremy 
Bentham to designate me, in one of his opaque 
works, by the appellation of St. Southey, for 
which I humbly thank his Jeremy Benthamship, 
and have in part requited him. It would be very 
convenient if I had the same claim to this honor, 
on the score of miraculous memory, as the afore- 
said Nicolas; but the twilight of my recollec- 
tions does not begin till the third year of my age.f 

* My birth-day was Friday, the 12th of August, 1774 ; 
the time of my birth, half past eight in the morning, ac- 
cording to the family Bible. According to my astrolog- 
ical friend Gilbert, it was a few minutes before the half 
hour, in consequence of which I am to have a pain in my 
bowels when I am about thirty, and Jupiter is my deadly 
antagonist ; but I may thank the stars for " a gloomy capa- 
bility of walking through desolation." — Letter to Grosvenor 
C. Bedford, Esq., Sept. 30, 1797. 

t My feelings were very acute ; they used to amuse 
themselves by making me cry at sad songs and dismal 
stories. 1 remember " Death anil the Lady," " Billy Prin- 



However, though I did not, like him, know 
the midwife at the time when she had most to 
do with me, I knew her afterward, for she 
brought all my brothers and sisters into the 
world. She was the wife of a Aperannuated 
Baptist preacher, who, as was fornrerly common 
for Baptist preachers to do, kept a shop, dealing 
in medicines and quackery among other things. 
Preachers of this grade have now nearly or en- 
tirely disappeared ; and even the Methodists 
will not allow their ministers to engage in any 
kind of trade. I mention this family, therefore, 
as belonging to a class which is now extinct. 
They were stiff Oliverians in their politics. The 
husband was always at his studies, which prob- 
ably lay in old Puritanical divinity ; he was 
chiefly supported by his wife's professional la- 
bors, and I well remember hearing him spoken 
of as a miserable, ragtose tyrant. The only son 
of this poor woman lost his life by a singularly 
dismal accident, when he was grown up and do- 
ing well in the world. Hastening one day to 
see his mother, upon the alarm of a sudden and 
dangerous illness which had seized her, he came 
to the draw-bridge on St. Augustine's Back just 
as they were beginning to raise it for the pas- 
sage of a vessel. In his eagerness he attempted 
to spring across, but, not calculating upon the 
rise, he fell in, and the vessel passed over him, 
inevitably, before any attempts to save him could 
be made. I used to cross the bridge almost 
every day for many years of my life ; and the 
knowledge of his fate warned me from, incurring 
the same danger, which otherwise, in all likeli- 
hood, active as I then was, and always impa- 
tient of loss of t : me, I should very often have 
done. 

It was my lot to be consigned to a foster- 
mother, a girl, or, rather, a young woman, who 
had been from childhood employed by my grand- 
mother, first in the garden, then in household 
affairs ; a poor, thoughtless, simple creature, 
who, however, proved a most affectionate nurse 
to me. The first day that I was taken to school 
she was almost heart-broken at the scene be- 
tween me and the schoolmistress — a scene 
which no doubt appeared to me of the most 
tragical kind. Having ushered me into the 
room and delivered me into custody, she made a 
hasty retreat, but stood without the door, look- 
ing through a curtained window which gave 
light into the passage, and listening to what en- 
sued. It was a place where I was sent to be 
out of the way for a few hours morning and 
evening, for I was hardly older than Cuthbert is 
at this time, and, though quite capable of learn- 
ing the alphabet, far too young to be put to it 
as a task, or made to comprehend the fitness of 



gle's Pig," " The children sliding on the ice all on ft sum- 
mer's day," and Witherington fighting on his stumps at 
Chevy Chase. This was at two years old, when my rec- 
ollection begins ; prior identity I have no»e. They tell 
me I used to beg them not to proceed. I know not wheth- 
er our feelings are blunted or rendered more acute by ac- 
tion : in either case, these pranks are wrong with chil- 
dren. I can not now hear a melancholy tale in silence, 
but I have learned to whistle.— Letter to G. C. Bedford, 
Esq., Sept. 30, 1797. 



24 



EARLY LIFE OF 



/Etat. 2-6. 



sitting still for so long a time t:gether on pain 
of the rod. Upon this occasion, when, for the 
first time in my life, I saw nothing but strange 
faces about me, and no one to whom I could 
look for kindfess or protection, I gave good proof 
of a sense or physiognomy which never misled 
me yet, of honesty in speaking my opinion, and 
of a temerity in doing it by which my after life 
has often been characterized. Ma'am Powell 
had as forbidding a face (I well remember it) as 
can easily be imagined ; and it was remai'kable 
for having no eyelashes, a peculiarity which I 
instantly perceived. When the old woman, 
therefore, led me to a seat on the form, I re- 
belled as manfully as a boy in his third year 
could do, crying out, " Take me to Pat ! I don't 
like ye ! you've got ugly eyes ! take me to Pat, 
I say !" Poor Pat went home with the story, 
and cried as bitterly in relating it as I had done 
during the unequal contest, and at the utter dis- 
comfiture to which I was fain to submit, when 
might, as it appeared to me, overpowered right.* 
My sister Eliza was born in 1776, and died 
of the measles in 1779. I remember her as my 
earliest playmate, by help of some local circum- 
stances, and sometimes fancy that I can call to 
mind a faint resemblance of her face. My 
brother Thomas came into the world 1777; 
Louisa next, in 1779. This was a beautiful 
creature, the admiration of all who beheld her. 
My aunt Mary was one day walking with her 
down Union Street, when Wesley happened to 
be coming Tip, and the old man was so struck 
with the little girl's beauty that he stopped and 
exclaimed, " Oh ! sweet creature !" took her by 
the hand, and gave her a blessing. That which 
in affliction we are prone to think a blessing, 
and which, perhaps, in sober reflection, may be 
justly thought so, befell her soon afterward — an 
early removal to a better world. She died of 
hydrocephalus, a disease to which the most 
promising children are the most liable. Happi- 
ly neither her parents nor her grandmother ever 
suspected, what is exceedingly probable, that in 
her case the disease may have been induced by 



* Here I was at intervals till my sixth year, and formed j 
a delectable plan with two schoolmates for going to an 
island and living by ourselves. We were to have one 
mountain of gingerbread and another of candy. ... 1 had I 
a great desire to be a soldier : Colonel Johnson once gave I 
me bis sword ; I took it to bed, and went to sleep in a ! 
state of most complete happiness : in the morning it was 
gone. Once I sat upon the grass in what we call a brown i 
study ; at last, out it came, with the utmost earnestness, 
to my aunt Mary : " Auntee Polly, I should like to have ; 
all the weapons of war, the gun, and the sword, and the j 
halbert, and the pistol, and all the weapons of war." Once j 
I got horsewhipped for taking a walk with a journeyman j 
barber who lived opposite, and promised to "give me a 
sword. This took a strange turn when I was about nine 
years old. I had been reading the historical plays of 
Shakspeare, and concluded there must be civil wars 
in my own time, and resolved to be a very great man, 
like the Earl of Warwick. Now it would be prudent to 
niitke partisans ; so I told my companions at school that 
my mother was a very good woman, and had taught me 
to interpret dreams. They used to come and repeat their 
In ama to me, and I was artful enough to refer them all 
to great civil wars, and the appearance of a very great 
m mi who was to appear — meaning myself. I had resolved 
that Tom should be a great man too, and actually dreamed 
Hi e of going into his tent to wake him the morning be- 
fore a battle, so full was I of these ideas.— Letter to G. C. 
Jhdford, Esq., Sept. 30, 1797. 



their dipping her every morning in a tub of the 
coldest well water. This was done from an old 
notion of strengthening her : the shock was 
dreadful; the poor child's horror of it, every 
morning, when taken out of bed, still more so. 
I can not remember having seen it without hor- 
ror ; nor do I believe that among all the prepos- 
terous practices which false theories have pro- 
duced, there was ever a more cruel and perilous 
one than this. John, the next child, was born 
in 1782, and died in infancy. 

My recollections of Eliza and Louisa are 
more imperfect than they might otherwise have 
been, because during those years I was very 
much from home, being sometimes at school, 
and sometimes with Miss Tyler, of whose situa- 
tion and previous history I must now speak, be- 
cause they had a material influence upon the 
course of my life. 

Miss Tyler, who was born in the year 1739, 
passed the earlier part of her life with her mater- 
nal uncle at Shobdon, a little village in Hereford- 
shire, where he resided upon a curacy. Mr. 
Bradford had been educated at Trinity College, 
Oxford, and was in much better circumstances 
than country curates in general. He had an 
estate in Radnorshire of respectable value, and 
married the sister of Mr. Greenly, of Titley, in 
Herefordshire, who, being of so good a family, 
had probably a good fortune. He appears to 
have possessed some taste for letters, and his li- 
brary was well provided with the professional 
literature of that age. Shobdon, though a re- 
mote place, gave him great opportunities of so- 
ciety : Lord Bateman resided there, in one of 
the finest midland situations that England af- 
fords ; and a clergyman of companionable tal- 
ents and manners was always a welcome guest 
at his table. Miss Tyler also became a favorite 
with Lady Bateman, and spent a great deal of 
time with her, enough to acquire the manners 
of high life, and too many of its habits and no- 
tions. Mrs. Bradford died a few years before 
her husband; not, however, till he was too far 
advanced in life, or too confirmed in celibate 
habits to think of marrying again. By that 
time he had become a victim to the gout. An 
odd accident happened to him during one of his 
severe fits, at a time when no persuasions could 
have induced him to put his feet to the ground, 
or to believe it possible that he could walk.* He 
was sitting with his legs up, in the full costume 
of that respectable and orthodox disease, when 
the ceiling, being somewhat old, part of it gave 
way, and down came a fine nest of rats, old and 
young together, plump upon him. He had what 
is called an antipathy to these creatures, and, 
forgetting the gout in the horror which their 
visitation excited, sprung from his easy chair, 
and fairly ran down stairs. 

Miss Tyler had the management of his house 
after his wife's death, and she had also, in no 
small degree, the management of the parish 
She had influuice enough to introduce inocula- 
tion there, and I believe great merit in the ex- 
ertions which she made on that occasion, and 



Mr.\r. 2-6. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



25 



the personal attention which she bestowed. It 
occurs to my recollection now also while I write, 
that she effected a wholesome and curious inno- 
vation in the poor-house, by persuading them to 
use beds stuffed with beech-leaves, according to 
a practice in some parts of France which she 
had heard or read of. It was Mr. Bradford 
who had placed my uncle Mr. Hill at Oxford, 
first at St. Mary's Hall, afterward at Christ 
Church, where he obtained a studentship, which 
must have been by means of some Shobdon con- 
nections. When Mr. Bradford died, which was 
in the year 1778, he left the whole of his prop- 
erty to Miss Tyler, except <£50 to my mother, 
and a small provision, charged upon his estates, 
for my poor uncle William, as one utterly inca- 
pable of providing for himself. 

Finding herself mistress of 661500 in money 
from Mr. Bradford's effects, besides the estate, 
and her own paternal portion of d£600, she be- 
gan to live at large, and to frequent watering 
places. At one of these (I think it was Wey- 
mouth) she fell in with Armstrong, the physician 
and poet, a writer deservedly respectable for his 
poem upon Health, and deservedly infamous for 
another of his productions. He recommended 
her to try the climate of Lisbon, less for any real 
or apprehended complaint than because he per- 
ceived the advice would be agreeable ; and thus, 
before you and I were born, did Armstrong pre- 
pare the way for our friendship, as well as for 
the great literary labors of my life. To Lisbon 
accordingly she went, taking with her my uncle, 
who had lately entered into orders, and Mrs. 
(a distant relation, the widow of a de- 
cayed Bristol merchant) as a sort of ama. Miss 
Palmer (sister of that Palmer who planned the 
mail coach system), one of her Bath acquaint- 
ances, joined the party. They remained about 
twelve months abroad, where some of your 
friends no doubt remember them, during the 
golden age of the factory, in 1774, the year of 
my birth. Miss Tyler was then thirty-four. 
She was remarkably beautiful, as far as any face 
can be called beautiful in which the indications 
of a violent temper are strongly marked. 



LETTER VI. 

DESCRIPTION OF MISS TYLER'S HOUSE AT BATH 

INOCULATION 3IISS TYLER'S FRIENDS AND AC- 
QUAINTANCES. 

April 7th, 1821. 
On her return from Lisbon Miss Tyler took a 
house in Bath, and there my eai'liest recollections 
begin, great part of my earliest childhood having 
been passed there. 

The house was in Walcot parish, in which, 
five-and-forty years ago, were the skirts of the 
city. It stood alone, in a walled garden, and 
the entrance was from a lane. The situation 
was thought a bad one, because of the approach, 
and because the nearest houses were of a mean 
description ; in other respects it was a very de- 
sirable residence. The house had been quite in 



the country when it was built. One of its fronts 
looked into the garden, the other into a lower 
garden, and over other garden grounds to the 
river, Bath Wick Fields (which are now covered 
with streets) and Claverton Hill, with a grove 
of firs along its brow, and a sham castle in the 
midst of their long, dark line. I have not a 
stronger desire to see the Pyramids than I had 
to visit that sham castle during the first years 
of my life. There was a sort of rural freshness 
about the place. The dead wall of a dwelling- 
house (the front of which was in Walcot Street) 
formed one side of the garden inclosure, and was 
covered with fine fruit-trees : the way from the 
garden door to the house was between that long 
house wall and a row of espaliers, behind which 
was a grass-plat, interspersed with standard trees 
and flower beds, and having one of those green 
rotatory garden seats shaped like a tub, where 
the contemplative person within may, like Diog- 
enes, be as much in the sun as he likes. There 
was a descent by a few steps to another garden, 
which was chiefly filled with fragrant herbs, and 
with a long bed of lilies of the valley. Ground- 
rent had been of little value when the house was 
built. The kitchen looked into the garden, and 
opened into it ; and near the kitchen door was a 
pipe, supplied from one of the fine springs with 
which the country about Bath abounds, and a 
little stone cistern beneath. The parlor door also 
opened into the garden ; it was bowered with 
jessamine, and there I often took my seat upon 
the stone steps. 

My aunt, who had an unlucky taste for sue 1 ' 
things, fitted up the house at a much greater eit 
pense than she was well able to afford. She 
threw two small rooms into one, aud thus made 
a good parlor, and built a drawing-room over 
the kitchen. The walls of that drawing-room 
were covered with a plain green paper, the floor 
with a Turkey carpet : there hung her own por- 
trait by Gainsborough, with a curtain to preserve 
the frame from flies and the colors from the sun ; 
and there stood one of the most beautiful pieces 
of old furniture I ever saw — a cabinet of ivory, 
ebony, and tortoise shell, in an ebony frame. It 
had been left her by a lady of the Spenser family, 
and was said to have belonged to the great Marl- 
borough. I may mention, as a part of the parlor 
furniture, a square screen with a foot-board and 
a little shelf, because I have always had one of 
the same fashion myself, for its convenience; a 
French writing-table, because of its peculiar 
shape, which was that of a Cajou nut or a kid- 
ney — the writer sat in the concave, and had a 
drawer on each side ; an arm-chair made of fine 
cherry wood, which had been Mr. Bradford's, 
and in which she always sat — mentionable be- 
cause, if any visitor who was not in her especial 
favor sat therein, the leathern cushion was al- 
ways sent into the garden to be aired and puri- 
fied before she would use it again ; a mezzotinto 
print of Pope's Eloisa, in an oval black frame, 
because of its supposed likeness to herself; two 
prints in the same kind of engraving, from pic- 
tures by Angelica Kauffman, one of Hector and 



26 



EARLY LIFE OF 



Mtat. 2-6 



Andromache, the other of Telemachus at the 
court of Menelaus : these I notice because they 
were in frames of Brazilian wood ; and the great 
print of Pombal, o grande marquez, in a similar 
frame, because this was the first portrait of any 
illustrious man with which I became familiar. 
The establishment consisted of an old man-serv- 
ant, and a maid, both from Shobdon. The old 
man used every night to feed the crickets. He 
died at Bath in her service. 

Here my time was chiefly passed from the 
age of two till six. I had many indulgences, 
but more privations, and those of an injurious 
kind ; want of playmates, want of exercise, never 
being allowed to do any thing in which by pos- 
sibility I might dirt myself; late hours in com- 
pany, that is to say, late hours for a child, which 
I reckon among the privations (having always 
had the healthiest propensity for going to bed 
betimes) ; late hours of rising, which were less 
painful, perhaps, but in other respects worse. 
My aunt chose that I should sleep with her, and 
this subjected me to a double evil. She used to 
have her bed warmed, and during the months 
while this practice was in season, I was always 
put into Molly's bed first, for fear of an acci- 
dent from the warming-pan, and removed when 
my aunt went to bed, so that I was regularly 
wakened out of a sound sleep. This, however, 
was not half so bad as being obliged to lie till 
nine, and not unfrequently till ten in the morn- 
ing, and not daring to make the slightest move- 
ment which could disturb her during the hours 
that I lay awake, and longing to be set free. 
These were, indeed, early and severe lessons of 
patience. My poor little wits were upon the 
alert at those tedious hours of compulsory idle- 
ness, fancying figures and combinations of form 
in the curtains, wondering at the motes in the 
slant sun-beam, and watching the light from the 
crevices of the window-shutters, till it served 
me, at last, by its progressive motion, to meas- 
ure the lapse of time. Thoroughly injudicious 
as my education under Miss Tyler was, no part 
of it was so irksome as this. 

I was inoculated at Bath at two years old, 
and most certainly believe that I have a distinct 
recollection of it as an insulated fact, and the 
precise place where it was performed. My 
mother sometimes fancied that my constitution 
received permanent injury from the long pre- 
paratory lowering regimen upon which I was 
kept. Before that time she used to say I had 
always been plump and fat, but afterward be- 
came the lean, lank, greyhound-like creature 
that I have ever since continued. She came to 
Bath to be with me during the eruption. Ex- 
cept the spots upon the arm, I had only one 
pustule ; afraid that this might not be enough, 
she gave me a single mouthful of meat at din- 
ner, and, before night, above a hundred made 
their appearance, with fever enough to frighten 
her severely. The disease, however, was very 
favorable. A year or two afterward I was 
brought to the brink of death by a fever, and 
still I remember the taste of one of my medi- 



cines (what it was I know not), and the cup in 
which it was administered. I remember, also, 
the doses of bark which followed. Dr. Sehom- 
berg attended me on both occasions. One of 
Schomberg's sons was the midshipman who was 
much talked of some forty years ago for having 
fought Prince William Henry, then one of his 
shipmates. I think he is the author of a history 
of our naval achievements. Alexander, another 
son, was a fellow of Corpus, and died in. 1790 
or 1791, having lost the use of his lower parts 
by a stroke of the palsy. I had the mournful 
office of going often to sit by him as he lay upon 
his back in bed, when he was vainly seeking re- 
lief at Bath. Boy as I was, and till then a 
stranger to him, he, who had no friend or rela- 
tion with him, was glad of the relief which even 
my presence afforded to his deplorable solitude. 

Miss Tyler had a numerous acquaintance, 
such as her person and talents (which were of 
no ordinary kind) were likely to attract. The 
circle of her Herefordshire acquaintance, extend- 
ing as far as the sphere of the three music meet- 
ings in the three dioceses of Hereford, Worcester, 
and Gloucester, she became intimate with the 
family of Mr. Raikes, printer and proprietor of 
the Gloucester Journal. One of his sons intro- 
duced Sunday Schools* into this kingdom ; others 
became India directors, bank directors, &c, in 
the career of mercantile prosperity. His daugh- 
ter, who was my aunt's friend, married Francis 
Newberry, of St. Paul's Church-yard, son of that 
Francis Newberry who published Good}^ Two- 
shoes, Giles Gingerbread, and other such delect- 
able histories in sixpenny books for children, 
splendidly bound in the flowered and gilt Dutch 
paper of former days. As soon as I could read, 
which was very early, Mr. Newberry presented 
me with a whole set of these books, more than 
twenty in number : I dare say they were in Miss 
Tyler's possession at her death, and in perfect 
preservation, for she taught me (and I thank her 
forSt) never to spoil nor injure any thing. This 
was a rich present, and may have been more in- 
strumental than I am aware of in giving me that 
love of books, and that decided determination to 
literature, as the one thing desirable, which mani- 
fested itself from my .childhood, and' which no cir- 
cumstances in after life ever slackened or abated. 

I can trace with certainty the rise and direc- 
tion of my poetical pursuits. They grew out 

of my aunt's intimacy with Miss . Hei 

father had acquired a considerable property as 
a wax and tallow-chandler at Bath, and vested 
great part of it in a very curious manner for an 
illiterate tradesman. He had a passion for the 
stage, which he indulged by speculating in the- 
aters ; one he built at Birmingham, one at Bris- 
tol, and one at Bath. Poor man, he outlived his 
reasonable faculties, and was, when I knew him, 
a pitiable spectacle of human weakness and de- 

* I know not where or when they were first instituted ; 
but they are noticed in an ordinance of Albert and Isabel, 
in the year 1608, as then existing in the Catholic Ts'cther- 
lands, the magistrates being enjoined to see to their estab- 
lishment and support in all places where they were not 
yet set on foot. 



Mr at. •?-( 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



27 



cay, hideously ugly, his nose grown out in knobs 
and bulbs, like an under-ground artichoke, his 
fingers crooked and knotted with the gout, filthy, 
irascible, helpless as an infant, and feebler than 
one in mind. In one respect this was happy for 
him. His wife was a kind, plain-mannered, do- 
mestic woman ; her clothes caught fire one day, 
she ran into the street in flames, and was burned 
to death. Mrs. Coleridge, who was then a girl 
of eight or nine years old, and lived in the same 
street, saw her in flames, and remembers how 
frightfully the dogs barked at the sight. Her 
husband, though in the house at the time, never 
knew what had befallen her. He survived her 
many years, and would frequently say she had 
been gone more than a week to Devizes, and it 
was time for her to come back. After this 
dreadful event he lived with his two daughters, 
Miss and Mrs. (a widow), in Gallo- 
way's Buildings, in a house at which I often visit- 
ed with my aunt, during fifteen or sixteen years 
of my life, occasionally for weeks together. 
Sometimes I was taken to see this deplorable 
old man, whose sight always excited in me a 
mingled feeling of horror and disgust, not to be 
recalled without some degree of pain. In con- 
sequence of his incapacity, the property of the 
Bath and Bristol theaters devolved upon his chil- 
dren, and was administered by his son, who 
was, in truth, a remarkable and rememberable 
person. 

Mr. must have been about five-and-thirty 

when I first remember him, a man of great tal- 
ents and fine person, with a commanding air and 
countenance, kind in his manners and in his na- 
ture ; yet there was an expression in his eyes 
which I felt, before I had ever heard of physi- 
opiomy, or could have understood the meaning 
of the word. It was a wild, unquiet look, a sort 
of inward emanating light, as if all was not as 
it ought to be within. I should pronounce now 
that it was the eye of one predisposed to insani- 
ty ; and this I believe to have been the fact, 
though the disease manifested itself not in him, 
but in his children. They, indeed, had the dou- 
ble reason to apprehend such an inheritance, for 
their mother was plainly crazed with hypochon- 
driacism and fantasticalness. She was a widow 
and an actress when he married her, and her 
humors soon made any place more agreeable to 
him than home. The children were my play- 
mates at those rare times when I had any. The 
eldest son was taken from the Charter House 
because he was literally almost killed there by 
the devilish cruelty of the boys ; they used to 
lay him before the fire till he was scorched, and 
shut him in a trunk with saw-dust till he had 
nearly expired with suffocation. The Charter 
House at that time was a sort of hell upon earth 
for the under boys. He was of weak under- 
standing and feeble frame, very like his mother 
in person ; he lived, however, to take orders, 
and I think I have heard that he died insane, as 
did one of his sisters, who perfectly resembled 
him. Two other sons were at Eton ; the elder 
of the two had one of the most beautiful coun- 



tenances I ever remember to have seen, only 
that it had his father's eyes, and a more fearful 
light in them. He was a fine, generous, over- 
flowing creature ; but you could not look at him 
without feeling that some disastrous fate would 
befall one so rash, so inconsiderate, and, withal, 
so keenly susceptible. When he was at Cam- 
bridge he used to give orders to his gyp by 
blowing a French horn, and he had a tune for 
every specific command, which the gyp was 
trained to understand, till so noisy and unaca- 
demical a practice was forbidden. There he ran 
wild, and contracted debts in all imaginable 
ways, which his father, the most indulgent of fa- 
thers, again and again discharged. These habits 
clung to him after he had left college. On the 
last occasion, where his conduct had been deeply 
culpable, and a large sum had been paid for him, 

Mr. did not utter a single reproach, but in 

the most affectionate manner entreated him to 
put away all painful thoughts of the past, and 
look upon himself as if he were only now begin- 
ning life. The poor fellow could not bear his 
father's kindness, and knowing, perhaps, too 
surely, that he could not trust his resolutions to 
amend his life, he blew out his own brains. 

I had not seen him for several years before 
his death. When we were boys I .admired him 
for his wit, his hilarity, his open, generous tem- 
per, and his countenance, which might better be 
called radiant than described by any other epi- 
thet ; but there was something which precluded 
all desire of intimacy. If we had been thrown 
together in youth, there would have been an in- 
tellectual attraction between us ; but intellect 
alone has never been the basis of my f::'endships, 
except in a single instance, and that instance 
proved the sandiness of such a foundation. Yet 
we liked each other ; and I never think of him 
without a hope, or rather a belief, an inward and 
sure persuasion, that there is more mercy in 
store for human frailty than even the most lib- 
eral creed has authorized us to assert. 

The next letter will explain in what way my 
acquaintance with this family was the means of 
leading 

My favor'd footsteps to the Muses' hill, 

Whose arduous paths I have not ceased to tread, 

From good to better persevering still. 



LETTER VII. 

BATH AND BRISTOL THEATERS REMOVED TO 

ANOTHER DAY SCHOOL THENCE TO A BOARD- 
ING SCHOOL AT CORSTON DESCRIPTION OF 

SCHOOL AND SCHOOLMASTER. 

September 2d, 1821. 
The Bath and Bristol theaters were then, and 
for many years afterward, what in trade language 
is called one concern. The performers were sta- 
tioned half the year in one city, half in the other. 
When they played on Mondays, Wednesdays, 
and Fridays at Bristol, they went to Bath on the 
Saturday in two immense coaches, each as big 
as a caravan of wild beasts, and returned after 



28 



EARLY LIFE OF 



Mtat.2-6 



the play. When the nights of performance at 
Bath were Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, 
they played at Bristol on the Monday. Mon- 
days and Saturdays were the fashionable nights. 
On Thursdays and Fridays they always played 
to thin, and very frequently to losing houses. 
The population of London is too large for a folly 
like this to show itself there. 

Miss Tyler, through her intimacy with Miss 
, had the command of orders for free admis- 
sion. She was exceedingly fond of theatrical rep- 
resentations, and there was no subject of which I 
heard so much from my earliest childhood. It 
even brought upon me once a most severe rep- 
rehension for innocently applying to the Church 
a phrase which, I then learned to my cost, be- 
longed only to the play-house, and saying one 
Sunday, on our return from morning service, 
that it had been a very full house. When I was 
taken to the theater for the first time, I can per- 
fectly well remember my surprise at not finding 
the pit literally a deep hole, into which I had 
often puzzled myself to think how or why any 
persons could possibly go. You may judge by 
this how very young I must have been. I rec- 
ollect nothing more of the first visit, except that 
the play was the Fathers, a comedy of Field- 
ing's, which was acted not more than one sea- 
son, and the farce was Coxheath Camp. This 
recollection, however, by the help of that useful 
book, the Biographia Dramatica, fixes the date 
to 1778, when I was four years old. 

A half sheet of reminiscences, written one- 
arid-twenty years ago at Lisbon, has recalled to 
my recollection this and a few other circumstan- 
ces, which might otherwise, perhaps, have been 
quite obliterated. Yet it surprises me to perceive 
how many things come to mind which had been 
for years and years forgotten ! It is said that 
when earth is flung to the surface in digging a 
well, plants will spring up which are not found 
in the surrounding country, seeds having quick- 
ened in light and air which had lain buried dur- 
ing unknown ages — no unapt illustration for the 
way in which forgotten things are thus brought 
up from the bottom of one's memory. 

I was introduced to the theater before it was 
possible for me to comprehend the nature of the 
drama, so as to derive any pleasure from it, ex- 
cept as a mere show. What was going on upon 
the stage, as far as I understood it, appeared 
real to me ; and I have been told that one night, 
when the Critic was represented, and I heard 
that Sir Walter Raleigh's head was to be cut 
off, I hid mine in Miss Mary Delamere's lap, 
and could not be persuaded to look up till I was 
assured the dreaded scene was over. It was 
not long before I acquired a keen relish for the 
stage ; but at this time my greatest pleasure 
was a walk in the fields, and the pleasure was 
heightened beyond measure if we crossed the 
river in the ferry-boat at Walcot or at the South 
Parade. Short as the passage was, I have not 
yet forgotten the delight which it used to give 
me. There were three points beyond all others 
whbh I was desirous of reaching, the sham cas- 



tle on Claverton Hill, a summer-house on Beech- 
en Cliffs, and the grave of a young man, whom 
a practiced gambler, by name (I think) Count 
Rice, had killed in a duel. The two former ob- 
jects were neither of them two miles distant ; 
but they were up hill, and my aunt regarded it 
as an impossibility to walk so far. I did not 
reach them, therefore, till I was old enough to 
be in some degree master of my own move- 
ments. The tomb of the unfortunate duelist 
was at Bath Weston, and we got there once, 
which was an extraordinary exertion ; but the 
usual extent of our walks into the country (which 
were very rare) was to a cottage in an orchard 
about half way to that village. It was always 
a great joy to me when I was sent from home, 
though my father's house was in one of the busi- 
est streets in a crowded city. I had more lib- 
erty then, and was under no capricious restric- 
tions, and I had more walks into the fields, 
though still too few. My mother sometimes, 
and sometimes my aunt Mary, would walk with 
me to Kingsdown, to Brandon Hill, Clifton, or 
that bank of the river which is called the Sea 
Banks, and we often went to my grandmother's, 
where I liked best to be, because I had there a 
thorough enjoyment of the country. 

Miss Tyler, whose ascendency over my moth- 
er was always that of an imperious elder sister, 
would not suffer me to be breeched till I was 
six years old, though I was tall of my age. I 
had a fantastic costume of nankeen for highda) r s 
and holidays, trimmed with green fringe : it 
was called a vest and tunic, or a jam. When 
at last I changed my dress, it was for coat, 
waistcoat, and breeches of foresters' green ; at 
that time there was no intermediate form of ap- 
parel in use. I was then sent as a day scholar 
to a school on the top of St. Michael's or Mile 
Hill, which was then esteemed the best in Bris- 
tol, kept by Mr. Foot, 1 * a dissenting minister of 
that community who are called General Baptists, 
in contradistinction to the Particular or Calvin- 
istic Baptists. Like most of his denomination, 
he had passed into a sort of low Arianism, if 
indeed he were not a Soeinian. With this, how- 
ever, I had no concern, nor did my parents re- 
gard it. To a child, indeed, it could be of no 
consequence ; but a youth might easily and im- 
perceptibly have acquired from it an injurious 
bias, if his good conduct and disposition had 
made him a favorite with him. He was an old 
man, and if the school had ever been a good 
one, it had woefully deteriorated. I was one of 
the least boys there, I believe the very least, 
and certainly both as willing and as apt to learn 
as any teacher could have desired ; yet it was 
the only school where I was ever treated with 
severity. Lessons in the grammar, which I did 
not comprehend, and yet could have learned 
well enough by rote under gentle discipline and 
a good-natured teacher, were frightened out of 
my head, and then I was shut up during play- 
time in a closet at the top of the stairs, where 



* He published some letters to Bishop Hoadley. Thia 
I learn from Gregonne's Secies Ri \igieuses. 



#1tat. 6, 7. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



there was just light enough through some bars 
to see my lesson by. Once he caned me cruel- 
ly — the only time that any master ever laid his 
hand upon me — and I am sure he deserved a beat- 
ing much more than I did. There was a great 
deal of tyranny in the school, from the worst of 
which I was exempted, because I went home in 
the evening ; but I stood in great fear of the big 
boys, and saw much more of the evil side of hu- 
man nature than I should ever have learned in 
the course of domestic education. 

I had not been there more than twelve months 
when the master died. He was succeeded by 
John Prior Estlin, a Socinian minister, with 
whom in after years I was well acquainted, a 
good scholar and an excellent man. Had I con- 
tinued at the school, he would have grounded 
me well, for he was just the kind of man to have 
singled me out and taken pleasure in bestowing 
careful culture where it would not have been 
lost. Unfortunately, my father (I know not for 
what reason) thought proper to remove me upon 
Mr. Foot's death, and placed me at a school 
nine miles from Bristol, in a village called Cors- 
ton, about a mile from the Globe at Newton, a 
well-known public house on the road between 
Bath and Bristol. The stage was to drop me 
at that public house, and my father to accom- 
pany it on horseback, and consign me to the 
master's care. When the time for our depart- 
ure drew nigh, I found my mother weeping in 
her chamber ; it was the first time I had ever 
seen her shed tears. The room (that wherein 
I was born), with all its furniture, and her posi- 
tion and look at that moment, are as distinct in 
my memory as if the scene had occurred but 
yesterday; and I can call to mind with how 
strong and painful an effort it was that I sub- 
dued my own emotions. I allude to this in the 
Hymn to the Penates as 

The first grief I felt, 
And the first painful smile that clothed my front 
With feelings not its own. 

What follows is also from the life : 

Sadly at night 
I sat me down beside a stranger's hearth, 
And when the lingering hour of rest was come, 
First wet with tears my pillow. 

One of my earliest extant poems (the Retro- 
spect) describes this school, and a visit which I 
made to it, after it had ceased to be one, in the 
year 1793. You have it, as it was originally 
written at that time, in the volume which I pub- 
lished with Robert Lovell, and as corrected for 
preservation, in the collection of my Minor Po- 
ems. The house had been the mansion of some 
decayed family, whose history I should like to 
trace if Collinson's Somersetshire were to fall 
in my way. There were vestiges of former re- 
spectability and comfort about it, which, young 
as I was, impressed me in the same manner that 
such things would do now — walled gardens, 
summer-houses, gate-pillars, surmounted with 
huge stone balls, a paddock, a large orchard, 
walnut-trees, yards, out-houses upon an opulent 
scale. I felt how mournful all this was in its 
fallen state, when the great walled garden was 



converted into a play-ground for the boys, the 
gateways broken, the summer-houses falling to 
ruin, and grass growing in the interstices of the 
lozenged pavement of the forecourt. The feat- 
ures within I do not sa distinctly remember, not 
being so well able to understand their symbols 
of better days ; only I recollect a black oaken 
stair-case from the hall, and that the school- 
room was hung with faded tapestry, behind which 
we used to have our hoards of crabs. 

Here one year of my life was passed with 
little profit and with a good deal of suffering. 
There could not be a worse school in all re- 
spects. Thomas Flower, the master, was a re- 
markable man, worthy of a better station in life, 
but utterly unfit for that in which he was placed. 
His whole delight was in mathematics and as- 
tronomy, and he had constructed an orrery upon 
so large a scale that it filled a room. What a 
misery it must have been for such a man to 
teach a set of stupid boys, year after year, the 
rudiments of arithmetic. And a misery he 
seemed to feel it. When he came into his desk, 
even there he was thinking of the stars, and 
looked as if he were out of humor, not from ill 
nature, but because his calculations were inter- 
rupted. But, for the most part, he left the 
school to the care of his son Charley, a person 
who was always called by that familiar diminu- 
tive, and whose consequence you may appreci- 
ate accordingly. Writing and arithmetic were 
all they professed to teach; but twice in the 
week a Frenchman came from Bristol to instruct 
in Latin the small number of boys who learned 
it, of whom I was one. Duplanier was his 
name. He returned to France at the commence- 
ment of the Revolution, and a re™ v+ obtained 
credit at Bristol, and got into the newspapers, 
that, having resumed his proper name, which 
for some reason or other he had thought fit to 
conceal in England, he went into the army, and 
became no less a personage than General Me- 
nou, of Egyptian notoriety. For Duplanier's 
sake, who was a very good-natured man, I am 
glad the story was disproved. 

That sort of ornamental penmanship which 
now, I fear, has wholly gone out of use, was 
taught there. The father, as well as Charley, 
excelled in it. They could adorn the heading 
of a rule in arithmetic in a ciphering-book, or 
the bottom of a page, not merely with common 
flourishing, but with an angel, a serpent, a fish, 
or a pen, formed w;th an ease and freedom of 
hand which was to me a great object of admi- 
ration; but, unluckily, I was too young to ac- 
quire the art. I have seen, in the course of my 
life, two historical pieces produced in this man- 
ner ; worthy of remembrance they are, as nota- 
ble specimens of whimsical dexterity. One was 
David killing Goliath : it was in a broker's shop 
at Bristol, and I would have bought it if I could 
have afforded at that time to expend some ten 
shillings upon it. The other was a portrait of 
King Joara V. on horseback, in the bishop's 
palace at Beja. They taught the beautiful Ital- 
ian, or lady's hand, used in the age of our par- 



30 



EARLY LIFE OF 



JEtat. 7. 8. 



ents 5 engrossing (which, I suppose, was devised 
to insure distinctness and legibility) ; and some 
varieties of German text, worthy for their square, 
massy, antique forms to have figured in an anti- 
quarian's title-page. 

Twice during the twelve months of my stay 
great interest was excited throughout the com- 
monwealth by a grand spelling match, for which 
poor Flower deserves some credit, if it was a 
device of his own to save himself trouble and 
amuse the boys. Two of the biggest boys chose 
their party, boy by boy alternately, till the whole 
school was divided between them. They then 
hunted the dictionary for words unusual enough 
in their orthography to puzzle ill-taught lads ; 
and having compared lists, that the same word 
might not be chosen by both, two words were 
delivered to every boy, and kept by him pro- 
foundly secret from all on the other side till the 
time of trial. On a day appointed we were 
drawn up in battle array, quite as anxious on 
the occasion as the members of a cricket club 
for the result of a grand match against all En- 
gland. Ambition, that "last infirmity of noble 
minds," had its full share in producing this anx- 
iety ; and, to increase the excitement, each per- 
son had wagered a halfpenny upon the event. 
The words were given out in due succession on 
each side, from the biggest to the least ; and for 
every one which was spelled rightly in its prog- 
ress down the enemy's ranks, the enemy scored 
one ; or one was scored on the other side if the 
word ran the gauntlet safely. The party in 
which I was engaged lost one of these matches 
and won the other. I remember that my words 
for one of them were Crystallization and Coterie, 
and that I was one of the most effective persons 
in the contest, which might easily be. 

Charley and his father frequently saved them- 
selves some trouble by putting me to teach big- 
ger boys than myself. I got on with Latin here 
more by assisting others in their lessons than by 
my own. when the master came so seldom. This 
assistance was not voluntary on my part ; it was 
a tax levied upon me by the law of the strongest, 
a law which prevails as much in schools as it 
did in the cabinets of Louis XIV. and the Em- 
peror Napoleon, and does in that of the United 
States of America; but the effect was, that I 
made as much progress as if my lessons had 
been daily. At Mr. Foote's I read Cordery and 
Erasmus, each with a translation in a parallel 
column, which was doubled down at lesson time. 
Here I got into Phaedrus without a translation, 
but with the help of an ordo verborum, indicated 
by figures in the margin. But I am at the end 
of my paper, and the slip beside me has items 
enough concerning Corston for another letter. 



LETTER VIII. 

RECOLLECTIONS OF CORSTON CONTINUED. 

December 28th, 1821. 
I remember poor Flower with compassion, 
and not without respect, as a man who, under 



more auspicious circumstances, might have passed 
his life happily for himself, and perhaps honor- 
ably as well as usefully for his country. His 
attainments and talents were, I have no doubt, 
very considerable in their kind ; and I am sure 
that his temper and disposition were naturally 
good. I never saw so little punishment in any 
school. There was but one flogging during my 
stay there : it was for running away, which was 
considered the heaviest of all offenses. The ex- 
hibition was then made as serious as possible ; 
the instrument was a scourge of packthread in- 
stead of a rod. But, though punishments in pri- 
vate schools were at that time, I believe, always 
much more severe than in public ones, I do not 
remember that this was remarkable for severity. 
We stood in awe and respect of him rather than 
fear. If there was nothing conciliating or in- 
dulgent about him, there was no rigor or ill na- 
ture ; but his manner was what you might expect 
to find in one who was habitually thoughtful, and 
who, when not engaged in abstruse studies, had 
reason enough for unhappiness, because of his 
domestic circumstances. His school was declin 
ing. He was about fifty years of age ; and hav- 
ing lost his first wife, had married one of his 
maids, who took to drinking ; the house, there- 
fore, was in disorder ; the servants were allowed 
to take their own course, and the boys were 
sadly neglected. In every thing which relates 
to personal cleanliness, they were left to the care 
of themselves. I had a profusion of curly hair : 
just before the holidays, it was thought proper 
to examine into the state of its population, which 
was found to be prodigiously great; my head, 
therefore, was plastered with soap, and in that 
condition I was sent home, with such sores in 
consequence of long neglect that my mother 
wept at seeing them. 

Our morning ablutions, to the entire saving 
of all materials, were performed in a little stream 
which ran through the barton, and in its ordi- 
nary state was hardly more than ankle deep 
We had porridge for breakfast in winter, bread 
and milk in summer. My taste was better than 
my appetite; the green leeks in this uncleanly 
broth gave me a dislike to that plant, which I 
retain to this day (St. David forgive me!) ; and 
if it were swimming with fat, as it usually was, 
I could better fast till the hour of dinner than 
do violence to my stomach by forcing down the 
greasy and ofFensive mixtn i. The bread and 
rnilk reminds me of an anecdote connected with 
the fashion of those day:.. Because I was in- 
dulged with sugar in my bread and milk at home, 
when I went to school I was provided with a 
store carefully secured in paper. I had a cocked 
hat for Sundays ; during the rest of the week it 
lay in my box upon the top of my clothes, and 
when the paper of brown sugar was reduced in 
bulk, I deposited it in the cock of the hat. As 
you may suppose, my fingers found their way 
there whenever I went to the box, and the box 
was sometimes opened for that purpose ; thus the 
sugar was by little and little strewn over the hat. 
It was in a sweet, clammy condition the first time 



jEtat. 7, 8. 



ROBERT SOTJTHEY. 



Si 



t was sent for from school by my aunt Tyler, to 
visit her at Bath ; and as the cocked hat was 
then in the last and lowest stage of its fashion, 
mine was dismissed to be rounded by the hatter, 
and I never wore one again till I was at Madrid, 
where round hats were prohibited. 

One day in the week we had bread and cheese 
for dinner ; or, when baking day came round, a 
hot cake, with cheese or a small portion of but- 
ter at our choice. This, to my liking, was the 
best dinner in the week. Some of the bo} T s 
would split their cake, lay the cheese in thin lay- 
ers between the halves, and then place it under 
a screw-press, so as to compress it into one 
mass. This rule of going without meat one day 
in the week was then, I believe, general in the 
country schools, and is still practiced in many, 
retained, perhaps, for motives of frugality, from 
Catholic times ; and yet, so stupid is popular ob- 
stinacy, fish, even where it is most plentiful, is 
never used. One of the servants had the priv- 
ilege of selling gingerbread and such things. 
We had bread and cheese for supper, and were 
permitted to raise salads for this meal, in little 
portions of ground, into which what had been 
in better times the flower border of the great 
pleasure garden was divided : these portions w T ere 
our property, and transferable by sale. We 
raised mustard and cress, radishes and lettuce. 
When autumn came, we had no lack of apples, 
for it is a country of orchards. The brook, which 
has already been mentioned, passed through one 
mmediately before it entered the barton where 
cur ablutions were performed ; the trees on one 
side grew on a steepish declivity, and in stormy 
weather we constructed dams across the stream 
to stop the apples which were brought down. 
Our master had an extensive orchard of his own, 
and employed the boys to gather in the fruit : 
there was, of course, free license to eat on that 
day, and a moderate share of pocketings would 
have been tolerated; but whether original sin 
was particularly excited by that particular fruit 
or not, so it was that a subtraction was made 
enormous enough to make inquiry unavoidable ; 
the boxes were searched in consequence, and the 
whole plunder was thus recovered. The boys 
were employed also to squail at the bannets, that 
is, being interpreted, to throw at his walnuts 
when it was time to bring them down : there 
were four or five fine trees on the hill-side above 
the brook. I war too little to bear a part in 
this, which required considerate strength; but 
for many days afterward I had the gleaning 
among the leaves and broken twigs with which 
the ground was covered, and the fragrance of 
those leaves, in their incipient decay, is one of 
those odors which I can recall at will, and which, 
whenever it occurs, brings with it the vivid re- 
membrance of past times. 

One very odd amusement, which I never saw 
or heard of elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at 
this school. It was performed with snail shells, 
by placing them against each other, point to 
point, and pressing till the one was broken in, 
or sometimes both. This was called conquer- 



ing; and the shell which remained unhurt ac- 
quired esteem and value in proportion to the 
number over which it had triumphed, an accu- 
rate account being kept. A great conqueror 
was prodigiously prized and coveted ; so much 
so, indeed, that two of this description would 
seldom have been brought to contest the palm, 
if both possessors had not been goaded to it by 
reproaches and taunts. The victor had the num- 
ber of its opponents added to its own ; thus, when 
one conqueror of fifty conquered another which 
had been as often victorious, it became conqueror 
of a hundred and one. Yet even in this, reputa- 
tion was sometimes obtained upon false pretenses. 
I found a boy one day who had fallen in with a 
great number of young snails, so recently hatch- 
ed that the shells were still transparent, and he 
was besmearing his fingers by crushing these 
poor creatures one after another against his con- 
queror, counting away with the greatest satis- 
faction at his work. He was a good-natured 
boy, so that I, who had been bred up to have a 
sense of humanity, ventured to express some 
compassion for the snails, and to suggest that 
he might as well count them and lay them aside 
unhurt. He hesitated, and seemed inclined to 
assent, till it struck him as a point of honor or 
of conscience, and then he resolutely said no ! 
that would not do, for he could not then fairly 
say he had conquered them. There is a sur- 
prising difference of strength in these shells, and 
that not depending upon the size or species ; I 
mean, whether yellow, brown, or striped. It 
might partly be estimated by the appearance of 
the point or top (I do riot know what better term 
to use) : the strong ones were usually clear and 
glossy there, and white if the shell were of the 
large, coarse, mottled-brown kind. The top was 
then said to be petrified ; and a good conqueror 
of this description would triumph for weeks or 
months. I remember that one of the greatest 
heroes bore evident marks of having once been 
conquered. It had been thrown away in some 
lucky situation, where the poor tenant had leis- 
ure to repair his habitation, or, rather, where 
the restorative power of nature repaired it for 
him, and the wall was thus made stronger than 
it had been before the breach, by an arch of new 
masonry below. But, in general, I should think 
the resisting power of the shell depended upon 
the geometrical nicety of its form. 

One of the big boys one day brought down a 
kite with an arrow from the play-ground : this 
I think a more extraordinary feat than Apollo's 
killing Python, though a Belvidere Jack Steel 
(this was the archer's name) would not make 
quite so heroic a statue. We had a boy there 
who wore midshipman's uniform, and whose pay 
must have more than maintained him at school ; 
his father was a purser, and such things were 
not uncommon in those days. While I was at 
this school, the corporation of Bristol invited Rod- 
ney from Bath to a public dinner, after his great 
victory ; and we, to do him honor in our way, 
were all marched down to the Globe at Newton, 
by the road side, that we might see him pass, 



32 



EARLY LIFE OF 



JEtat. 8. 



and give him three cheers. They were heartily 
given, and were returned with great good humor 
from the carriage window. Another circum- 
stance has made me remember the day well. 
Looking about for conquerors in Newton church- 
yard before we returned to school. I saw a slow- 
worm get into the ground under a tombstone ; 
and in consequence, when I met, no long time 
afterward, with the ancient opinion that the 
spinal marrow of a human body generates a 
serpent, this fact induced me long to believe it 
without hesitation, upon the supposed testimony 
of my own eyes. 

Though I had a full share of discomfort at 
Corston, I recollect nothing there so painful as 
that of being kept up every night till a certain 
hour, when I was dying with sleepiness. Some- 
times I stole away to bed ; but it was not easy 
to do this, and I found that it was not desirable, 
because the other boys played tricks upon me 
when they came. But I dreaded nothing so 
much as Sunday evening in winter: we were 
then assembled in the hall to hear the master 
read a sermon, or a portion of Stackhouse's His- 
tory of the Bible. Here I sat at the end of a 
long form, in sight, but not within feeling of the 
fire, my feet cold, my eyelids heavy as lead, and 
yet not daring to close them, kept awake by fear 
alone, in total inaction, and under the operation 
of a lecture more soporific than the strongest 
sleeping dose. Heaven help the wits of those 
good people who think that children are to be 
edified by having sermons read to them ! 

After remaining there about twelve months, 
I was sent for home, upofi an alarm that the itch 
had broken out among us. Some of the boys 
communicated this advice to their parents in let- 
ters which Duplanier conveyed for them; all 
others, of course, being dictated and written 
under inspection. Tb.e report, whether true or 
false, accelerated the ruin of the school. A 
scandalous scene took place of mutual reproaches 
between father and son, each accusing the other 
for that neglect, the consequences of which were 
now become apparent. 

The dispute was renewed with more violence 
after the boys were in bed. The next morning 
the master was not to be seen ; Charley appear- 
ed with a black eye, and we knew that father 
and son had come to blows ! Most, if not all, 
the Bristol boys were now taken away, and I 
among them, to my great joy. But, on my ar- 
rival home, I w T as treated as a suspected person, 
and underwent a three days' purgatory in brim- 
stone. 



LETTER IX. 

RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS GRANDMOTHER^ HOUSE 
AT BEDMINSTER LOVE FOR BOTANY AND EN- 
TOMOLOGY. 

July, 1822. 
The year which I passed at Corston had been 
a mournful one for my mother. She lost my 
sweet little sister Louisa during that time; and 



being after a while persuaded to accompany Miss 
Tyler to London, where she had never before 
been, they were recalled by the tidings of my 
grandmother's sudden death. Miss Tyler had 
found it expedient to break up her establishment 
at Bath, and pass some time in visiting among 
her friends. She now took up her abode at 
Bedminster till family affairs should be settled, 
and till she could determine where and how to 
fix herself. Thither also I was sent, while my 
father was looking out for another school at 
which to place me. 

I have so many vivid feelings connected with 
this house at Bedminster, that if it had not been 
in a vile neighborhood, I believe my heart would 
have been set upon purchasing it, and fixing my 
abode there, where the happiest days of my 
childhood were spent. My grandfather built it 
(about the year 1740, I suppose), and had made 
it what was then thought a thoroughly com- 
modious and good house for one in his rank of 
life. It stood in a lane, some two or three hund- 
red yards from the great western road. You 
ascended by several semicircular steps into what 
was called the fore-court, but was, in fact, a 
flower garden, with a broad pavement from the 
gate to the porch. That porch was in great 
part lined, as well as covered, with white jessa- 
mine ; and many a time have I sat there with 
my poor sisters, threading the fallen blossoms 
upon grass stalks. It opened into a little hall, 
paved with diamond-shaped flags. On the right 
hand was the parlor, which had a brown or black 
boarded floor, covered with a Lisbon mat, and 
a handsome time-piece over the fire-place; on 
the left was the best kitchen, in which the family 
lived. The best kitchen is an apartment that 
belongs to other days, and is now no longer to be 
seen, except in houses which, having remained 
unaltered for the last half century, are inhabited 
by persons a degree lower in society than their 
former possessors. The one which I am now 
calling to mind, after an interval of more than 
forty years, was a cheerful room, with an air of 
such country comfort about it, that my little 
heart was always gladdened when I entered it 
during my grandmother's life. It had a stone 
floor, which I believe was the chief distinction 
between a best kitchen and a parlor. The fur- 
niture consisted of a clock, a large oval oak 
table with two flaps (over which two or three 
fowling-pieces had their place), a round tea-table 
of cherry wood, Windsor chairs of the same, and 
two large armed ones of that easy make (of all 
makes it is the easiest), in one of which my 
grandmother always sat. On one side of the 
fire-place the china was displayed in a buffet — 
that is, a cupboard with glass doors; on' the 
other were closets for articles less ornamental, 
but more in use. The room was wainscoted 
and ornamented with some old maps, and with 
a long looking-glass over the chimney-piece, and 
a tall one between the windows, both in white 
frames. The windows opened into the fore- 
court, and were as cheerful and fragrant in the 
season of flowers as roses and jessamine, which 



jEtat. 8. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



33 



grew luxuriantly without, could make them. 
There was a passage between this apartment 
and the kitchen, long enough to admit of a large 
airy pantry, and a larder on the left hand, the 
windows of both opening into the barton, as did 
those of the kitchen ; on the right was a door 
into the back court. There was a rack in the 
kitchen well furnished with bacon, and a mistle- 
toe bush always suspended from the middle of 
the ceiling. 

The green room, which was my uncle Ed- 
ward's, was over the parlor. Over the hall was 
a smaller apartment, which had been my grand- 
father's office, and still contained his desk and 
his pigeon-holes : I remember it well, and the 
large-patterned, dark, flock paper, with its faded 
ground. The yellow room, over the best kitchen, 
was the visitor's chamber ; and this my mother 
occupied whenever she slept there. There was 
no way to my grandmother's, the blue room over 
the kitchen, but through this and an intervening 
passage, where, on the left, was a store-room. 
The blue room had a thorough light, one window 
looking into the barton, the other into the back 
court. The squire slept in the garret ; his room 
was on one side, the servants' on the other : and 
there was a large open space between, at the 
top of the stairs, used for lumber and stores. 

A door from the hall, opposite to the entrance, 
opened upon the cellar stairs, to which there 
was another door from the back court. This 
was a square, having the house on two sides, 
the wash-house and brew-house on the third, 
and walled on the fourth. A vine covered one 
side of the house here, and grew round my grand- 
mother's window, out of which I have often 
reached the grapes. Here also was the pigeon- 
house, and the pump> under which the fatal dip- 
ping* was performed. The yard or barton was 
of considerable size ; the entrance to it was from 
the lane, through large folding gates, with a 
horse-chestnut on each side. And here another 
building fronted you, as large as the house, con- 
taining the dairy and laundry, both large and 
excellent in their kind, seed-rooms, stable, hay- 
lofts, &c. The front of this out-house was al- 
most clothed with yew, clipped to the shape of 
the windows. Opposite the one gable-end were 
the coal and stick houses ; and on the left side 
of the barton was a shed for the cart, and, while 
my grandfather lived, for an open carriage, which 
after his death was no longer kept. Here, too, 
was the horse-block, beautifully overhung with 
ivy, from an old wall against which it was placed. 
The other gable end was covered with fruit-trees, 
and at the bottom was a raised chamomile bed. 

An old fashioned bird's-eye view, half picture, 
half plan, would explain all this more intelligibly 
than my description can do ; and if I possessed 
the skill, I should delight in tracing one : my 
memory would accurately serve. If I have made 
myself understood, you will perceive that the back 
court formed a square with the house. Behind 
both was a piece of waste ground, left for the 



See page 24. 



passage of carts from the barton to the orchard, 
but considerably wider than was necessary for 
that purpose. It was neatly kept in grass, with 
a good wide path from the court to the kitchen 
garden. This was large, excellently stocked, 
and kept in admirable order by my uncle Edward. 
It was inclosed from the waste ground by a wall 
about breast high, surmounted with white rails 
till it joined the out-houses. The back of these 
was covered with pear and plum trees — the 
green gages, I remember, were remarkably fine 
of their kind. One side was walled, and well 
clothed with cherry, peach, and nectarine trees ; 
the opposite one was separated by a hedge from 
the lane leading to the orchard, from which the 
garden was divided at the bottom. I have call- 
ed it a kitchen garden, because that name was 
given it ; but it was ornamental as well as use- 
ful, with grass walks, espaliers, and a profusion 
of fine flowers. The side of the house in the 
fore-court also was covered with an apricot-tree, 
so that every luxury of this kind which an En- 
glish sun can ripen was there in abundance. 
Just by' the orchard gate was a fine barberry- 
bush ; and that peculiar odor of its blossoms, 
which is supposed to injure the wheat within its 
reach, is still fresh in my remembrance. Words- 
worth has no sense of smell. Once, and once 
only in his life, the dormant power awakened : 
it was by a bed of stocks in full bloom, at a 
house which he inhabited in Dorsetshire, some 
five-and-twenty years ago ; and he says it was 
like a vision of Paradise to him ; but it lasted 
only a few minutes, and < the faculty has con- 
tinued torpid from that time. The fact is re- 
markable in itself, and would be worthy of no- 
tice, even if it did not relate to a man of whom 
posterity will desire to know all that can be re- 
membered. He has often expressed to me his 
regret for this privation. I, on the contrary, 
possess the sense in such acuteness, that I can 
remember an odor and call up the ghost of one 
that is departed. But I must return to the bar- 
berry-bush. It stood at the entrance of a potato 
garden, which had been taken from the orchard. 
The orchard was still of considerable size. At 
the bottom was a broad wet ditch, with a little 
draw-bridge over it leading into the fields, 
through which was the pleasantest way to church 
and to Bristol. It was just one mile to the 
church, and two to my father's house in Wine 
Street. 

It was very seldom indeed that my grand- 
mother went to Bristol. I scarcely recollect 
ever to have seen her there. The extent of her 
walks was to church, which she never missed, 
unless the weather absolutely confined her to the 
house. She was not able to attend the evening 
service also, on account of the distance ; but in 
the morning she was constant, and always in 
good time ; for if she were not there before the 
absolution, she used to say that she might as 
well have remained at home. At other times 
she rarely went out of her own premises. Neigh- 
bors of her own rank there were none within her 
reach; her husband's acquaintance had mostly 



34 



EARLY LIFE OF 



^Etat. a 



died off, and she had made no new ones since 
his death. Her greatest happiness was to have 
my mother there with some of the young fry ; 
and we, on our part, had no pleasure so great 
as that of a visit to Bedminster. It was, indeed, 
for my mother, as well as for us, an advantage 
beyond all price to have this quiet country home 
at so easy a distance, abounding as it did with 
all country comforts. Bedminster itself was an 
ugly, dirty, poor, populous village, many of the 
inhabitants being colliers ; but the coal-pits were 
in a different part of the parish, and the house 
was at a sufficient distance from all annoyances. 
If there was no beauty of situation, there was 
complete retirement and perfect comfort. The 
view was merely to a field and cottage on the 
other side the lane, on a rising ground belong- 
ing to the property. But the little world within 
was our own, and to me it was quite a different 
world from that in which I lived at other times. 
My father's house was in one of the busiest and 
noisiest streets of Bristol, and of course had no 
outlets. At Bath I was under perpetual re- 
straint. But here I had all wholesome liberty, 
all wholesome indulgence, all wholesome enjoy- 
ments 5 and the delight which I there leai'ned to 
take in rural sights and sounds has grown up 
with me, and continues unabated to this day. 

My chief amusement was in the garden, where 
I found endless entertainment in the flowers and 
in observing insects. I had little propensity to 
any boyish sports, and less expertness in them. 
My uncles Edward and William used to re- 
proach me with this sometimes, saying they 
never saw such a boy. One schoolboy's art, 
however, they taught me, which I have never 
read of, nor seen practiced elsewhere ; it was 
that of converting a marble into a black witch, 
and thereby making it lucky. You know that 
if a marble be put in the fire, it makes a good 
detonating ball. I have sacrificed many a one 
so, to frighten the cook. But if the marble be 
wrapped up in brown paper (perhaps any paper 
may answer the purpose as well), with some 
suet or dripping round about it, it will not ex- 
plode while the fat is burning, and when you 
take it out of the grate it is as black as jet. 

But, if I was unapt at ordinary sports, a bota- 
nist or entomologist would have found me a will- 
ing pupil in those years ; and if I had fallen in 
with one, I might, perhaps, at this very day, have 
been classifying mosses, and writing upon the 
natural history of snails or cock-chafers, instead 
of recording the events of the Peninsular War. 
I knew every variety of grass blossom that the 
fields produced, and in what situations to look 
for each. I discovered that snails seal them- 
selves up in their shells during the winter, and 
that ants make their way into the cock-chafer 
through an aperture in the breast, and eat out 
its inside while it is yet alive. This gave me a 
great dislike to the ants, which even the delight- 
ful papers about them in the Guardian did not 
overcome. Two curious facts concerning these 
insects, which fell under my own observation in 
those days, are worthy of being noted. They 



spoiled the produce of some of our best currant- 
trees one year. The trees were trained against 
a wall ; the ants walked over them continually 
and in great numbers (I can not tell why, but 
probably after the aphides, which, as Kirby and 
Spence tell us, they regularly milk), and thus 
they imparted so rank a smell to the fruit that 
it could not be eaten. The ants were very nu- 
merous that season, and this occasioned a just 
and necessary war upon them. They had made 
a highway through the porch, along the inter- 
stices of the flag-stones. The right of path, as 
you may suppose, was not acquiesced in; and 
when this road was as full as Cheapside at noon- 
day, boiling water was poured upon it. The 
bodies, however, all disappeared in a few hours, 
carried away, as we supposed, by their comrades. 
But we know that some insects are marvelously 
retentive of life ; and this circumstance has some- 
times tempted me to suspect that an ant may de- 
rive no more injury from being boiled, than a fly 
from being bottled in Madeira, or a snail from 
having its head cut off, or from lying seven years 
in a collector's cabinet. Of the latter fact (which 
was already aiithenticated), my neighbor, Mr. 
Fryer, of Ormathwaite. had proof the other day. 

There are three flowers which, to this day T 
always remind me of Bedminster. The Syringa, 
or Roman jessamine, which covered an arbor in 
the fore-court, and another at the bottom of the 
kitchen garden ; the everlasting pea, which grew 
luxuriantly under the best kitchen windows ; 
and the evening primrose — my grandmother lov- 
ed to watch the opening of this singularly deli- 
cate flower — a flower, indeed, which in purity 
and delicacy seems to me to exceed all others. 
She called it mortality, because these beauties 
pass away so soon, and because, in the briefness 
of its continuance (living only for a night), it re- 
minded her of human life. 

The house was sold after her death, as soon 
as a purchaser could be found, there being no 
longer the means for supporting it. The rever- 
sion of her jointure had long ago been sold by 
John Tyler. The house was Edward's proper- 
ty, he having bought it when he came of age 
Her loss was deeply felt by him and the poor 
Squire ; and, indeed, it was fatal to their happi- 
ness, for happy hitherto they had been, accord- 
ing to their own sense of enjoyment. In losing 
her they lost every thing. The Squire was sent 
to board in a village on the coast of the Bristol 
Channel, called Worle ; and Edward Tyler, who 
was very capable of business, took a clerk's place 
in Bristol. But their stay was gone ; and event- 
ually, I have no doubt, both their lives were 
shortened by the consequences. 

I went to look at the place some twenty years 
ago ; it was a good deal altered : bow windows 
had been thrown out in the front, and a gazebo 
erected in the roof. After viewing about the 
front as much as I could without being noticed 
and deemed impertinent, I made my way round 
into the fields, and saw that the draw-bridge 
was still in existence. I have seen the gazebo 
since from the window of a stage-coach, and 



MfAT. 8. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY, 



35 



this is probably the last view I shall ever have 
of a place so dear to me. Even the recollec- 
tions of it will soon be confined to my own breast, 
for my uncle and my aunt Mary are now the 
only living persons who partake them. 



LETTER X. 

18 PLACED AS A DAY BOARDER AT A SCHOOL IN 

BRISTOL EARLY EFFORT OF AUTHORSHIP 

LOVE FOR DRAMATIC AUTHORS MISS PALMER 

SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS OPINION OF PUB- 
LIC AND PRIVATE EDUCATION. 

January 10th, 1823. 

I was now placed as a day boarder at a school 
.n that part of Bristol called the Fort, on the hill 
above St. Michael's Church. William Williams, 
the master, was, as his name denotes, a Welsh- 
man. I find him satirized, or, to use a more 
accurate word, slandered, in the Miscellanies of 
my uncle's old master, Emanuel Collins, as an 
impudent pretender. This he certainly was not ; 
for he pretended to very little, and what he pro- 
fessed to teach he taught well. The Latin he 
left wholly to an usher, Bevan by name, who was 
curate of the parish. The writing, ciphering, 
and merchant's accounts he superintended him- 
self, though there was a writing-master who 
made and mended the pens, ruled the copy-books, 
and examined the slates. Williams was an au- 
thor of the very humblest class. He had com- 
posed a spelling-book solely for the consumption 
of his own school : it was never published, and 
had not even a title-page. For love of this spell- 
ing-book, he exercised the boys in it so much 
that the thumbing and dog-leaving turned to good 
account. But he was, I verily believe, consci- 
entiously earnest in making them perfect in the 
Catechism. The examination in this was al- 
ways dreaded as the most formidable duty of the 
school, such was the accuracy which he exact- 
ed, and the severity of his manner on that occa- 
sion. The slightest inattention was treated as 
a crime. 

My grandmother died in 1782, and, either in 
the latter end of that year or the ensuing Janu- 
ary, I was placed at poor old Williams's, whom, 
as that expression indicates, I remember with 
feelings of good will. I had commenced poet 
before this, at how early an age I can not call 
to mind ; but I very well recollect that my first 
composition, both in manner and sentiment, might 
have been deemed a very hopeful imitation of 
the Bell-man's verses. The discovery, however, 
that I could write rhymes gave me great pleas- 
ure, which was in no slight degree heightened 
when I perceived that my mother was not only 
pleased with what I had produced, but proud of 
it. Miss Tyler had intended, as far as she was 
concerned, to give me a systematic education, 
and for this purpose (as she afterward told me) 
purchased a translation of Rousseau's Emilius. 
That system being happily even more impracti- 
cable than Mr. Edgeworth's, I was lucky enough 



to escape from any experiment of this kind, and 
there good fortune provided for me better than 
any method could have done. Nothing could be 
more propitious for me, considering my aptitudes 
and tendency of mind, than Miss Tyler's predi- 
lection, I might almost call it passion, for the 
theater. Owing to this, Shakspeare was in my 
hands as soon as I could read ; and it was long 
before I had any other knowledge of the history 
of England than what I gathered from his plays. 
Indeed, when first I read the plain matter "of 
fact, the difference which appeared then puzzled 
and did not please me, and for some time I pre- 
ferred Shakspeare's authority to the historian's. 

It is curious that "Titus Andronicus" was 
at first my favorite play ; partly, I suppose, be- 
cause there was nothing in the characters above 
my comprehension; but the chief reason must 
have been that tales of horror make a deep im- 
pression upon children, as they do upon the vul- 
gar, for whom, as their ballads prove, no tragedy 
can be too bloody : they excite astonishment 
rather than pity. I went through Beaumont and 
Fletcher also before I was eight years old : cir- 
cumstances enable me to recollect the time ac- 
curately. Beaumont and Fletcher were great 
theatrical names, and therefore there was no 
scruple about letting me peruse their works. 
What harm, indeed, could they do me at that 
age ? I read them merely for the interest which 
the stories afforded, and understood the worse 
parts as little as I did the better. But I acquir- 
ed imperceptibly from such reading familiarity 
with the diction, and ear for the blank verse of 
our great masters. In general, I gave myself 
no trouble with what I did not understand ; the 
story was intelligible, and that was enough. 
But the knight of the Burning Pestle perplexed 
me terribly; burlesque of this kind is the last 
thing that a child can comprehend. It set me 
longing, however, for Palmerin of England, and 
that longing was never gratified till I read it in 
the original Portuguese. My favorite play upon 
the stage was " Cymbeline," and next to that, 
" As You Like It." They are both romantic 
dramas ; and no one had ever a more decided 
turn for music or for numbers than I had for 
romance. 

You will wonder that this education should 
not have made me a dramatic writer. I had 
seen more plays before I was seven years old 
than I have ever since I was twenty, and heard 
more conversation about the theater than any 
other subject. Miss Tyler had given up her 
house at Walcot before I went to Corston ; and 
when I visited her from school, she was herself 
a guest with Miss Palmer and her sister, Mrs. 
Bartlett, whose property was vested in the Bath 
and Bristol theaters. Their house was in Gal-, 
loway's Buildings, from whence a covered pas- 
sage led to the play-house, and they very rarely 
missed a night's performance. I was too old to 
be put to bed before the performance began, and 
it was better that I should be taken than left 
with the servants ; therefore I was always of 
the party : and it is impossible to describe the 



36 



EARLY LIFE OF 



^TAT. 8. 



thorough delight which I received from this ha- 
bitual indulgence. No alter enjoyment could 
equal or approach it j I was sensible of no de- 
fects either in the dramas or in the representa- 
tion ; better acting, indeed, could nowhere have 
been found : Mrs, Siddons was the heroine, Di- 
mond and Murray would have done credit to any 
stage, and among the comic actors were Edwin 
and Blanchard — and Blisset, who, though never 
known to a London audience, was, of all comic 
actors whom I have ever seen, the most perfect. 
But I was happily insensible to that difference 
between good and bad acting, which in riper 
years takes off so much from the pleasure of 
dramatic representation ; every thing answered 
the height of my expectations and desires. And 
I saw it in perfect comfort, in a small theater, 
from the front row of a box not too far from the 
center. The Bath theater was said to be the 
most comfortable in England, and no expense 
was spared in the scenery and decorations. 

My aunt, who hoarded every thing except 
money, preserved the play-bills, and had a col- 
lection of them which Dr. Burney might have 
envied. As she rarely or never suffered me to 
be out of doors, lest I should dirt my clothes, 
these play-bills were one of the substitutes de- 
vised for my amusement instead of healthy and 
natural sports. I was encouraged to prick them 
with a pin, letter by letter 5 and, for want of any 
thing better, became as fond of this employment 
as women sometimes are of netting or any or- 
namental work. I learned to do it with great 
pleasure, pricking the larger types by their out- 
line, so that when they were held up to the win- 
dow they were bordered with spots of light. 
The object was to illuminate the whole bill in 
this manner. I have done it to hundreds ; and 
yet I can well remember the sort of dissatisfied 
and damping feeling which the sight of one of 
these bills would give me a day or two after it 
had been finished and laid by. \t was like an 
illumination when half the lamps are gone out. 
This amusement gave my writing-masters no 
little trouble ; for, in spite of all their lessons, I 
held a pen as I had been used to hold the pin. 

Miss Tyler was considered as an amateur and 
patroness of the stage. She was well acquaint- 
ed with Henderson, but of him I have no recol- 
lection. He left Bath, I believe, just as my 
play-going days began. Edwin, I remember, 
gave me an ivory wind-mill when I was about 
four years old; and there was no family with 
which she was more intimate than Dimond's. 
She was thrown also into the company of dra- 
matic writers at Mr. Palmer's, who resided then 
about a mile from Bath, on the Upper Bristol 
Road, at a house called West Hall. Here she 
became acquainted with Coleman and Sheridan, 
and Cumberland and Holcroft ; but I did not see 
any of them in those years, and the two former, 
indeed, never. Sophia Lee was Mrs. Palmer's 
most intimate friend. She was then in high rep- 
utation for the first volume of the Recess, and 
for the Chapter of Accidents. You will not won- 
der, that hearing, as I continually did, of living 



authors, and seeing in what estimation they were 
held, I formed a great notion of the dignity at- 
tached to their profession. Perhaps in no other 
circle could this effect so surely have been pro- 
duced as in a dramatic one, where ephemeral 
productions excite an intense interest while they 
last. Superior as I thought actors to all other 
men, it was not long before I perceived that au- 
thors were still a higher class. 

Though I have not become a dramatist, my 
earliest dreams of authorship were, as might be 
anticipated, from such circumstances, of a dra- 
matic form, and the notion which I had formed 
of dramatic composition was not inaccurate. " It 
is the easiest thing in the world to write a play !" 
said I to Miss Palmer, as we were in a carnage 
on Redcliffe Hill one day, returning from Bristol 
to Bedminster. " Is it, my dear ?" was her re- 
ply. " Yes," I continued, "for you know you 
have only to think what you would say if you 
were in the place of the characters, and to make 
them say it." This brings to mind some un- 
lucky illustrations wilich I made use of about 
the same time to the same lady, with the view 
of enforcing w T hat I conceived to be good and 
considerate advice. Miss Palmer was on a visit 
to my aunt at Bedminster ; they had fallen out, 
as they sometimes would do. These bickerings 
produced a fit of sullenness in the former, which 
was not shaken off for some days ; and while it 
lasted, she usually sat with her apron over her 
face. I really thought she would injure her eyes 
by this, and told her so in great kindness ; "for 
you know, Miss Palmer," said I, " that every 
thing gets out of order if it is not used. A book, 
if it is not opened, will become damp and moldy ; 
and a key, if it is never turned in the lock, gets 
rusty." Just then my aunt entered the room. 
"Lord, Miss Tyler! 1 ' said the offended lady, 
" what do you think this child has been saying? 
He has been comparing my eyes to a rusty key 
and a moldy book." The speech, however, was 
not without some good effect, for it restored good 
humor. Miss Palmer was an odd woman with 
a kind heart ; one of those persons who are not 
respected so much as they deserve, because their 
dispositions are better than their understanding. 
She had a most generous and devoted attach- 
ment to Miss Tyler, which was not always re- 
quited as it ought to have been. The earliest 
dream which I can remember related to her ; it 
was singular enough to impress itself indelibly 
upon my memory. I thought I was sitting with 
her in her drawing-room (chairs, carpet, and 
every thing are now visibly present to my mind's 
eye) when the devil was introduced as a morn- 
ing visitor. Such an appearance, for he was in 
his full costume of horns, black bat-wings, tail, 
and cloven feet, put me in ghostly and bodily 
fear ; but she received him with perfect polite- 
ness, called him dear Mr. Devil, desired the serv- 
ant to put him a chair, and expressed her delight 
at being favored with a oall,. 

There was much more promise implied in my 
notion of how a play ought to be written than 
would have been found in any of my attempts. 



iETAT. 8-12. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



37 



The first subject which I tried was the conti- 
nence of Scipio, suggested by a print in a pock- 
et-book. Battles were introduced in abundance, 
because the battle in Cymbeline was one of my 
favorite scenes ; and because Congreve's hero in 
the Mourning Bride finds the writing of his father 
in prison, I made my prince of Numantia find pen, 
ink, and paper, that he might write to his mis- 
tress. An act and a half of this nonsense ex- 
hausted my perseverance. Another story ran for 
a long time in my head, and I had planned the 
characters to suit the actors on the Bath stage. 
The fable was taken from a collection of tales, 
every circumstance of which has completely fad- 
ed from my recollection, except that the scene 
of the story in question was laid in Italy, and 
the time, I think, about Justinian's reign. The 
book must have been at least thirty or forty years 
old then, and I should recognize it if it ever fell 
in my way. While this dramatic passion con- 
tinued, I wished my friends to partake it, and, 
soon after I went to Williams's school, persuaded 
one of my schoolfellows to write a tragedy. Bal- 
lard was his name, the son of a surgeon at Port- 
bury, a good-natured fellow, with a round face 
which I have not seen for seven or eight-and- 
thirty years, and yet fancy that I could recog- 
nize it now, and should be right glad to see it. 
He liked the suggestion, and agreed to it very 
readily, but he could not tell what to write about. 
I gave him a story. But then another difficulty 
was discovered; he could not devise names for 
the personages of the drama. I gave him a most 
heroic assortment of propria qua maribus et fas- 
minis. He had now got his Dramatis Persona, 
but he could not tell what to make them say, and 
then I gave up the business. I made the same 
attempt with another schoolfellow, and with no 
better success. It seemed to me very odd that 
they should not be able to write plays as well as 
to do their lessons. It is needless to say that 
both these friends were of my own age 5 this is 
always the condition of school intimacies. The 
subject of the second experiment was a boy whose 
appearance prepossessed every body. My moth- 
er was so taken with the gentleness of his man- 
ners, and the regularity and mildness of his feat- 
ures, that she was very desirous I should become 
intimate with him. He grew up to be a puppy, 
sported a tail when he was fifteen, and a^five- 
and-twenty was an insignificant withered homun- 
culus, with a white face shriveled into an ex- 
pression of effeminate peevishness. I have seen 
many instances wherein the promise of the boy 
has not been fulfilled by the man, but never so 
striking a case of blight as this. 

The school was better than Flower's, inas- 
much as I had a Latin lesson every day instead 
of thrice a week. But my lessons were solitary 
ones, so few boys were there in my station, and, 
indeed, in the station of life next above mine, 
who received a classical education in those days, 
compared with what is the case now. Writing 
and arithmetic, with at most a little French, 
were thought sufficient, at that time, for the sons 
of opulent Bristol merchants. I was in Phaedrus 



when I went there, and proceeded through Cor- 
nelius Nepos, Justin, and the Metamorphoses. 
One lesson in the morning was all. The rest of 
the time was given to what was deemed there 
of more importance. Writing was taught very 
differently at this school from what it was at 
Corston, and much less agreeably to my inclina- 
tions. We did copies of capital letters there, and 
were encouraged to aspire at the ornamental 
parts of penmanship. But Williams, who wrote 
a slow, strong hand himself, admirable of its 
kind, put me back to the rudiments at once, and 
kept me at strokes, pot-hooks, and hangers, w's, 
n's, and m's, and such words as pupil and tulip, 
Heaven knows how long, with absurd and weari- 
some perseverance. Writing was the only thing 
in which any pains were ever taken, or any meth- 
od observed, to ground me thoroughly, and I was 
universally pronounced a most unpromising pu- 
pil. No instruction ever could teach me to hold 
the pen properly; of course, therefore, I could 
make none of those full, free strokes, which were 
deemed essential to good writing, and this drew 
upon me a great deal of unavailing reproof, though 
not severity, for old Williams liked me, on the 
whole ; and Mr. Foote was the only preceptor 
(except a dancing-master) who ever laid hands 
on me in anger. At home, too, my father and 
my uncle Thomas used to shake their heads at 
me, and pronounce that I should never write a 
decent hand. My ciphering-book, however, made 
some amends, in my master's eyes. It was in 
this that his pains and the proficiency of his 
scholars were to be shown. The books he used 
to sew himself, half a dozen sheets folded into 
the common quarto size ; they were ruled with 
double red lines, and the lines which were re- 
quired in the sums were also double ruled with 
red ink. When the book was filled, the pencil 
lines were carefully rubbed out ; and Williams, 
tearing off the covers, deposited it in an envelope 
of fine cartridge paper, on which he had written, 
in his best hand, the boy's name to whom it be- 
longed. When there were enough of these to 
form a volume, they were consigned to a poor 
old man, the inhabitant of an alms-house, who 
obtained a few comforts beyond what the estab- 
lishment allowed him by binding them. Now, 
though I wrote what is called a stiff, cramp 
hand, there was a neatness and regularity about 
my books which were peculiar to them. I had 
as quick a sense of symmetry as of meter. My 
lines were always drawn according to some 
standard of proportion, so that the page had an 
appearance of order at first sight. I found the 
advantage of this when I came to be concerned 
with proof-sheets. The method which I used in 
my ciphering-book led me to teach the printers 
how to print verses of irregular length upon a 
regular principle ; and Ballantyne told me I was 
the only person he ever met with who knew how 
a page would look before it was set up. I may 
add that it was I who set the fashion for black 
letter in title-pages and half titles, and that this 
arose firm my admiration of German text at 
school 



38 



EARLY LIFE OF 



Mtat. 8-12, 



I remained at this school between four and 
live years, which, if not profitably, were at least 
not unhappily spent. And here let me state the 
deliberate opinion upon the contested subject of 
public or private education, which I have formed 
from what I have experienced, and heard, and ob- 
served. A juster estimate of one's self is ac- 
quired at school than can be formed in the course 
of domestic instruction, and, what is of much 
more consequence, a better intuition into the 
characters of others than there is any chance of 
learning in after life. I have said that this is of 
more consequence than one's self-estimate, be- 
cause the error upon that score which domestic 
education tends to produce is on the right side 
— that of diffidence and humility. These ad- 
vantages a day scholar obtains, and he avoids 
great part of the evils which are to be set against 
them. He can not, indeed, wholly escape pol- 
lution, but he is far less exposed to it than if he 
were a boarder. He suffers nothing from tyr- 
anny, which is carried to excess in schools ; nor 
has he much opportunity of acquiring or indulg- 
ing malicious and tyrannical propensities him- 
self. Above all, his religious habits, which it 
is almost impossible to retain at school, are safe. 
I would gladly send a son to a good school by 
day; but, rather than board him at the best, I 
would, at whatever inconvenience, educate him 
myself. What I have said applies to public 
schools as well as private ; of the advantages 
which the former possess I shall have occasion 
to speak hereafter. 



LETTER XL 

MRS. DOLIGNON EARLY LOVE FOR BOOKS MISS 

TYLER TAKES A HOUSE IN BRISTOL FURTHER 

RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS UNCLE WILLIAM HIS 

DEATH. 

January 19th, 1823. 
My home, for the first two years while I went 
to Williams's school, was at my father's, except 
that during the holidays I was with Miss Tyler, 
either when she had lodgings at Bath, or was 
visiting Miss Palmer there. The first summer 
holidays I passed with her at Weymouth, whith- 
er she was invited to join her friend Mrs. Dolig- 
non. 

This lady, whom I remember with the utmost 
reverence and affection, was a widow with two 
children, Louisa, who was three or four years 
older than me, and John, who was just my age. 
Her maiden name was Delamere, she and her 
husband being both of refugee race — an extrac- 
tion of which I should be far more proud than 
if my family name were to be found in the Roll 
of Battle Abbey. I have heard that Mr. Dolig- 
non, in some delirium, died by his own hand, 
and this, perhaps, may have broken her spirits, 
and given a subdued and somewhat pensive man- 
ner to one who was naturally among the gen- 
tlest, meekest, kindest of human beings. I shall 
often have to speak of her in these letters. She 
had known me at Bath in my earliest childhood ; 



I had the good fortune then to obtain a place in 
her affections, and that place I retained, even 
when she thought it necessary to estrange me 
from her family. 

Landor, who paints always with the finest 
touch of truth, whether he is describing external 
or internal nature, makes his Charoba disap- 
pointed at the first sight of the sea : 

" She coldly said, her long-lash'd eyes abased, 
' Is this the mighty ocean ? Is this all ?' " 

and this he designs as characteristic of a " soul 
discontented with capacity." When I went on 
deck in the Corunna packet the first morning, 
and for the first time found myself out of sight 
of land, the first feeling was certainly one of dis- 
appointment as well as surprise at seeing my- 
self in the center of so small a circle. But the 
impression which the sea made upon me when 
I first saw it at Weymouth was very different; 
probably because not having, like Charoba, 
thought of its immensity, I was at once made 
sensible of it. The sea, seen from the shore, is 
still, to me, the most impressive of all objects, 
except the starry heavens ; and if I could live 
over any hours of my boyhood again, it should 
be those which I then spent upon the beach at 
Weymouth. One delightful day we passed at 
Portland, and another at Abbotsbury, where one 
of the few heronries in this kingdom was then 
existing, and perhaps still may be. There was 
another at Penshurst, and I have never seen a 
third. I wondered at nothing so much as at the 
Chesil Bank, which connects Portland, like the 
Firm Island of Amadis, with the main land, the 
shingles whereof it is formed gradually dimin- 
ishing in size from one end to the other, till it 
becomes a sand-bank. The spot which I recol- 
lect with most distinctness is the church-yard 
of an old church in the island, which, from its 
neglected state, and its situation near the cliffs 
— above all, perhaps, because so many ship- 
wrecked bodies were interred there, impressed 
me deeply and durably. 

The first book which I ever possessed beyond 
the size of Mr. Newberry's gilt regiment was 
given me soon after this visit by Mrs. Dolignon. 
It was Hoole's translation of the Gerusalcmme 
Liberata. She had heard me speak of it with a 
delight and interest above my years. My curi- 
osity to read the poem had been strongly excited 
by tke stories of Olendo and Sophronia, and of 
the Enchanted Forest as versified by Mrs. Rowe. 
I read them in the volume of her Letters, and 
despaired, at the time, of ever reading more of 
the poem till I should be a man, from a whim- 
sical notion that, as the subject related to Jeru- 
salem, the original must be in Hebrew. No 
one in my father's house could set me right 
upon this point; but going one day with my 
mother into a shop, one side of which was fitted 
up with a circulating library, containing not 
more than three or four hundred volumes, almost 
all novels, I there laid my hand upon Hoole's 
version, a little before my visit to Weymouth. 
The copy which Mrs. Dolignon sent me is now 
in my sight, upon the shelf, and in excellent 



JEtat. 8-12. 



ROBERT SOUTflEY. 



39 



preservation, considering that when a schoolboy 
I perused it so often that I had no small portion 
of it by heart. Forty years have tarnished the 
gilding upon its back ; but they have not effaced 
ray remembrance of the joy with which I re- 
ceived it, and the delight which I found in its 
repeated perusal. 

During the years that I resided in Wine Street, 
I was upon a short allowance of books. My fa- 
ther read nothing except Felix Farley's Bristol 
Journal. A small glass cupboard over the desk 
in the back parlor held his wine-glasses and all 
his library. It consisted of the Spectator, three 
or four volumes of the Oxford Magazine, one of 
the Freeholder's, and one of the Town and 
Country; these he had taken in during the 
Wilkes and Liberty epidemic. My brother 
Tom and I spoiled them by coloring, that is, be- 
daubing the prints ; but I owe to them some 
knowledge of the political wit, warfare, and 
scandal of those days ; and from one of them, 
that excellent poem, the Old Bachelor, was cut 
out, which I reprinted in the Annual Anthology. 
The other books were Pomfret's Poems, The 
Death of Abel, Aaron Hill's translation of Me- 
rope, with The Jealous Wife, and Edgar and 
Emmeline, in one volume ; Julius Caesar, the 
Toy Shop, All for Love, and a Pamphlet upon 
the Quack Doctors of George II. 's days, in an- 
other ; the Vestal Virgins, the Duke of Lerma, 
and the Indian Queen, in a third. To these my 
mother had added the Guardian, and the happy 
copy of Mrs. Rowe's Letters which introduced 
me to Torquato Tasso. 

The holidays made amends for this penury, 
and Bull's Circulating Library was then to me 
what the Bodleian would be now. Hoole, in his 
notes, frequently referred to the Orlando Furioso. 
I saw some volumes thus lettered on Bull's coun- 
ter, and my heart leaped for joy. They proved 
to be the original ; but the shopman, Mr. Cru- 
ett (a most obliging man he w T as), immediately 
put the translation into my hand, and I do not 
think any accession of fortune could now give 
me so much delight as I then derived from that 
vile version of Hoole's. There, in the notes, I 
first saw the name of Spenser, and some stanzas 
of the Faery Quedn. Accordingly, when I re- 
turned the last volume, I asked if that work was 
in the library. My friend Cruett replied that 
they had it, but it was written in old English, 
and I should not be able to understand it. This 
did not appear to me so much a necessary con- 
sequence as he supposed, and I therefore re- 
quested he would let me look at it. It was the 
quarto edition of '17, in three volumes, with 
large prints folded in the middle, equally worth- 
less (like all the prints of that age) in design 
and execution. There was nothing in the lan- 
guage to impede, for the ear set me right where 
the uncouth spelling (orthography it can not be 
called) might have puzzled the eye; and the 
few words which are really obsolete were suffi- 
ciently explained by the context. No young 
lady of the present generation falls to a new 
novel of Sir Walter Scott's with keener relish 



than I did that morning to the Faery Queen. 
If I had then been asked wherefore it gave me 
so much more pleasure than ever Ariosto had 
done, I could not have answered the question. 
I now know that it was very much owing to 
the magic of its verse ; the contrast between the 
flat couplets of a rhymester like Hoole, and the 
fullest and finest of all stanzas, written by one 
who was perfect master of his art. But this 
was not all. Ariosto too often plays with his 
subject; Spenser is always in earnest. The 
delicious landscapes which he luxuriates in de- 
scribing brought every thing before my eyes. I 
could fancy such scenes as his lakes and forests, 
gardens and fountains presented; and I felt, 
though I did not understand, the truth and pu- 
rity of his feelings, and that love of the beautiful 
and the good w T hich pervades his poetry. 

When Miss Tyler had lived about among her 
friends as long as it was convenient for them to 
entertain her, and longer in lodgings than was 
convenient for herself, she began to think of 
looking out for a house at Bristol ; and, owing 
to some odd circumstances, I was the means of 
finding one which precisely suited her. Mrs. 
Wraxall, the widow of a lawyer, had heard, I 
know not how, that I was a promising boy, very 
much addicted to books, and she sent to my 
mother requesting that I might drink tea with 
her one evening. The old lady was mad as a 
March hare after a religious fashion. Her be- 
havior to me was very kind ; but, as soon as tea 
was over, she bade me kneel down, and down 
she knelt herself, and prayed for me by the hour 
to my awful astonishment. When this was 
done she gave me a little book called Early Pi- 
ety, and a coarse edition of the Paradise Lost, 
and said she was going to leave Bristol. It 
struck me immediately that the house which she 
was about to quit w T as such a one as my aunt 
wanted. I said so ; and Mrs. Wraxall immedi- 
ately answered, "Tell her that if she likes it, 
she shall have the remainder of my lease." 
The matter was settled in a few days, for this 
was an advantageous offer. The house at that 
time would have been cheap at c£20 a year, and 
there was an unexpired term of five years upon 
it at only d£ll. This old lady was mother to 
Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who had been bred up, 
and perhaps born, in that habitation. The own- 
er was poor John Morgan's father. Mr. Wrax- 
all. many years before, had taken it at a low 
rent upon a repairing lease, and had expended 
a great deal of money upon it at a time when 
it was rather a rural than a suburban residence. 
The situation had been greatly worsened, but it 
was still in the skirts of the city, and out of 
reach of its noise. 

It stood in the avenue leading from Maudlin 
Lane to Horfield Lane or Road. When the plan 
of Bristol for Barrett's wretched history of that 
city was engraved, the buildings ended with 
Maudlin Lane, and all above was fields and 
gardens. That plan is dated 1780, but must 
have been drawn at least ten years earlier, for 
it marks St. Leonard's Church, which was pulled 



40 



EARLY LIFE OF 



Mtat. 8-12. 



down in the beginning of 1771. The avenue is 
marked there by the name of Red Coat Lane ; a 
mere lane it appears, running up between fields, 
and with a hedge on each side. It was now, 
however, known by the name of Terril Street. 
There were at the bottom four or five houses on 
the left hand, built like the commencement of a 
street, and these were there when the plan was 
taken. Where they ended the steeper ascent 
began ; and some houses followed, which, though 
contiguous, stood each in its little garden, some 
thirty yards back from the street. There were 
five of these, and the situation was such that 
they must have been in good estimation before 
some speculator, instead of building a sixth, 
erected at right angles with them a row of five 
or six inferior dwellings. Above these was only 
a steep paved avenue between high walls, inac- 
cessible for horses because of some flights of 
steps. The view was to a very large garden 
opposite, one of those which supplied the market 
with fruit and culinary vegetables. 

The house upon which Miss T)'ler now en- 
tered was small but cheerful ; Sir Nathaniel 
would perhaps be ashamed to remember it, but 
to his father it had evidently been an object of 
pride and pleasure. As is usual in suburban 
gardens, he had made the most of the ground. 
Though no wider than the front of the house, 
there was a walk paved with lozenge-shaped 
stones from the gate, and two gravel walks. The 
side beds were allotted to currant and gooseberry 
bushes ; the others were flower beds, and there 
were two large apple-trees and two smaller 
ones. In front of the house the pavement ex- 
tended, under which was an immense cistern for 
rain water, so large as to be absurd : it actually 
seemed fitter for a fort than for a small private 
family. The kitchen was under ground. On 
one side the gate was a summer-house, with a 
sort of cellar, and another cistern below it. 

As soon as my aunt was settled here, she 
sent for her brother William, who, since his 
mother's death, had been boarded at a substan- 
tial shop-keeper's in the little village of Worle, 
on the Channel, about twenty miles from Bris- 
tol. I look back upon his inoffensive and mo- 
notonous course of life with a compassion which 
I was then not capable of feeling. For one or 
two years he walked into the heart of the city 
every Wednesday and Saturday to be shaved, 
and to purchase his tobacco ; he went, also, some- 
times to the theater, which he enjoyed highly. 
On no other occasion did he ever leave the house ; 
and as inaction, aided, no doubt, by the inordin- 
ate use of tobacco, and the quantity of small-beer 
with which he swilled his inside, brought on a 
premature old age, even this exercise was left 
off. As soon as he rose, and had taken his first 
pint of beer, which was his only breakfast, to 
the summer-house he went, and took his station 
in the bow-window as regularly as a sentinel in 
a watch-box. Here it was his whole and sole 
employment to look at the few people who pass- 
ed, and to watch the neighbors, with all whose 
concerns at last he became perfectly intimate by 



what he could thus oversee and overhear. He 
had a nickname for every one of them. In the 
evening my aunt and I generally played at five- 
card loo with him, in which he took an intense 
interest ; and if, in the middle of the day, when 
I came home to dinner, he could get me to play 
at marbles in the summer-house, he was de- 
lighted. The points to which he looked on in 
the week were the two mornings when Joseph 
came to shave him : this poor journeyman bar- 
ber felt a sort of compassionate regard for him, 
and he had an insatiable appetite for such news 
as the barber could communicate. Thus his 
days passed in wearisome uniformity. He had 
no other amusement, unless in listening to hear 
a comedy read ; he had not, in himself, a single 
resource for whiling away the time, not even 
that which smoking might have afforded him ; 
and, being thus utterly without an object for the 
present or the future, his thoughts were per- 
petually recurring to the past. His affections 
were strong and lasting. Indeed, at his mother's 
funeral his emotions were such as to affect all 
who witnessed them. That grief he felt to the 
day of his death. I have also seen tears in his 
eyes when he spoke of my sisters, Eliza and 
Louisa, both having died just at that age when 
he had most delight in fondling them, and they 
were most willing to be fondled. Whether it 
might have been possible to have awakened him 
to any devotional feelings may be doubted; but 
he believed and trusted simply and implicitly, 
and more, assuredly, would not be required from 
one to whom so little had been given. He lived 
about four years after this removal. His brother 
Edward died a year before him, of pulmonary 
consumption. This event affected him deeply. 
He attended the funeral, described the condition 
of the coffins in the family vault in a manner 
which I well remember, and said that his turn 
would be next. One day, on my return from 
school at the dinner hour, going into the sum- 
mer-house, I found him sitting in the middle of 
the room and looking wildly. He told me he 
had been very ill, that he had had a seizure in 
the head such as he had never felt before, and 
that he was certain something very serious ailed 
him. I gave the alarm; but it passed over; 
neither he himself, nor any person in the house, 
knew what such a seizure indicated. The next 
morning he arose as usual, walked down stairs 
into the kitchen, and, as he was buttoning the 
knees of his breeches, exclaimed, " Lord have 
mercy upon me !" and fell from the chair. His 
nose was bleeding when he was taken up. Im- 
mediate assistance was procured, but he was 
dead before it arrived. The stroke was merci- 
fully sudden, but it had been preceded by a long 
and gradual diminution of vital strength ; and I 
have never known any other case in which, when 
there were so few external appearances of dis- 
ease or decay, the individual was so aware that 
his dissolution was approaching. 

I often regret that my memory should have 
retained so few of the traditional tales and pro- 
verbial expressions which I heard from him, more 



Mtat. 8-12. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



41 



certainly than from all other persons in the 
course of my life. Some of them have been 
lately recalled to my recollection by Grimm's 
Collection. What little his mind was capable 
of receiving it had retained tenaciously, and of 
these things it had a rich store. Upon his death 
Miss Tyler became the sole survivor of her pa- 
ternal race. 



LETTER XII. 

HIS RECOLLECTIONS OF SCHOOL AT BRISTOL 

HIS SCHOOLMASTER AND SCHOOLFELLOWS. 

August 20th, 182,3. 

My memory strengthens as I proceed in this 
task of retrospection ; and yet, while some cir- 
cumstances — a look, a sound, a gesture, though 
utterly unimportant, recur to me more vividly 
than the transactions of yesterday, others, which 
I would, fain call to mind, are irrevocably gone. 
I have sometimes fancied, when dreaming upon 
what may be our future state, that in the next 
world we may recover a perfect recollection of 
all that has occurred to us in this, and in the 
prior stages of progressive existence, through 
which it is not improbable that our living princi- 
ple has ascended. And yet the best and happi- 
est of us must have something or other, alta 
mente repostum, for which a draught of Lethe 
would be desired. 

The pleasantest of my school years were those 
which I passed at Williams's, especially after I 
took up my abode at Terril Street, for I then 
went home to dinner, and found much more sat- 
isfaction there in my own pursuits from twelve 
o'clock till two than in his contracted play- 
ground. What I learned there, indeed, was 
worth little ; it was just such a knowledge of 
Latin as a boy of quick parts and not without 
diligence will acquire under bad teaching. When 
I had gone through the Metamorphoses, Williams 
declared his intention of taking me from the usher 
and instructing me in Virgil himself, no other of 
his pupils having proceeded so far. But the old 
man, I suppose, discovered that the little classical 
knowledge which he ever possessed had passed 
away as irrevocably as his youth, and I continued 
under the usher's care, who kept me in the Ec- 
logues so long that I was heartily sick of them, 
and I believe have never looked in them from that 
time. Over and over again did that fellow make 
me read them ; probably because he thought the 
book was to be gone through in order, and was 
afraid to expose himself in the Georgics. No 
attempt was made to ground me in prosody; 
and as this defect in my education was never 
remedied (for when I went to Westminster I 
was too forward in other things to be placed low 
enough in the school for regular training in this), 
I am at this day as liable to make a false quan- 
tity as any Scotchman. I was fond of arithmetic, 
and have no doubt that, at that time, I should 
have proceeded with pleasure through its higher 
branches, and might have been led on to math- 



ematics, of which my mind afterward became 
impatient, if not actually incapable. 

Sometimes, when Williams was in good hu- 
mor, he suspended the usual business of the 
school and exercised the boys in some uncom- 
mon manner. For example, he would bid them 
all take their slates, and write as he should dic- 
tate. This was to try their spelling ; and I re- 
member he once began with this sentence : " As 
I walked out to take the air, I met a man with 
red hair, who was heir to a good estate, and was 
carrying a hare in his hand." Another time he 
called upon all of a certain standing to write a 
letter, each upon any subject that he pleased. 
You will perhaps wonder to hear that no task 
ever perplexed me so woefully as this. I had 
never in my life written a letter, except a formal 
one at Corston before the holidays, every word 
of which was of the master's dictation, and which 
used to begin, " Honored Parents." Some of 
the boys produced compositions of this stamp ; 
others, who were a little older and more ambi- 
tious, wrote in a tradesman-like style, soliciting 
orders, or acknowledging them, or sending in an 
account. For my part, I actually cried for per- 
plexity and vexation. Had I been a blockhead, 
this would have provoked Williams ; but he al- 
ways looked upon me with a favorable eye, and, 
expressing surprise rather than anger, he en- 
deavored both to encourage and shame me to the 
attempt. To work I fell at last, and presently 
presented him with a description of Stonehenge, 
in the form of a letter, which completely filled 
the slate. I had laid hands not long before upon 
the Salisbury Guide, and Stonehenge had ap- 
peared to me one of the greatest wonders in the 
world. The old man was exceedingly surprised, 
and not less delighted, and I well remember how 
much his astonishment surprised me, and how 
much I was gratified by his praise. I was not 
conscious of having done any thing odd or ex- 
traordinary, but the boys made me so ; and to 
the sort of envy which it excited among them, I 
was indebted for a wholesome mortification. 
One morning, upon entering the school a few 
minutes before the master made his appearance, 
some half dozen of them beset me, and demanded 
whether I, with all my learning, could tell what 
the letters i. e. stood for. The question was pro- 
posed in the taunting tone of expected triumph, 
which I should well have liked to " disappoint. 
But when I answered that I supposed it was for 
John the Evangelist, the unlucky guess taught 
me never again to be ashamed of acknowledging 
myself ignorant of what I really did not know. 
It was a useful lesson, especially as I was fortu- 
nate enough to perceive, early in life, that there 
were very many subjects of which I must of ne- 
cessity be so. 

Of all my schoolmasters, Williams is the one 
whom I remember with the kindliest feelings. 
His Welsh blood was too easily roused ; and his 
spirit was soured by the great decline of his 
school. His numbers in its best days had been 
from seventy to a hundred; now they did not 
reach forty, when the times were dearer by all 



42 



EARLY LIFE OF 



jEtat. 8-12. 



the difference which the American War had oc- 
casioned, and his terms could not be raised in 
proportion to the increased price of every thing, 
because schools had multiplied. When his ill 
circumstances pressed upon him, he gave way, 
perhaps more readily, to impulses of anger ; be- 
cause anger, like drunkenness, suspends the sense 
of care, and an irascible emotion is felt as a re- 
lief from painful thoughts. His old wig, like a 
bank of morning clouds in the east, used to indi- 
cate a stormy day. At better times both the 
wig and the countenance would have beseemed 
a higher station ; and his anger was the more 
frightful, because at those better times there was 
an expression of good humor and animation in 
his features which was singularly pleasing, and 
I believe denoted Ins genuine character. He 
would strike with a ruler sometimes when his 
patience was greatly provoked by that incorrigi- 
ble stupidity, which of all things, perhaps, puts 
patience to the severest trial. There was a hulk- 
ing fellow (a Creole with negro features and a 
shade of African color in him), who possessed 
this stupidity in the highest degree ; and Will- 
iams, after flogging him one day, made him pay 
a halfpenny for the use of the rod, because he re- 
quired it so much oftener than any other boy in 

the school. Whether G was most sensible 

of the mulct or the mockery, I know not, but he 
felt it as the severest part of the punishment. 
This was certainly a tyrannical act ; but it was 
the only one of which I ever saw Williams guilty. 
There were a good many Creoles at this 
school, as, indeed, at all the Bristol schools. 
Cassava bread was among the things which 
were frequently sent over to them by their par- 
ents, so that I well knew the taste of manioc 
long before I heard its name. These Creoles 
were neither better nor worse than so many oth- 
er boys in any respect. Indeed, though they had 
a stronger national cast of countenance, they 
were, I think, less marked by any national feat- 
ures of mind or disposition than the Welsh, cer- 
tainly much less than the Irish. One of them 
(evidently by his name of French extraction) 
was, however, the most thoroughly fiendish hu- 
man being that I have ever known. There is an 
image in Kehama, drawn from my recollection of 
the devilish malignity which used sometimes to 
glow in his dark eyes, though I could not there 
give the likeness in its whole force, for his coun- 
tenance used to darken with the blackness of his 
passion. Happily for the slaves on the family 
estate, he, though a second brother, was wealthy 
enough to settle in England ; and an anecdote 
which I heard of him when he was about thirty 
years of age, will show that I have not spoken 
of his character too strongly. When he was 
shooting one day, his dog committed some fault. 
He would have shot him for this upon the spot, 
if his companion had not turned the gun aside, 
and, as he supposed, succeeded in appeasing him ; 
but, when the sport was over, to the horror of 
that companion (who related the story to me), 
he took up a large stone and knocked out the 
door's brains. I have mentioned this wretch, 



who might otherwise have better been forgot- 
ten, for a charitable reason ; because I verily be- 
lieve that his wickedness was truly an "original, 
innate, constitutional sin, and just as much a 
family disease as gout or scrofula. I think so, 
because he had a nephew who was placed as a 
pupil with King, the surgeon at Clifton, and in 
whom, at first sight, I recognized a physiog- 
nomy which I hope can belong to no other breed. 
His nephew answered in all respects to the re- 
lationship, and to the character which Nature had 
written in every lineament of his face. He ran 
a short career of knavery, profligacy, and crimes, 
which led him into a prison, and there he died 
by his own hand. 

Another of my then schoolfellows, who was 
also a Creole, came to a like fate, but from very 
different circumstances. He was the natural son 
of a wealthy planter by a woman of color, and 
went through the school with the character of an 
inoffensive, gentlemanly, quiet boy, who never 
quarreled with any body, nor ever did an ill-na- 
tured thing. When he became a young man, he 
was liberally supplied with money, and launched 
into expenses which such means tended to create 
and seemed to justify. The supplies suddenly 
ceased, I am not certain whether by an experi- 
ment of rigor, or owing to his father's dying 
without providing for him in his will ; the latter 

I think was the case. Poor H , however, 

was arrested for debt, and put an end to his hope- 
less prospects in prison, by suicide. 

Colonel Hugh Baillie, who made himself con- 
spicuous some few months ago by very properly 
resenting the unjust expulsion of his son from 
Christ Church (an act of the late dean's misera- 
ble misgovernment) , was one of my cotempora- 
ries at this school. My old Latin master, Du- 
planier, kept a French academy next door, and 
by an arrangement between the two masters, 
his boys came three mornings in the week to 
write and cipher with us. Among these inter- 
mitting schoolfellows was poor John Morgan, 
with whom Coleridge lived for several years ; 
Gee, whom I have already mentioned ; and a 
certain H , with whom I had an ad- 
venture in after-life well worthy of preservation. 

This youth was about three years older than 
I ; of course, I had no acquaintance with him, 
nor did I ever exchange a word with him, un- 
less it were when the whole school were en- 
gaged in playing prison-base, in which he took 
the lead as the rcodag cjkvs of his side. His fa- 
ther was a merchant, concerned, among other 
things, in the Irish linen trade : my father had 
some dealings with him, and, in his misfortunes, 
found him — what, I believe, is not a common 
character — an unfeeling creditor. They were 
a proud family ; and, a few years after my fa- 
ther's failure, failed themselves, and, as the 

phrase is, went to the dogs. This H O 

was bred to be an attorney, but wanted either 
brains or business to succeed in his calling — I 
dare say both. I had forgotten his person, and 
should never have thought of him again (except 
when the game o ' prison-base was brought to 



iETAT. 8-12. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



43 



my mind), if, in the year 1798, I had not been 
surprised by hearing one day at Cottle's shop 
that he had been there twice or thrice to inquire 
for me, and had left a message requesting that, 
if I came into Bristol that day (it was during 
the year of my abode at Westbury), I would 
call on him at an attorney's office at a certain 
hour. Accordingly, thither I went, rung at the 

bell, inquired for Mr. , gave my name, 

and was ushered into a private room. Nothing 
could be more gracious than his recognition of 
a person whom he must have passed twenty 
times in the street during the last three months : 
" we had been schoolfellows at such a place, at 
such a time," &c, &c, all which I knew very 
well ; but how we came to be acquaintances 
now was what I had to learn, and to explain 
this cost him a good deal of humming and haw- 
ing, plentifully intermixed with that figure of 
speech which the Irish call blarney, and which 
is a much more usual as well as useful figure 
than any of those, with the hard names of which 
poor boys used to be tormented in the Latin 
grammar. From the use which he made of 
this figure, he appeared to know that I was an 
author of some notoriety, and that one of my 
books was called Joan of Arc. The compli- 
ments which he laid on were intermingled with 
expressions of great regret for the deficiencies 
of his own education : he learned a little Latin, 
a little French, but there it had stopped ; in 
short, I knew what must be the extent of his 
acquirements ; " for you and I, Mr. Southey, you 
know, were schoolfellows." At last it came out 
that, from a consciousness of these deficiencies, 
he had been led to think that a glossary of the 
English language was a work very much wanted, 
and that no one could be more competent to sup- 
ply such a desideratum than the gentleman whom 
he had the honor of addressing. I was as little 
able to guess what his deficiencies had to do 
with a glossary as you can be ; and, not feeling 
any curiosity to get at a blockhead's meaning, 
endeavored to put an end to the interview by 
declaring at once my utter inability to execute 
such a work, for the very sufficient reason that 
I was wholly ignorant of several languages, the 
thorough knowledge of which was indispensable 
in such researches. This produced more blar- 
ney, and an explanation that my answer did not 
exactly apply to what his proposal intended. 
What he meant was this : there were a great 
many elegant words, which persons like himself, 
whose education had been neglected, would oft- 
en like to use in conversation (he said this feel- 
ingly ; it had often been his own case ; he felt 
it, indeed, every day of his life) : they would be 
glad to use these words if they only knew their 
meaning ; and what he wanted was a glossary 
or dictionary of such words, a little book which 
might be carried in the pocket. It would cer- 
tainly command an extensive sale : I could 
make the book; he had a large acquaintance, 
and could procure subscribers for it ; and we 
might make a thriving partnership concern in 
this literary undertaking. Before he arrived at 



this point, the scene had become far too comical 
to leave any room in my feelings for anger. I 
kept my countenance (which has often been put 
to much harder trials than my temper, and is, 
moreover, a much more difficult thing to keep), 
declined his proposal decidedly but civilly, took 
my leave in perfect good humor, and hastened 
back to Cottle's, to relieve myself by telling him 
the adventure. 



LETTER XIII. 

VISITORS TO HIS SCHOOLMASTER. 

May 27th, 1824. 

Nearly four years have elapsed since I be- 
gan this series of reminiscences, and I have only 
written twelve letters, which bring me only into 
the twelfth year of my age. Alas ! this is not 
the only case in which I feel that the remaining 
portion of my life, were it even to be protracted 
longer than there is reason to expect upon the 
most favorable calculation of chances, must be 
too short for the undertakings which I have 
sometimes dreamed of completing. It is, how- 
ever, the case in which I can, with least incon- 
venience, quicken my speed; and frail as by 
humiliating experience I know my own resolu- 
tions to be, I will nevertheless endeavor to send 
off a letter from this time forth at the end of ev- 
ery month. Matter for one more will be afford- 
ed before I take leave of poor old William Will- 
iams ; and that part of it which has no connec- 
tion with myself, will not be the least worth 
relation. 

It was a good feature in his character that he 
had a number of poor retainers, who used to 
drop in at school hours, #nd seldom went away 
empty handed. There was one poor fellow, fa- 
miliarly called Dr. Jones, who always set the 
school in a roar of laughter. What his real his- 
tory was I know not ; the story was, that some 
mischievous boys had practiced upon him the 
dreadfully dangerous prank of giving him a dose 
of cantharides, and that he had lost his wits in 
consequence. I am not aware that it could 
have produced this effect, though it might very 
probably have cost him his life. Crazy, how- 
ever, he was, or, rather, half crazed, and it was 
such a merry craziness that it would have been 
wishing him ill to have wished him otherwise. 
The bliss of ignorance is merely negative ; 
there was a positive happiness in his insanity ; 
it was like a perpetual drunkenness, sustained 
just at that degree of pleasurable excitement, 
which, in the sense of present enjoyment, is 
equally regardless of the future and of the past. 
He fancied himself a poet, because he could pro- 
duce, upon demand, a rhyme in the sorriest 
doggerel ; and the most celebrated improvisator -e 
was never half so vain of his talent as this queer 
creature, whose little figure of some five feet 
two I can perfectly call to mind, with his suit 
of rusty black, his more rusty wig, and his old 
cocked hat. Whenever he entered the school- 
room he was greeted with a shout of welcome ; 



41 



EARLY LIFE OF 



iETAT. 8-12. 



all business was suspended ; he was called upon 
from all sides to give us a rhyme ; and when 
the master's countenance offered any encourage- 
ment, he was entreated also to ask for half a 
holiday, which, at the price of some doggerel, 
was sometimes obtained. You will readily be- 
lieve he was a popular poet. 

The talent of composing imitative verses has 
become so common in our days, that it will re- 
quire some evidence to make the next genera- 
tion believe what sort of verses were received 
as poetry fifty years ago, when any thing in 
rhyme passed current. The magazines, how- 
ever, contain proof of this, the very best of them 
abounding in such trash as would be rejected 
now by the provincial newspapers. Whether 
the progress of society, which so greatly favors 
the growth and development of imitative talent, 
is equally favorable to the true poetical spirit, 
is a question which I may be led to consider 
hereafter. But, as I had the good fortune to 
grow up in an age when poets, according to the 
old opinion, were born and not made, and as, at 
the time to which this part of my reminiscences 
relates, the bent of my nature had decidedly 
shown itself, I may here make some observa- 
tions upon the grounds and consequences of that 
opinion. 

In the earliest ages, certain it is, that they 
who possessed that gift of speech which enabled 
them to clothe ready thoughts in measured or 
elevated diction were held to be inspired. False 
oracles were uttered in verse, and true prophe- 
cies delivered in poetry. There was, therefore, 
some reason for the opinion. A belief akin to it, 
and not improbably derived from it, prevails even 
now among the ignorant, and was much more 
prevalent in my childhood, when very few of the 
lower classes could write or read, and when, in 
the classes above them, those who really were 
ignorant knew that they were so. Sleight of 
hand passed for magic in the Dark Ages, sleight 
of tongue for inspiration ; and the ignorant, when 
they were no longer thus to be deluded, still 
looked upon both as something extraordinary and 
wonderful. Especially the power of arranging 
words in a manner altogether different from the 
common manner of speech, and of disposing syl- 
lables so as to produce a harmony which is felt 
by the dullest ear (a power which has now be- 
come an easy, and, therefore, is every day be- 
coming more and more a common acquirement), 
appeared to them what it originally was in all 
poets, and always will be in those who are truly 
such ; and even now, though there are none who 
regard its possessor with superstitious reverence, 
there are many who look upon him as one who, 
in the constitution of his mind, is different from 
themselves. As no madman ever pretended to 
a religious call without finding some open-eared 
listeners ready to believe in him and become his 
disciples ; so, perhaps, no one ever composed 
verses with facility who had not some to admire 
and applaud him in his own little circle. This 
was the case even with so poor a creature as 
Dr. Jones. And to the intoxication of conceit, 



which the honest admiration of the ignorant has 
produced in half-crazed rhymers like him, it is 
owing that some marvelous productions have 
found their way to the press. Dr. Jones, by 
whom I have been led into this digression, was 
a doggerelist of the very lowest kind. One other 
such I once met with, when I was young enough 
to be heartily amused at an exhibition which, 
farcical as it was, would now make me mourn- 
ful. He was a poor engraver, by name Coyte; 
very simple, very industrious, very poor, and 
completely crazed with vanity, because he could 
compose off-hand, upon any subject, such rhymes 
as the bell-man's used to be. Bedford's father 
used occasionally to relieve him, for he was mar- 
ried, and could earn but a "miserable livelihood 
for his family. I saw him on one of his visits to 
Brixton, in the year 1793, when he was between 
forty and fifty years of age. His countenance 
and manner might have supplied Wilkie with a 
worthy subject. Mr. Bedford (there never lived 
a kinder-hearted man) loved merriment, and 
played him off, in which Grosvenor and Horace 
joined, and I was not backward. We gave him 
subjects upon which he presently wrote three or 
four sorry couplets. No creature was ever more 
elated with triumph than he was at the hyper- 
bolical commendations which he received ; and 
this, mingled with the genuine humility which 
the sense of his condition occasioned, produced 
a truly comic mixture in his feelings and gestic- 
ulations. What with pleasure, inspiration, ex- 
ertion, and warm weather (for it was in the dog- 
days), he perspired as profusely, .though I dare 
say not as fragrantly, as an elephant in love, and 
literally overflowed at eyes and mouth, frothing 
and weeping in a salivation of happiness. I think 
this poor creature published "A Cockney's Ram- 
bles in the Country" some twelve or fourteen 
years ago, for such a pamphlet I saw advertised 
by Joseph William Coyte ; and I sent for it at 
the time, but it was too obscure to be found. 

These are examples of the very humblest and 
meanest rhymesters, who nevertheless felt them- 
selves raised above their companions because 
they could rhyme. I have been acquainted with 
poets in every intermediate degree between Jones 
and Wordsworth, and their conceit has almost 
uniformly been precisely in an inverse proportion 
to their capacity. When this conceit acts upon 
low and vulgar ignorance, it produces direct 
craziness, as in the instances of which I have 
been speaking. In the lower ranks of middle 
life I have seen it, without amounting to insani- 
ty, assume a form of such extravagant vanity 
that the examples which have occurred within 
my own observation would be deemed incredible 
if brought forward in a farce. Of these in due 
time. There is another more curious manifest- 
ation of the same folly, which I do not remem- 
ber ever to have seen noticed, but which is well 
worthy of critical observation, because it shows 
in its full extent, and therefore in puris natural- 
ibus, a fault which is found in by much the great- 
er part of modern poetry — the use of words 
which have no signification where they are used. 



JEtat. 8-12. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



45 



or which, if they mean any thing, mean non- 
sense — the substitution of sound for sense. I 
could show you passage after passage in cotem- 
porary writers — the most popular writers, and 
some of them the most popular passages in their 
works, which, when critically, that is to say, 
strictly, but justly examined, are as absolutely 
nonsensical as the description of a moonlight 
night in Pope's Homer. Pope himself intended 
that for a fine description, and did not perceive 
that it was as absurd as his own " Song by a 
Person of Quality." Now there have been writ- 
ers who have possessed the talent of stringing 
together couplet after couplet in sonorous verse, 
without any connection, and without any mean- 
ing, or any thing like a meaning, and yet they 
have had all the enjoyment of writing poetry, 
have supposed that this actually was poetry, 
and published it as such. I know a man who has 
done this, who made me a present of his poem ; 
yet he is very far from being a fool ; on the con- 
trary, he is a lively, pleasant companion, and his 
talents in conversation are considerably above 
par. The most perfect specimen I ever saw of 
such verses was a poem called " The Shepherd's 
Farewell," printed in quarto some five-and-thir- 
ty years ago. Coleridge once had an imperfect 
copy of it. I forget the author's name ; but 
when I was first at Lisbon, I found out that he 
was a schoolmaster, and that poor Paul Berthon 
had been one of his pupils. Men of very inferi- 
or power may imitate the manner of good writ- 
ers with great success ; as, for example, the two 
Smiths have done ; but I do not believe that any 
imitative talent could produce genuine nonsense 
verses like those of " The Shepherd's Farewell." 
The intention of writing nonsensically would ap- 
pear, and betray the purport of the writer. Pure, 
involuntary, unconscious nonsense is inimitable 
by any effort of sense. 

Such writers as these, if they were cross-ex- 
amined, would be found to imagine that they 
composed under the real influence of poetical in- 
spiration ; and were Taylor the pagan to set 
about heathenizing one of them, I am persuaded 
that he would not find it difficult to make him 
believe in the Muses. In fact, when this soul 
of conceit is in action, the man is fairly beside 
himself. An innate self-produced inebriety pos- 
sesses him ; he abandons himself to it, and while 
the fit lasts is as mad as a March hare. The 
madness is not permanent, because such inspira- 
tion, according to received opinion, only comes 
on when the rhymester is engaged in his voca- 
tion. And well it is when it shows itself in 
rhyme ; for the case is very different with him 
who has the gift of uttering prose with the same 
fluency and the same contempt of reason. He 
in good earnest sets up for an inspired messen- 
ger ; he has received a call ; and there are not 
»nly sects, but societies, in this country ready to 
accredit him, and take him into employ, and send 
him forth with a roving commission, through 
towns and villages, to infect others with the most 
infectious of all forms of madness, disturb the 
peace of families, and prepare the way for anoth- 



er attempt to overthrow the Established Church 
— another struggle, which will shake these king- 
doms to their center. 

Dr. Jones has led me into a long digression, 
upon which I should not have entered if I had 
foreseen that it would have extended so far. An- 
other of Williams's visitors, and an equally popu- 
lar one, was a glorious fellow, Pullen by name, 
who, during the age of buckskin, made a fortune 
as a breeches maker in Thomas Street. If I 
could paint a portrait from memory, you should 
have his likeness. Alas ! that I can only give 
it in words, and that that perfect figure should 
at this hour be preserved only in my recollec- 
tions ! Sic transit gloria mundi 1 His coun- 
tenance expressed all that could be expressed by 
human features of thorough-bred vulgarity, pros- 
perity, pride of purse, good living, coarse humor, 
and boisterous good nature. He wore a white 
tie-wig. His eyes were of the hue and luster 
of scalded gooseberries, or oysters in sauce. His 
complexion was the deepest extract of the grape ; 
he owed it to the Methuen treaty ; my uncle, no 
doubt, had seen it growing in his rides from 
Porto ; and Heaven knows how many pipes must 
have been filtered through the Pullenian system 
before that fine permanent purple could have been 
fixed in his cheeks. He appeared always in buck- 
skins of his own making, and in boots. He would 
laugh at his own jests with a voice like Sten- 
tor, supposing Stentor to have been hoarse ; and 
then he would clap old Williams on the back 
with a hand like a shoulder of mutton for breadth 
and weight. You may imagine how great a 
man we thought him. They had probably been 
boon companions in their youth, and his visits 
seldom failed to make the old man lay aside the 
schoolmaster. He was an excellent hand at 
demanding half a holiday, and when he succeed- 
ed, always demanded three cheers for his suc- 
cess, in which he joined with all his might and 
main. If I were a believer in the Romish purg- 
atory, I should make no doubt that every visit 
that he made to that schoolroom was carried to 
the account of his good works. Some such set- 
off he needed, for he behaved with brutal want 
of feeling to a son who had offended him, and 
who, I believe, would have perished for want 
if it had not been for the charity of John Mor- 
gan's mother, an eccentric but thoroughly good 
woman, and one of those people whom I shall 
rejoice to meet in the next world. This I learn- 
ed from her several years afterward. At this 
time Pullen was a widower between fifty and 
sixty ; a hale, strong-bodied man, upon whom 
his wine-merchant might reckon for a consider- 
able annuity during many years to come. He 
had purchased some lands adjacent to the Lep- 
pincott property near Bristol, in the pleasantest 
part of that fine neighborhood. Sir Henry Lep- 
pincott was elected member for the city at that 
election in which Burke was turned out. He 
died soon afterward ; his son was a mere child ; 
and Pullen, the glorious Pullen, in the plenitude 
of his pride, and no doubt in a new pair of buck, 
skins, called on the widow, introduced himself 



46 



EAltLY LIFE OF 



JEtat. 8-12. 



as the owner of the adjacent estate, and upon 
that score, without further ceremony, proposed 
marriage as an arrangement of mutual fitness. 
Lady Leppincott, of course, rang the bell, and 
ordered the servants to turn him out of the house. 
This is a story which would be deemed too ex- 
travagant in a novel, and yet you would believe 
it without the slightest hesitation if you had ever 
seen the incomparable breeches maker. 

Mrs. Estan, the actress, whom you must re- 
member, was at that time preparing to make her 
first appearance on the stage at the Bristol The- 
ater. The part she had chosen was Letitia 
Hardy, in " The Belle's Stratagem," and in that 
part she had to dance a minuet de la cour, to per- 
fect herself in which, and perhaps for the sake 
of accustoming herself to figure away before an 
audience, she came to our school on two or three 
dancing days, and took lessons there — a circum- 
stance too remarkable to be forgotten in a school- 
boy's life. Walters, the dancing-master, was 
not a little proud of his pupil. That poor man 
was for three years the plague of my life, and I 
was the plague of his. In some unhappy mood, 
he prevailed on my mother to let me learn to 
dance, persuading himself as well as her that I 
should do credit to his teaching. It must have 
been for my sins that he formed this opinion : in 
an evil hour for himself and for me it was form- 
ed; he would have had much less trouble in 
teaching a bear, and far better success. I do 
not remember that I set out with any dislike or 
contempt of dancing, but the unconquerable in- 
capacity which it was soon evident that I pos- 
sessed produced both, and the more he labored 
to correct an incorrigible awkwardness, the more 
awkwardly, of course, I performed. I verily 
believe the fiddle-stick was applied as much to 
my head as to the fiddle-strings when I was 
called out. But the rascal had a worse way 
than that of punishing me. He would take my 
hands in his, and lead me down a dance ; and 
then the villain would apply his thumb nail 
against the flat surface of mine, in the middle, 
and press it till he left the mark there. This 
species of torture I suppose to have been his own 
invention, and so intolerable it was that at last, 
whenever he had recourse to it, I kicked his 
shins. Luckily for me, he got into a scrape by 
beating a boy unmercifully at another school, so 
that he was afraid to carry on this sort of con- 
test; and giving up, at last, all hope of ever 
making me a votary of the Graces or of the 
dancing Muse, he contented himself with shak- 
ing his head and turning up his eyes in hopeless- 
ness whenever he noticed my performance. I 
had always Tom Madge for my partner ; a poor 
fellow long since dead, whom I remember with 
much kindness. He was as active as a squirrel, 
but every limb seemed to be out of joint when 
he began to dance. "We were always placed as 
the last couple, and went through the work with 
the dogged determination of never dancing more 
when we should once be delivered from the 
dancing-master — a resolution which I have pi- 
ously kept, even unto this day. 



Williams, who read well himself, and prided 
himself upon it, was one day very much offended 
with my reading, and asked me scornfully who 
taught me to read. I answered my aunt. 
" Then," said he, " give my compliments to your 
aunt, and tell her that my old horse, that has 
been dead these twenty years, could have taught 
you as well." I delivered the message faith- 
fully, to her great indignation. It was never 
forgotten or forgiven, and perhaps it accelerated 
the very proper resolution of removing me. My 
uncle made known his intention of placing me 
at Westminster. His connection with Christ 
Church naturally led him to prefer that to any 
other school, in the hope that I should get into 
college, and so be elected off to a studentship. 
But, as I was in feeble health, and, moreover, 
had been hitherto very ill taught, it was deemed 
advisable that I should be placed for twelve 
months under a clergyman competent to prepare 
me for a public school. 

Before I take leave of Williams, two or three 
memoranda upon the slip of paper before me 
must be scored off. There was a washing tub 
in the play-ground, with a long towel on a reel 
beside it. This tub was filled every morning 
for the boarders to perform their ablutions, all in 
the same water, and whoever wished to wash 
hands or face in the course of the day, had no 
other. I was the only boy who had any repug- 
nance to dip his hands in this pig-trough. There 
was a large cask near, which received the rain 
water ; but there was no getting at the water, 
for the top was covered, and to have taken out 
the spigot would have been a punishable offense. 
I, however, made a little hollow under the spig- 
ot, to receive the drippings, just deep enough 
to wet the hands, and there I used to wash my 
hands with clean water when they required it. 
But I do not remember that any one ever fol- 
lowed my example. I had acquired the sense 
of cleanliness and the love of it, and they had not. 

A time was remembered when there were 
wars of school against school, and a great battle 
which had taken place in the adjoining park be- 
tween Williams's boys and Foot's, my first mas- 
ter. At both schools I heard of this, and the 
victory was claimed by both ; for it was an old 
affair, a matter of tradition (not having been no- 
ticed in history), long before my generation, or 
any who were in the then school, but remember- 
ed as an event second only in importance, if 
second, to the war of Troy. 

It was fully believed in both these schools, 
and at Corston, that no bastard could span his 
own wrist. And I have no doubt this supersti- 
tion prevailed throughout that part of England. 



LETTER XIV. 

HE IS SENT AS A DAY SCHOLAR TO A CLERGYMAN 
IN BRISTOL EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 

June 29th, 1824. 

In a former letter I have mentioned Mrs. S , 

who had been Miss Tyler's schoolmistress. My 



jEtat. 12, 13. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



47 



aunt kept up an acquaintance with her as long 
as she lived, and after her death with her two 
daughters, who lived together in a house on 
Redclift Parade, the pleasantest situation in Bris- 
tol, if there had been even a tolerable approach 
to it. One of these sisters was unmarried ; the 
other a widow with one son, who was just of my 
age : Jem Thomas was his name. Mr. Lewis, 
the clergyman under whom I was placed at the 
end of 1786 or the beginning of 1787, lodged and 
boarded with these sisters. He had been usher 
at the grammar school ; and, having engaged to 
educate this boy, was willing to take a few more 
pupils from the hours of ten till two. When I 

went to him he had two others, C and R , 

both my seniors by three or four years. The 
former I used to call Caliban : he might have 
played that character without a mask, that is, 
supposing he could have learned the part ; for the 
resemblance held good in mind as well as in ap- 
pearance, his disposition being somewhat between 
pig and baboon. The latter was a favorite with 
Lewis ; his father had formerly practiced in Bristol 
as a surgeon, but had now succeeded to an estate 
of some value. He was little and mannish, some- 
what vain of superficial talents, and with a spice 
of conceit both in his manners and in his dress ; 
but there was no harm in him. He took an 
honorary Master's degree at the Duke of Port- 
land's installation in 1793, which was the only 
time I ever saw him after we ceased to be fel- 
low-pupils. He married about that time, and 
died young. 

Caliban had a sister whom I shall not libel 
when I call her Sycorax. A Bristol tradesman, 
a great friend of S. T. C.'s, married her for her 
money ; and the only thing I ever heard of Cali- 
ban in after life was a story which reached me 
of her every where proclaiming that her brother 
was a very superior man to Mr. Coleridge, and had 
confuted him one evening seven-and-twenty times 
in one argument. The word which Coleridge 
uses as a listener when he is expected to throw 
in something, with or without meaning, to show 
that he is listening, is, or used to be, as I well 
remember, undoubtedly. The foolish woman 
had understood this expletive in its literal mean- 
ing, and kept account with her fingers that he 
pronounced it seven-and-twenty times, while en- 
during the utterance of an animal in comparison 
with whom a centaur would deserve to be called 
human, and a satyr rational. 

Jem Thomas was a commonplace lad, with 
a fine, handsome person, but by no means a good 
physiognomy, and I can not remember the time 
when I was not a physiognomist. He was edu- 
cated for a surgeon, and ruined by having at his 
disposal, as soon as he came of age, something be- 
tween two and three thousand pounds, which his 
grandfather unwisely left to him at once, instead 
of leaving it to his mother for her life. This he 
presently squandered; went out professionally 
to the East Indies, and died there. So much for 
my three companions, among whom it was not 
possible that I could find a friend. There came 
a fourth, a few weeks only before I withdrew : 



he was a well-minded boy, and has made a very 
respectable man. Harris was his name : he 
married Betsy Petrie, who was one of my fellow- 
travelers in Portugal. 

I profited by this year's tuition less than I 
should have done at a good school. It is not 
easy to remedy the ill effects of bad teaching ; 
and the further the pupil has advanced in it, the 
greater must be the difficulty of bringing him 
into a better way. Lewis, too, had been accus- 
tomed to the mechanical movements of a large 
school, and was at a loss how to proceed with a 
boy who stood alone. I began Greek under him, 
made nonsense-verses, read the Electa ex Ovidio 
et Tibullo and Horace's Odes, advanced a little 
in writing Latin, and composed English themes. 

Cest le premier pas qui coute. I was in as 
great tribulation when I had the first theme to 
write as when Williams required me to produce 
a letter. The text, of course, had been given 
me ; but how to begin, what to say, or how to 
say it, I knew not. No one who had witnessed 
my perplexity upon this occasion would have 
supposed how much was afterward to be spun 
from these poor brains. My aunt, at last in 
compassion, wrote the theme for me. Lewis 
questioned me if it was my own, and I told him 
the truth. He then encouraged me sensibly 
enough ; put me in the way of composing the 
commonplaces of which themes are manufac- 
tured (indeed, he caused me to transcribe some 
rules for themes, making a regular receipt as for 
a pudding) ; and he had no reason afterward to 
complain of any want of aptitude in his scholar, 
for when I had learned that it was not more diffi- 
cult to write in prose than in verse, the ink drib- 
bled as daintily from my pen as ever it did from 
John Bunyan's. One of these exercises I still re- 
member sufficiently well to know that it was too 
much like poetry, and that the fault was of a 
hopeful kind, consisting less in inflated language 
than in poetical imagery and sentiment. But 
this was not pointed out as a fault, and luckily I 
was left to myself; otherwise, like a good horse, 
I might have been spoiled by being broken in 
too soon. 

It was still more fortunate that there was none 
to direct me in my favorite pursuit, certain as it is 
that any instructor would have interfered with 
the natural and healthy growth of that poetical 
spirit which was taking its own course. That 
spirit was like a plant which required no forcing 
nor artificial culture ; only air and sunshine, and 
the rains and the dews of heaven. I do not re- 
member in any part of my life to have been so 
conscious of intellectual improvement as I was 
during the year and half before I was placed at 
Westminster : an improvement derived, not from 
books or instruction, but from constantly exer- 
cising myself in English verse ; and from the de- 
velopment of mind which that exercise produced, 
I can distinctly trace my progress by help of a 
list, made thirty years ago, of all my composi- 
tions in verse which were then in existence, or 
which I had at that time destroyed. 

Early as my hopes had been directed toward 



48 



E ARL5T LIFE OF 



Mtat. 12, 13. 



the drama, they received a more decided and 
more fortunate direction from the frequent peru- 
sal of Tasso, Ariosto, and Spenser. I had read, 
also, Mickle's Lusiad and Pope's Homer. If you 
add to these an extensive acquaintance with the 
novels of the day, and with the Arabian and 
mock- Arabian tales, the whole works of Jose- 
phus (taken in by me with my pocket-money in 
threescore sixpenny numbers, which I now pos- 
sess), such acquaintance with Greek and Roman 
history as a schoolboy picks up from his lessons 
and from Goldsmith's abridged histories, and such 
acquaintance with their fables as may be learned 
from Ovid, from the old Pantheon, and, above all, 
from the end of Littleton's Dictionary, you will 
have a fair account of the stock upon which I 
began. But Shakspeare, and Beaumont and 
Fletcher, must not be forgotten ; nor Sidney's 
Arcadia ; nor Rowley's Poems, for Chatterton's 
history was fresh in remembrance, and that story, 
which would have affected one of my disposition 
any where, acted upon me with all the force of 
local associations. 

The first of my Epic Dreams was created by 
Ariosto. I meant to graft a story upon the Or- 
lando Furioso, not knowing how often this had 
been done by Italian and Spanish imitators. Ar- 
cadia was to have been the title and the scene ; 
thither I meant to carry the Moors under Mar- 
silius after their overthrow in France, and there 
to have overthrown them again by a hero of my 
own, named Alphonso, who had caught the Hip- 
pogriff. This must have been when I was be- 
tween nine and ten, for some verses of it were 
written on the covers of my Phasdrus. They 
were in the heroic couplet. Among my aunt's 
books was the first volume of Bysshe's Art of 
Poetry, which, worthless as it is, taught me at 
that age the principle upon which blank verse is 
constructed, and thereby did me good service at 
a good time. I soon learned to prefer that meter, 
not because it was easier than rhyme (which was 
easy enough), but because I felt in it a greater 
freedom and range of language, because I was 
sensible that in rhyming I sometimes used ex- 
pressions, for the sake of the rhyme, which were 
far-fetched, and certainly would not have occm> 
red without that cause. My second subject was 
the Trojan Brutus ; the defeat and death of King 
Richard, and the Union of the two Roses, was 
my third. In neither of these did I make much 
progress ; but with the story of Egbert I was 
more persevering, and partly transcribed several 
folio sheets. The sight of these was an en- 
couragement to proceed, and I often looked at 
them with delight in the anticipation of future 
fame. This was a solitary feeling, for my am- 
bition or vanity (whichever it may deserve to be 
called) was not greater than the shyness which 
accompanied it. My port-folio was of course 
held sacred. One day, however, it was profaned 
by an acquaintance of my aunt's who called to 
pay a morning visit. She was shown into the 
parlor, and I, who was sent to say my aunt 
would presently wait upon her, found her with 
my precious Egbert in her hand. Her compli- 



ments had no effect in abating my deep resent- 
ment at this unpardonable curiosity ; and, though 
she was a good-natured woman, I am afraid I 
never quite forgave her. Determining, however, 
never to incur the risk of a second exposure, I 
immediately composed a set of characters for my 
own use. 

In my twelfth and thirteenth year, besides 
these loftier attempts, I wrote three heroic epis- 
tles in rhyme : the one was from Diomede to 
Egiale ; the second from Octavia to Mark An- 
tony ; the third from Alexander to his father 
Herod, a subject with which Josephus supplied 
me. I made, also, some translations from Ovid, 
Virgil, and Horace, and composed a satirical de- 
scription of English manners, as delivered by 
Omai, the Taheitean, to his countrymen on his 
return. On the thirteenth anniversary of my 
birth, supposing (by an error which appeared to 
be common enough at the end of the century) 
that I was then entering the first year of my 
teens instead of completing it, and looking upon 
that as an awful sort of step in life, I wrote some 
verses in a strain of reflection upon mortality 
grave enough to provoke a smile when I recol- 
lect them. Among my attempts at this time 
were two descriptive pieces entitled Morning in 
the Country and Morning in Town, in eight-syl- 
lable rhymes, and in imitation of Cunningham. 
There was also a satirical peep into Pluto's do- 
minions, in rhyme. I remember the conclusion 
only, and that because it exhibits a singular in- 
dication how strongly and how early my heart 
was set upon that peculiar line of poetry which 
I have pursued with most ardor. It described 
the Elysium of the Poets, and that more sacred 
part of it in which Homer, Virgil, Tasso, Spen- 
ser, Camoens, and Milton were assembled. 
While I was regarding them, Fame came hur- 
rying by with her arm full of laurels, and asking 
in an indignant voice if there was no poet who 
would deserve them ? Upon which I reached 
out my hand, snatched at them, and awoke. 

One of these juvenile efforts was wholly orig- 
inal in its design. It was an attempt to exhibit 
the story of the Trojan War in a dramatic form, 
laying the scene in Elysium, where the events 
which had happened on earth were related by 
the souls of the respective heroes as they suc- 
cessively descended. The opening was a dia- 
logue between Laodamia and Protesilaus, in 
couplets : the best rhymes which I had yet writ- 
ten. But I did not proceed far, probably be- 
cause the design was too difficult, and this would 
have been reason enough for abandoning it even 
if I had not entered with more than usual ardor 
upon a new heroic subject, of which Cassibelan 
was the hero. I finished three books of this 
poem, and had advanced far in the fourth before 
I went to Westminster. All this was written 
fairly out in my own private characters, and in 
my best writing, if one may talk of calligraphy 
in an unknown hand which looked something 
like Greek, but more like conjuration, from the 
number of trines and squares which it contain- 
ed. These characters, however, proved fatal to 



/Etat. 12, 13. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



49 



the poem, for it was not possible for me to con- 
tinue it at school for want of privacy ; disuse 
made the cipher so difficult that I could not read 
it without almost spelling as I went on 5 and at 
last, in very vexation, I burned the manuscript. 

I wonder whether Spurzheim could, at that 
time, have discovered an organ of constructive- 
ness in my pericranium. The Elysian drama 
might seem to indicate that the faculty was 
there, but not a trace of it was to be found in 
any of the heroic poems which I attempted. 
They were all begun upon a mere general no- 
tion of the subject, without any prearrangement, 
and very little preconception of the incidents by 
which the catastrophe was to be brought about. 
When I sat down to write, I had to look as 
much for the incidents as for the thoughts and 
words in which they were to be clothed. I ex- 
pected them to occur just a^ readily ; and so, in- 
deed, such as they were, tLey did. My reading 
in the old chivalrous romances has been suffi- 
ciently extensive to justify me in asserting that 
the greater number of those romances were 
written just in the same way, without the slight- 
est plan or forethought; and I am much mis- 
taken if many of the Italian romantic poems 
were not composed in the same inartificial man- 
ner. This I am sure — that it is more difficult 
to plan than to execute well, and that abund- 
ance of true poetical power has been squander- 
ed for want of a constructive talent in the poet. 
I have felt this want in some of the Spanish 
and Portuguese writers even more than their 
want of taste. The progress of my own mind 
toward attaining it (so far as I may be thought 
to have attained it) I am able to trace distinctly, 
not merely by the works themselves, and by my 
own recollections of the views with which they 
were undertaken and composed, but by the va- 
rious sketches and memoranda for four long nar- 
rative poems, made during their progress, from 
the first conception of each till its completion. 
At present, the facility and pleasure with which 
I can plan a heroic poem, a drama, and a bio- 
graphical or historical work, however compre- 
hensive, is even a temptation to me. It seems 
as if I caught the bearings of a subject at first 
sight, just as Telford sees from an eminence, 
with a glance, in what direction his road must 
be carried. But it was long before I acquired 
this power — not fairly, indeed, till I was about 
five or six-and-thirty ; and it was gained by 
practice, in the course of which I learned to 
perceive wherein I was deficient. 

There was one point in which these prema- 
ture attempts afforded a hopeful omen, and that 
was in the diligence and industry with which I 
endeavored to acquire all the historical informa- 
tion within my reach relating to the subject in 
hand. Forty years ago I could have given a 
better account of the birth and parentage of Eg- 
bert, and the state of the Heptarchy during his 
youth, than I could do now without referring to 
books; and when Cassibelan was my hero, I 
was as well acquainted with the division of the 
island amoncr the ancient tribes, as I am now 
D 



with the relative situation of its counties. It 
was, perhaps, fortunate that these pursuits were 
unassisted and solitary. By thus working a 
way for myself, I acquired a habit and a love for 
investigation, and nothing appeared uninterest. 
ing which gave me any of the information I 
wanted. The pleasure which I took in such 
researches, and in composition, rendered me, in 
a great degree, independent of other amuse- 
ments ; and no systematic education could have 
fitted me for my present course of life so well 
as the circumstances which allowed me thus to 
feel and follow my own impulses. 



-^> 



LETTER XV. 

CHARACTER OF MISS TYLER HIS MOTHER 

SHADRACH WEEKS HIS BROTHER HENRY 

PLACED WITH MISS TYLER HIS SISTER^ 

DEATH. 

July 17th, 1824. 
Few boys were ever less qualified for the dis- 
cipline of a public school than I was, when it 
was determined to place me at Westminster ; 
for, if my school education had been ill conduct- 
ed, the life which I led with Miss Tyler tended 
in every respect still more to unfit me for the 
new scenes, the new world almost it might be 
called, on which I was about to enter. 

When my aunt settled at Bristol, she brought 
with her a proud contempt for Bristol society. 
In fact, she had scarcely any acquaintance there, 
and seldom saw any company except when some 
of her Bath friends came to Clifton for the sum- 
mer, or -when the players took up their abode in 
the city, for then Mr. Dimond used to visit her. 
He was a most gentlemanly and respectable 
man, as well as a good actor. Great is the de- 
light which I have had in seeing him perform, 
and hardly less was that which I have felt in 
listening to his conversation. The days when 
he dined with us were almost our only gala days. 
At such times, and when she went out, Miss 
Tyler's appearance and manners were those of 
a woman who had been bred in the best society, 
and was equal to it ; but if any stranger or vis- 
itor had caught her in her ordinary apparel, she 
would have been as much confused as Diana 
when Actaeon came upon her bathing-place, and 
almost with as much reason, for she was always 
in a bed-gown and in rags. Most people, I sus- 
pect, have a weakness 4or old shoes ; ease and 
comfort, and one's own fireside, are connected 
with them ; in fact, we never feel any regard for 
shoes till they attain to the privileges of age, 
and then they become almost as much a part of 
the wearer as his corns. This sort of feeling 
my aunt extended to old clothes of every kind ; 
the older and the raggeder they grew, the more 
unwilling she was to cast them off. But she 
was scrupulously clean in them ; indeed, the 
principle upon which her whole household econ- 
omy was directed was that of keeping the house 
clean, and taking more precautions against dust 



50 



EARLY LIFE OF 



Mtat. 12, 13 



than would have bcc-i: needful against the plague 
in an infected city. She labored under a perpet- 
ual dusto-phobia, and a comical disease it was; 
but whether I have been most amused or annoy- 
ed by it, it would be difficult to say. I had, 
however, in its consequences, an early lesson 
how fearfully the mind may be enslaved by in- 
dulging its own peculiarities and whimsies, inno- 
cent as they may appear at first. 

The discomfort which Miss Tyler's passion 
for cleanliness produced to herself, as well as to 
her little household, was truly curious : to her- 
self, indeed, it was a perpetual torment ; to the 
two servants, a perpetual vexation; and so it 
would have been to me if Nature had not blessed 
me with an innate hilarity of spirit which noth- 
ing but real affliction can overcome. That the 
better rooms might be kept clean, she took pos- 
session of the kitchen, sending the servants to 
one which was under ground ; and in this little, 
dark, confined place, with a rough stone floor, 
and a sky-light (for it must not be supposed that 
it was a best kitchen, which was always, as it 
was intended to be, a comfortable sitting-room ; 
this was more like a scullery), we always took 
our meals, and generally lived. The best room 
was never opened but for company, except now 
and then on a fine day to be aired and dusted, if 
dust could be detected there. In the other par- 
lor I was allowed sometimes to read, and she 
wrote her letters, for she had many correspond- 
ents ; and we sat there sometimes in summer, 
when a fire was not needed, for fire produced 
ashes, and ashes occasioned dust, and dust, visi- 
ble or invisible, was the plague of her life. I 
have seen her order the tea-kettle to be emptied 
and refilled because some one had passed across 
the hearth while it was on the fire preparing for 
her breakfast. She had indulged these humors 
till she had formed for herself notions of unclean- 
ness almost as irrational and inconvenient as those 
of the Hindoos. She had a cup once buried for 
six weeks, to purify it from the lips of one whom 
she accounted unclean ; all who w T ere not her fa- 
vorites were included in that class. A chair in 
which an unclean person had sat was put out in 
the garden to be aired ; and I never saw her more 
annoyed than on one occasion, when a man, who 
called upon business, seated himself in her own 
chair : how the cushion was ever again to be ren- 
dered fit for her use, she knew not ! On such 
occasions, her fine features assumed a character 
either fierce or tragic ; her expressions were ve- 
hement even to irreverence ; and her gesticula- 
tions those of the deepest and wildest distress — 
hands and eyes uplifted, as if she was in hopeless 
misery, or in a paroxysm of mental anguish. 

As there are none who like to be upon ill terms 
with themselves, most people find out some de- 
vice whereby they may be reconciled to their 
own faults ; and in this propensity it is that much 
of the irreligion in the world, and much of its 
false philosophy, have originated. My aunt used 
frequently to say that all good-natured people 
were fools. Hers was a violent temper rather 
than an ill one ; there was a great deal of kind- 



ness in it. though it was under no restraint. She 
was at once tyrannical and indulgent to her serv- 
ants, and they usually remained a long while in 
her service, partly. I believe, from fear, and 
partly from liking : from liking, because she sent 
them often to the play (which is probably, to per- 
sons in that condition, as it is to children, the 
most delightful of all amusements), and because 
she conversed with them much more than is 
usual for any one in her rank of life. Her hab- 
its were so peculiar, that the servants became, 
in a certain degree, her confidants ; she there- 
fore was afraid to change them ; and they even, 
when they wished to leave her, were afraid to 
express the wish, knowing that she would regard 
it as a grievous offense, and dreading the storm 
of anger that it would bring down. Two serv- 
ants in my remembrance left her for the sake oi 
marrying ; and, although they had both lived with 
her many years, she never forgave either, nor ever 
spoke of them without some expression of bitter- 
ness. I believe no daughter was ever more afraid 
of disclosing a clandestine marriage to a severe 
parent than both these women were of making 
their intention known to their mistress, such was 
the ascendency that she possessed over them. 
She had reconciled herself to the indulgence of 
her ungoverned anger by supposing that a bad 
temper was naturally connected with a good un- 
derstanding and a commanding mind. 

Besides her servants, there were two persons 
over whom she had acquired the most absolute 
control. Miss Palmer was the one : a more com- 
plete example can not be imagined of that magic 
which a strong mind exercises over a weak one. 
The influence which she possessed over my moth- 
er was equally unbounded and more continual, 
but otherwise to be explained : it was the as- 
cendency of a determined and violent spirit over 
a gentle and yielding one. There was a differ- 
ence of twelve years between their ages, and the 
authority which Miss Tyler had first exerted as 
an elder sister she never relaxed. My mother 
was one of those few persons (for a few such 
there are) who think too humbly of themselves. 
Her only fault (I verily believe she had no oth- 
er) was that of yielding submissively to this im- 
perious sister, to the sacrifice of her own inclin- 
ation and judgment, and sense of what was right. 
She had grown up in awe and admiration of her, 
as one who moved in a superior rank, and who, 
with the advantage of a fine form and beautiful 
person, possessed that, also, of a superior and cul- 
tivated understating : withal, she loved her with 
a true sisterly affection which nothing could di- 
minish, clearly as she saw her faults, and severely 
as at last she suffered by them. But never did 
I know one person so entirely subjected by an- 
other, and never have I regretted any thing more 
deeply than that subjection, which most certain- 
ly, in its consequences, shortened her life. 

If my mother had not been disfigured by the 
small-pox, the two sisters would have strikingly 
resembled each other except in complexion, my 
mother being remarkably fair. The expression, 
however, of the two countenances was as oppo- 



/Etat. 12, 13. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



51 



site as the features were alike, and the difference 
in disposition was not less marked. Take her for 
all in all, I do not believe that any human being 
ever brought into the world, and carried through 
it, a larger portion of original goodness than my 
dear mother. Every one who knew her loved 
her, for she seemed made to be happy herself, 
and to make every one happy within her little 
sphere. Her understanding was as good as her 
heart : it is from her I have inherited that alert- 
ness of mind, and quickness of apprehension, 
without which it would have been impossible for 
me to have undertaken half of what I have per- 
formed. God never blessed a human creature 
with a more cheerful disposition, a more gener- 
ous spirit, a sweeter temper, or a tenderer heart. 
I remember that when first I understood what 
death was, and began to think of it, the most fear- 
ful thought it induced was that of losing my moth- 
er 5 it seemed to me more than I could bear, and 
I used to hope that I might die before her. Na- 
ture is merciful to us. We learn gradually that 
we are to die ; a knowledge which, if it came 
suddenly upon us in riper age, would be more 
than the mind could endure. We are gradually 
prepared for our departure by seeing the objects 
of our earliest and deepest affections go before 
us ; and even if no keener afflictions are dis- 
pensed to wean us from this world, and remove 
our tenderest thoughts and dearest hopes to an- 
other, mere age brings with it a weariness of 
life, and death becomes to the old as natural and 
desirable as sleep to a tired child. 

My father's house being within ten minutes' 
walk of Terril Street (or rather run, for I usu- 
ally galloped along the by-ways), few days passed 
on which I did not look in there. Miss Tyler 
never entered the door, because there was an 
enmity between her and Thomas Southey. She 
had given just occasion to it. They hated each 
other cordially now, and took no pains to con- 
ceal it. My visits at home, therefore, were short, 
and I was seldom allowed to dine or pass the 
evening there. My brother Tom was at school ; 
the difference of age between us made us at that 
time not very suitable companions when we were 
together. There was not a single bo)^ of my own 
age, or near it, in any of the few families with 
whom either my mother of aunt were acquaint- 
ed ; and my only friend and companion was my 
aunt's servant-boy, Shadrach Weeks, her maid's 
brother. Shad, as we called him, was just my 
own age, and had been taken into her service 
soon after she settled in Bristol. He was a 
good-natured, active, handy lad, and became 
very much attached to me, and I to him. At 
this hour, if he be living, and were to meet me, 
I am sure he would greet me with a hearty shake 
by the hand ; and, be it where it might, I should 
return the salutation . We used to work togeth- 
er in the garden, play trap in the fields, make 
kites and fly them, try our hands at carpentry, 
and, which was the greatest of all indulgences, 
go into the country to bring home primrose, vio- 
let, and cowslip roots ; and sometimes to St. 
Vincent's Rocks, or, rather, the heights about a 



mile and a half further down the river, to search 
for the bee and fly orchis. Some book had taught 
me that these rare flowers were to be found there ; 
and I sought for them year after year with such 
persevering industry, for the unworthy purpose 
of keeping them in pots at home (where they 
uniformly pined and died), that I am afraid bot- 
anists who came after me may have looked for 
them there in vain. Perhaps I have never had 
a keener enjoyment of natural scenery than when / 
roaming about the rocks and woods on the side 
of the Avon with Shad and our poor spaniel 
Phillis. Indeed, there are few scenes in the isl- 
and finer of their kind, and no other where mer- 
chant vessels of the largest size may be seen sail- 
ing between such rocks and woods — the shores 
being upon a scale of sufficient magnitude to 
supply all that the picturesque requires, and not 
upon so large a one as to make the ships appear 
comparatively insignificant. 

Had it not been for this companion, there 
would have been nothing to counteract the ef- 
feminating and debilitating tendency of the hab- 
its to which my aunt's peculiarities subjected 
me. Pricking play -bills had been the pastime 
which she encouraged as long as I could be 
prevailed on to pursue it, and afterward she en- 
couraged me to cut paper into fantastic patterns. 
But I learned a better use of my hands in Shad's 
company ; and we became such proficients in 
carpentry, that, before I went to Westminster, 
we set about the enterprise of making and fitting 
up a theater for puppets. This was an arduous 
and elaborate work, of which I shall have more 
to say hereafter, as our design extended with 
our progress. At this time, little more had 
been done than to finish the body of the theater, 
where there were pit, boxes, and gallery, and an 
ornamented ceiling, which, when it was put on, 
made the whole look on the outside like a box 
of unaccountable form. The spectator was to 
look through a glass behind the gallery, which 
was intended to have been a magnifier, till, to 
our great disappointment, we were assured at 
the optician's that no single magnifier could pro- 
duce any effect at the distance which this was 
required to act. The scenery and stage con- 
trivances I shall speak of in due time, for this 
was an undertaking which called forth all our 
ingenuity, and continued for several years to oc- 
cupy me during the holidays. 

Before I went to Westminster, my brother 
Henry had been taken into Miss Tyler's house- 
hold, when he was about five years old. In 
1787 a daughter was born, and christened Mar- 
garetta. I remember her as well as it is pos- 
sible to remember an infant — that is, without 
any fixed and discriminating remembrance. She 
was a beautiful creature, and I was old enough 
to feel the greatest solicitude for her recovery, 
when I set off for London early in the spring of 
1788. A thoughtless nurse-maid had taken her 
out one day to the most exposed situation with- 
in reach, what is called the Sea Banks, and kept . 
her there unusually long while a severe east 
wind was blowing. From that hour she drooped j 



52 



EARLY LIFE OF 



iETAT. 14. 



cough and consumption came on. I left her 
miserably and hopelessly ill, and never saw her 
more. This was the first death that I had ever 
apprehended and dreaded, and it affected me 
deeply. 



LETTER XVI. 

IS PLACED AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOLFELLOWS 

FIRST HOLIDAYS ANECDOTE OF GEORGE 

THE THIRD LATIN VERSES. 

August 29th, 1824. 
The business of placing me at Westminster 
afforded my aunt an excuse for going to London. 
Miss Palmer was easily persuaded to accompa- 
ny her, and to hire a carriage for the season, 
and we set off in February, 1788. I had never 
before been a mile from Bath in that direction, 
and when my childish thoughts ever wandered 
into the terra incognita which I was one day to 
explore, this had been the road to it, simply be- 
cause all the other outlets from that city were 
familiar to me. We slept at Marlborough the 
first night, at Reading the second, and on the 
third day we reached Salt Hill. Tom and 
Charles Palmer were summoned from Eton to 
meet their aunt there, and we remained a day 
for the purpose of seeing Windsor, which I have 
never seen since. Lodgings had been engaged 
in a small house in Pall Mall, for no situation 
that was less fashionable would content Miss 
Tyler, and she had a reckless prodigality at fits 
and starts, the effects of which could not be 
counteracted by the parsimony and even penu- 
riousness of her usual habits. Mr. Palmer was 
at that time controller of the Post-office, holding 
the situation which he had so well deserved, and 
from which he was not long afterward most in- 
juriously displaced. We visited him, and the 
Newberrys, and Mrs. Dolignon, and went often 
to the theaters ; and my aunt appeared to be as 
happy as if she were not incurring expenses 
which she had no means of discharging. My 
father had given her thirty pounds for the jour- 
ney, a sum amply sufficient for taking me to 
school and leaving me there, and, moreover, as 
much as he could afford ; but she had resolved 
upon passing the season in town, as careless of 
all consequences as if she had been blind to 
them. 

About six weeks elapsed before I was depos- 
ited at my place of destination. In the interval 
I had passed a few days with the Newberrys at 
Addiscombe, and with the Miss Delameres at 
Cheshunt. At the latter place I was happy, for 
they were excellent women, to whom my heart 
opened, and I had the full enjoyment of the coun- 
try there, without any drawback. London I 
very much disliked : I was too young to take 
any pleasure in the companies to which I was 
introduced as an inconvenient appendage of my 
aunt's; nor did I feel half the interest at the 
theaters, splendid as they were, which I had 
been wont to take at Bath and Bristol, where 
every actor's face was familiar to me, and every 



movement of the countenance could be perceived. 
I wished for Shad, and the carpentry, and poor 
Phillis, and our rambles among the woods and 
rocks. At length, upon the first of April (of 
all ominous days that could be chosen), Mr. 
Palmer took me in his carriage to Dean's Yard, 
introduced me to Dr. Smith, entered my name 
with him. and, upon his recommendation, placed 
me at the boarding house, then called Otley's, 
from its late mistress, but kept by Mrs. Farren; 
and left me there, with Samuel Hayes, the usher 
of the house, and of the fifth form, for my tutor. 

Botch Hayes, as he was denominated, for the 
manner in which he mended his pupil's verses, 
kept a small boarding house next door ; but at 
this time a treaty of union between the two 
houses was going on, which, like the union of 
Castile and Aragon, was to be brought about 
by a marriage between the respective heads of 
the several states. This marriage took place 
during the ensuing Whitsun holidays ; and the 
smaller flock was removed, in consequence, to 
our boarding house, which then took the name 
of Hayes's, but retained it only a few months, 
for Hayes, in disgust at not being appointed un- 
der master, withdrew from the school. His 
wife, of course, followed his fortunes, and was 
succeeded by Mrs. Clough, who migrated thither 
with a few boarders from Abingdon Street. But 
as Botch Hayes is a person who must make his 
appearance in the Athenae Cantabrigienses (if 
my lively, happy, good-natured friend Mr. Hughes 
carries into effect his intention of compiling such 
a work), I will say something of him here. 

He was a man who, having some skill and 
much facility in versifying, walked for many 
years over the Seatonian race-ground at Cam- 
bridge, and enjoyed the produce of Mr. Seaton's 
Kislingbury estate without a competitor. He 
was, moreover, what Oldys describes Nahum 
Tate to have been — " a free, good-natured, fud- 
dling companion;" to all which qualities his 
countenance bore witness. With better conduct 
and better fortune, Hayes would have had learn- 
ing and talents enough to have deserved and 
obtained promotion. His failings were so noto- 
rious, and the boys took such liberties with him 
(sticking his wig full of paper darts in school, 
and, indeed, doing or leaving undone whatever 
they pleased, in full reliance upon his easy and 
indolent good-nature), that it would have been 
a most unfit thing to have appointed him under 
master, in course of seniority, when Vincent suc- 
ceeded Dr. Smith. Perhaps he would not have 
taken offense at being passed by, if a person 
thoroughly qualified had been chosen in his 
stead ; but he could not bear to have an inferior 
usher, who was a man of no talents whatever, 
promoted over him, and therefore, to the great 
injury of his worldly affairs, which could ill bear 
such a sacrifice, he left the school altogether. 
Hayes it was who edited those sermons which 
Dr. Johnson is supposed to have written for his 
friend Dr. Taylor. 

I was placed in the under fourth, a year lower 
than I might have been if I could have made 



/Etat. 14. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



53 



Latin verses, and yet more than a year too high 
for being properly trained to make them. The 
manner of introducing a boy into the ways of 
the school was by placing him for a week or ten 
days under the direction of one in the same re- 
move, who is called his substance, the new- 
comer being the shadow; and, during this sort 
of novitiate, the shadow neither takes nor loses 
place by his own deserts, but follows the sub- 
stance. A diligent and capable boy is, of course, 
selected for this service ; and Smedley, the usher 
of the fourth, to my great joy, picked out George 
Strachey, the very individual on whom my phys- 
iognomical eyes would have rested if I might 
have made a choice throughout the whole school. 
Strachey and I were friends at first sight. But 
he boarded at home; and it is in the boarding 
house, more than in the school, that a friend is 
wanted ; and there, God knows, I had, for some 
time, a solitary heart. 

The present Lord Amherst was head of the 
house ; a mild, inoffensive boy, who interfered 
with no one, and, having a room to himself 
(which no other boy had), lived very much to 
himself in it, liked and respected by every body. 

I was quartered in the room with , who 

afterward married that sweet creature, Lady 
, and never was woman of a dove-like na- 
ture more unsuitably mated, for , when in 

anger, was perfectly frantic. His face was as 
fine as a countenance could be which expressed 
so ungovernable and dangerous a temper ; the 
finest red and white, dark eyes and brows, and 
black curling hair ; but the expression was rath- 
er that of a savage than of a civilized being, and 
no savage could be more violent. He had sea- 
sons of good nature, and at the worst was rath- 
er to be dreaded than disliked, for he was plain- 
ly not master of himself. But I had cause to 
dread him, for he once attempted to hold me by 
the leg out of the window. It was the first floor, 
and over a stone area : had I not struggled in 
time, and clung to the frame with both hands, 
my life would probably have been sacrificed to 
this freak of temporary madness. He used to 
pour water into my ear when I was abed and 
asleep, fling the porter-pot or the poker at me, 
and in many ways exercised such a capricious 
and dangerous tyranny, merely by right of the 
strongest (for he was not high enough in the 
school to fag me), that at last I requested Mr. 
Hayes to remove me into another chamber. 
Thither he followed me ; and, at a veiy late hour 
one night, came in wrapped in a sheet, thinking 
to frighten me by personating a ghost, in which 
character he threw himself upon the bed, and 
rolled upon me. Not knowing who it was, but 
certain that it was flesh and blood, I seized him 
by the throat, and we made noise enough to bring 
up the usher of the house, and occasion an in- 
quiry, which ended in requiring 's word 

that he never would again molest me. 

He kept his word faithfully, and left school a 
few months afterward, when he was about seven- 
teen or eighteen, and apparently full grown — a 
singularly fine and striking youth ; indeed, one 



of those figures which you always remember 
vividly. I heard nothing of him till the Irish 
rebellion : he served in the army there ; and 
there was a story, which got into the newspa- 
pers, of his meeting a man upon the road, and 
putting him to death without judge or jury, upon 
suspicion of his being a rebel. It was, no doubt, 
an act of madness. I know not whether any 
proceedings took place (indeed, in those dreadful 
times, any thing was passed over) ; but he died 
soon afterward, happily for himself and all who 
were connected with him. 

Miss Tyler returned to Bristol before . the 
Whitsun holidays, having embarrassed herself, 
and had recourse to shifts of which I knew too 
much. To spare the expense of a journey so 
soon after my entrance at school, I was invited 
for the holidays by the good Miss Delameres to 
Cheshunt. I passed three weeks there very hap- 
pily, having the use of an excellent microscope, 
and frequently taking my book into the green- 
house, and reading there for the sake of the 
temperature and the odor of the flowers. Dur- 
ing part of the time there were two other guests 
in the house. The one was a nice, good-hu- 
mored, warm-hearted girl, in the very flower of 
youth and feeling, who was engaged to a French 
or Swiss clergyman, Mercier by name. Her 
own was La Chaumette. She was of Swiss ex- 
traction, and, having passed the preceding year 
among her relations in the Pays de Vaud, had 
brought home something like a maladie du pays, 
if that phrase may be applied to a longing after 
any country which is not our own : it was, how- 
ever, a very natural affection for one who was 
compelled to exchange Lausanne for Spitalfields. 
I used to abuse Switzerland as a land of bears 
and wolves, and ice and snow, for the sake of 
seeing the animation with which she defended 
and praised it. Not long afterward she married 
to her heart's content, and, to the very great re- 
gret of all who knew her, died in her first child- 
bed. Poor Betsey la Chaumette ! after a lapse 
of nine-and-twenty years, I thought of her in 
Switzerland, and when I was at Echichens with 
the Awdrys, met with a Swiss clergyman who 
knew her and remembered her visit to that 
country. 

I have heard her mother relate an anecdote 
of herself which is well worthy of preservation, 
because of another personage to whom it relates 
also. She was a most lively, good-humored, en- 
tertaining woman ; and her conversation was the 
more amusing because it was in broken English, 
intermingled plentifully with French interjec- 
tions. In person she was strong-featured, large, 
and plain even to ugliness, if a countenance can 
be called ugly which was always brightened 
with cheerfulness and good nature. There was 
a Mr. Giflardiere, who held some appointment 
in the queen's household (I think he used to read 
French to her), and was one of those persons 
with whom the royal family were familiar. Mrs. 
La Chaumette was on a visit to him at Windsor, 
and it was insisted upon by the Giflardieres that 
she must have one of the Lunardi bonnets (im- 



54 



EARLY LIFE OF 



jEtat. 14. 



mortalized by Barns) which were then in fashion, 
it being the first age of balloons. This she re- 
sisted most womanfully, pleading her time of life 
and ugliness with characteristic volubility and 
liveliness, but to no purpose. Her eloquence 
was overruled ; and as nobody could appear 
without such a bonnet, such a bonnet she had. 
All this went to the palace ; for kings and queens 
are sometimes as much pleased at being ac- 
quainted with small private affairs as their sub- 
jects are in conversing upon great public ones. 
Mrs. La Chaumette's conversation was worth 
repeating, even to a king ; and she was so orig- 
inal a person, that the king knew her very well 
by character, and was determined to see her. 
Accordingly, he stopped his horse one day be- 
fore Giffardiere's apartments, and, after talking 
a while with him, asked if Mrs. La Chaumette 
was within, and desired she might be called to 
the window. She came in all the agitation or 
fluster that such a summons was likely to excite. 
The king spoke to her with his wonted good 
nature, asked her a few questions, hoped she 
liked Windsor, and concluded by saying he was 
glad to hear she had consented at last to have a 
Lunardi bonnet. Trifling as this is, it is a sort 
of trifling in which none but a kind-hearted king 
would have indulged ; and I believe no one ever 
heard the story without liking George III. the 
better for it : I am sure this was the effect it 
produced in the circle of her acquaintance. How 
well do I remember the looks, and tones, and 
gestures, and mon Dieus ! with which she ac- 
companied the relation. 

James Beresford was the other visitor at Ches- 
hunt ; an unsuccessful translator of the iEneid 
into blank verse, but the very successful author 
of the Miseries of Human Life. He was then a 
young man, either just in orders, or on the point 
of being ordained. This story was then remem- 
bered of him at the Charter House : that he had 
been equally remarkable when a boy for his nois- 
iness and his love of music ; and having one day 
skipped school to attend a concert, there was 
such an unusual quietness in consequence of his 
absence, that the master looked round, and said, 
" Where's Beresford ? I am sure he can not be 
in school !" and the detection thus brought about 
cost poor Beresford a flogging. Him also, like 
Betsey la Chaumette, I never saw after that vis- 
it ; and, with all his pleasantness and good na- 
ture, he left upon me an unpleasant impression, 
from a trifling circumstance which I remember 
as indicative of my own moral temper at that 
time. Our holidays' exercise was to compose 
a certain number of Latin verses from any part 
of Thomson's Spring. I did my task doggedly, 
in j*uch a manner that it was impossible any ex- 
ercise could have been more unlike a good one, 
and yet the very best could not more effectually 
have proved the diligence with which it had been 
made. There was neither a false quantity, nor 
a grammatical fault, nor a decent line in the 
whole. The ladies made me show it to Beres- 
ford ; and he, instead of saying, in good-natured 
sincerity, " You have never been taught to make 



verses, but it is plain that you have taken great 
pains in making these, and therefore I am sure 
the usher will give you credit for what you have 
done," returned them to me, saying, " Sir, I 
see you will be another Virgil one of these days." 
I knew that this was neither deserved as praise 
nor as mockery ; and I felt then, as I have con- 
tinued through life to do, that unmerited censure 
brings with it its own antidote in the sense of 
injustice which it provokes, but that nothing is 
so mortifying as praise to which you are con- 
scious that you have no claim. 

Smedley spoke to me sensibly and kindly about 
this exercise, and put me in training as far as 
could then be done. He had no reason to com- 
plain of my want of good will, for before the 
next holidays I wrote about fifty long and short 
verses upon the death of Fair Rosamund, which 
I put into his hands. The composition was bad 
enough, I dare say, in many respects, but it gave 
proofs of good progress. They were verses to 
the ear as well as to the fingers ; and I remem- 
ber them sufficiently to know that the attempt 
was that of a poet. It is worth remembering, 
as being the only Latin poem that I ever com- 
posed voluntarily ; for there my ambition ended. 
When I was so far upon a footing with the rest 
of the remove that I could make verses decent 
enough to pass muster, I was satisfied. It was 
in English, and not in heathen Latin, that 

" The sacred Sisters for their own 
Baptized me in the springs of Helicon ;" 

and I also knew, though I did not know Lope de 
Vega had said it, that 

"Todo paxaro en su nido 
Natural canto mantiene, 
En que ser perfeto viene : 
Porque en el canto aprendido 
Ml imperfeciones tiene." 



LETTER XVII. 

RECOLLECTIONS OF WESTMINSTER CONTINUED. 
March 16th, 1825. 
The Christmas before my entrance at West- 
minster, I remember seeing in the newspapers 
the names of those boys who acted in the West- 
minster play that year (1787). For one who 
knew nothing of the school, nor of any person in 
it, it was something to be acquainted with three 
or four boys, even by name ; and I pleased^my- 
self with thinking that they were soon to be my 
friends. This was a vain fancy in both senses 
of the word : by their being selected to perform 
in the play, I supposed they were studious and 
clever boys, with whom I should, of course, be- 
come familiar ; and I had no notion of the ine- 
quality which station produces at a public school. 
It is such that, when I came to Westminster, I 
never exchanged a word with any of these per- 
sons. Oliphant, Twistleton, and Carey were three 
of them. Carey was a marked favorite with Vin- 
cent, and afterward with Cyril Jackson at Christ 
Church ; he is now Bishop of Exeter, having 
been head master of the school where, at the 
time of which I am now writing, he was one of 



vEtat. 14, 15. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



55 



the monitors. It is said that he is indebted to 
Cyril Jackson for his promotion to the bench, 
the dean requesting a bishopric for him, or, rath- 
er, earnestly recommending him for one when 
he refused it for himself. Twistleton was re- 
markable for a handsome person, on which he 
prided himself, and for wearing his long hair 
loose and powdered in school, but tied and dressed 
when he went out ; for in those days hobble-de- 
hoys used to let their hair grow, cultivating it 
for a tail, which was then the costume of man- 
hood. The Westminster play gave him a taste 
for private theatricals. Immediately after leav- 
ing school he married a girl with whom he had 
figured away in such scenes ; she became an act- 
ress afterward in public of some pretensions and 
much notoriety, as being the wife of an honora- 
ble and a clergyman. For a while Twistleton 
figured in London as a popular preacher, which 
too frequently is but another kind of acting ; he 
then went out to India, and died there lately as 
archdeacon in Ceylon, where he had latterly 
taken a very useful and becoming part in pro- 
moting the efforts which are made in that island 
for educating and converting the natives. Oli- 
phant was the more remarkable person of the 
three, and would probably have risen to celebrity 
had he lived. He was from Liverpool, the son, 
I believe, of a tradesman, one of the queerest 
fellows in appearance that I ever remember to 
have seen ; and so short-sighted, that we had 
stories of his walking into a grave in the clois- 
ters, and running his head through a lamp-light- 
er's ladder in the street. The boys in the sixth 
form speak in public once a week, in rotation, 
three king's scholars and three town boys. Gen- 
erally this is got through as a disagreeable task ; 
but now and then an ambitious fellow mouths 
instead of mumbling it ; and I remember Twis- 
tleton and Oliphant reciting the scene between 
Brutus and Cassius with good effect, and with 
voices that filled the school. After leaving Cam- 
bridge Oliphant tried his fortune as an author, 
and published a novel, which I never saw ; but 
it had some such title as " Memoirs of a Wild 
Goose Philosopher." He died soon afterward. 
His first efforts in authorship were, however, 
made as a periodical essayist before he left school. 
The Microcosm, which the Etonians had recent- 
ly published, excited a spirit of emulation at 
Westminster ; and soon after I went there, some 
of the senior king's scholars, of whom Oliphant 
was at the head, commenced a weekly paper 
called the Trifler. As the master's authority in 
our age of lax discipline could not prevent this, 
Smith contented himself, in his good-natured, 
easy way, with signifying his disapprobation by 
giving as a text for a theme, on the Monday 
after the first number appeared, these words, 
scribimus indocti doctique. There were two or 
three felicitous papers in the Microcosm which 
made a reputation for the book; indeed, Eton 
has never produced men of more genius than 
those who contributed to it. The Trifler may in 
general have been on a par with it ; that is to say, 
neither oi' them could contain any thing better in 



serious composition than good schoolboy's exer- 
cises ; but it had no lucky hits of a lighter kind ; 
and when forty numbers had been published, 
more to the contentment of the writers than of 
any body else, the volume was closed and was 
forgotten. The only disgraceful circumstance 
attending it was that a caricature was put forth, 
representing Justice as weighing the Microcosm 
against the Trifler, and the former, with its au- 
thors, and the king as a make-weight on their 
side, was made to kick the beam. This was 
designed and etched by James Hook, then a 
junior king's scholar, and now the very Reverend 
Dean of Worcester. I do not suppose it was 
sold in the print-shops, but the boys were ex- 
pected to subscribe for it at a shilling each. 

My first attempt to appear in print was in the 
aforesaid Trifler. I composed an elegy upon my 
poor little sister's death, which took place just 
at that time. The verses were written with all 
sincerity of feeling, for I was very deeply affect- 
ed ; but that they were very bad I have no doubt ; 
indeed, I recollect enough of them to know it. 
However, I sent them by the penny -post, sign- 
ing them with the letter B. ; and in the next 
number this notice was taken of the communica- 
tion : " B.'s Elegy must undergo some altera- 
tions, a liberty all our correspondents must allow 
us to take." After this I looked for its appear- 
ance anxiously, but in vain ; for no further men- 
tion was made of it, because no alteration could 
have rendered it fit for appearance, even among 
the compositions of elder schoolboys. Oliphant 
and his colleagues never knew from whence it 
came ; I was far too much below them to be 
suspected, and, indeed, at that time, I was known 
out of my remove for nothing but my curly head. 

Curly heads are not common ; I doubt whether 
they can be reckoned at three per cent, upon the 
population of this country ; but, luckily for me, 
the present Sir Charles Burrell (old Burrell, as 
we then called him, a very good-natured man) 
had one as well as myself. The space between 
Palace Yard and St. Margaret's Church-yard 
was at that time covered with houses. You 
must remember them, but I knew all the lanes 
and passages there ; intricate enough they were, 
and afforded excellent cover, just in the most 
dangerous part, on the border, when we were 
going out of bounds, or returning home from such 
an expedition. The improvements which have 
laid all open there have done no service to the 
Westminster boys, and have deprived me of some 
of the pleasantest jogging-places for memory that 
London used to contain. In one of these pas- 
sages was the door of a little schoolmaster, whose 
academy was announced by a board upon the 
front of a house, close to St. Margaret's Church- 
yard. Some of the day boys in my remove took 
it into their heads, in the pride of Westminster, 
to annoy this academician by beating up his 
quarters, and one day I joined in the party. 
The sport was to see him sally with a cane in 
his hand, and to witness the admiration of his 
own subjects at our audacity. He complained 
at last, as he had good cause, to Vincent , but 



56 



EARLY LIFE OF 



Mtat. 14, 15. 



no suspicion fell or could fall upon the real par- 
ties ; for it so was, that the three or four ring- 
leaders in these regular rows were in every re- 
spect some of the best boys in the school, and 
the very last to whom any such pranks would 
have been imputed. The only indication he 
could give was that one of the culprits was a 
curly-headed fellow. One evening, a little to 
ray amusement, and not a little to my conster- 
nation, I heard old Burrell say that Vincent had 
just sent for him, and taxed him with making a 
row at a schoolmaster's in St. Margaret's Church- 
yard, and would hardly believe the protestations of 
innocence, which he reiterated with an oath when 
he told the story, and which I very well knew to 
be sincere. It was his curly head, he said, that 
brought him into suspicion. I kept my own coun- 
sel, and did not go near the academy again. 

At a public school you know something of 
every boy in your own boarding house and in 
your own form ; you are better acquainted with 
those in your own remove (which at Westminster 
means half a form) ; and your intimacies are such 
as choice may make from these chances of juxta- 
position. All who are above you you know by 
sight and by character, if they have any : to 
have none indicates an easy temper, inclined 
rather to good than evil. Of those who are be- 
low you, unless they are in the same house, you 
are acquainted with very few, even by name. 
The number, however, of those with whom you 
are more or less brought in contact, is such, that 
after-life seldom or never affords another oppor- 
tunity of knowing so many persons so well, and 
forming so fair an estimate of human nature. Is 
that estimate a favorable one ? and what says 
my own experience? Of the three hundred 
boys who were my cotemporaries during four 
years (about fifty, perhaps, being changed annual- 
ly), there were very few upon whose countenance 
Nature had set her best testimonials. I can call 
to mind only one wherein the moral and intel- 
lectual expression were in perfect accord of ex- 
cellence, and had full effect given them by the 
features which they illuminated. Those who 
bore the stamp of reprobation, if I may venture 
to use a term which is to be abhorred, were cer- 
tainly more in number, but not numerous. The 
great majority were of a kind to be whatever 
circumstances might make them ; clay in the 
potter's hand, more or less fine ; and as it is fit- 
ting that such subjects should be conformed to 
the world's fashion and the World's uses, a pub- 
lic school was best for them. But where there 
is a tendency to low pursuits and low vices, such 
schools are fatal. They are nurseries, also, for 
tyranny and brutality. Yet, on the other hand, 
good is to be acquired there, which can be at- 
tained in no other course of education. . 

Of my own cotemporaries there, a fair pro- 
portion have filled that place and maintained that 
character in the world which might have been 
expected from the indications of their boyhood. 
Some have manifested talents which were com- 
pletely latent at that time ; and others who put 
forth a fair blossom have produced no fruit. But, 



generally speaking, in most instances where I 
have had opportunity of observing, the man has 
been what the boy promised, or, as we should 
say in Cumberland, offered to be. 

Our boarding house was under the tyranny 
of W. F . He was, in Westminster lan- 
guage, a great beast ; that is, in plain truth, a 
great brute — as great a one as ever went upon 
two legs. But there are two sorts of human 
brutes — those who partake of wolf-nature or of 

pig-nature, and F was of the better breed, 

if it be better to be wolfish than swinish. He 
would have made a good prize-fighter, a good 
buccaneer, or, in the days of Coeur de Lion or 
of my Cid, a good knight, to have cut down the 
misbelievers with a strong arm and a hearty 
good will. Every body feared and hated him ; 
and yet it was universally felt that he saved the 
house from the tyranny of a greater beast than 

himself. This was a fellow by name B . 

who was mean and malicious, which F was 

not. I do not know what became of him ; his 
name has not appeared in the Tyburn Calendar, 
which was the only place to look for it ; and if 
he has been hanged, it must have been under an 
alias, an observation which is frequently made 
when he is spoken of by his schoolfellows. He 

and F were of an age and standing, the 

giants of the house, but F was the braver, 

and did us the good office of keeping him in or- 
der. They hated each other cordially, and, the 

evening before we were rid of " Butcher B ," 

F — gave the whole house the great satisfac- 
tion of giving him a good thrashing. 

It was so obviously impossible to put Latin and 

Greek into F , at either end, even if there 

had been any use in so doing, that no attempt 
was made at it. The Greek alphabet he must 
have known ; but he could have known nothing 
more of Greek, nor, indeed, of any thing else, 
than just to qualify him for being crammed to 
pass muster, at passing from one form to another ; 
and so he was floated up to the Shell, beyond 
which the tide carried no one. He never did an 
exercise for himself of any kind ; they were done 
by deputy, whom the fist appointed ; and, after 
a while, it was my ill fortune to be promoted to 
that office. My orders were that the exercises 
must always be bad enough; and bad enough 
they were. I believe, indeed, that the habit of 
writing bad Latin for him spoiled me for writing 
it well, when, in process of time, I had exercises 
of the same kind to compose in my own person. 
It was a great deliverance when he left school. 
I saw him once afterward, in the High Street at 
Oxford. He recognized me instantly, stopped 
me, shook me heartily by the hand, as if we had 
been old friends, and said, " I hear you became 
a devilish fine fellow after I left, and used to row 
Dodd (the usher of the house) famously !" The 
look and the manner with which these words 
were spoken I remember perfectly; the more 
so, perhaps, because he died soon afterward, and 
little as it was to have been expected, there was 
something in his death which excited a certain 
degree of respect as well as pity. He went into 



5£tat. 14, 15. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



57 



the army, and perished in our miserable expedi- 
tion to St. Domingo, where, by putting himself 
forward on all occasions of service, and especially 
by exerting himself in dragging cannon when 
the soldiers were unequal to the fatigue, he 
brought on the yellow fever, and literally fell a 
victim to a generosity and good -nature which he 
had never been supposed to possess. 

That fever proved fatal to a good many of my 
Westminster schoolfellows, who, some of them 
because they were fit for the army, and others 
because they were fit for nothing else, took to 
that profession at the commencement of the Rev- 
olutionary war. Rather a large proportion of 
them perished in the West Indies. " Who the 
devil would have thought of my burying old 
Blair !" was the exclamation of one who re- 
turned, and who of the two might better have 
been buried there himself. Blair was a cousin 
of the present Countess of Lonsdale, and I -was 
as intimate with him as it was possible to be 
with one who boarded in another house, though 
it would not have been easy to have found a boy 
in the whole school more thoroughly unlike my- 
self in every thing, except in temper. He was, 
as Lord Lonsdale told me, a spoiled child — idle, 
careless, fond of dogs and horses, of hunting rats, 
baiting badgers, and, above all, of driving stage- 
coaches. But there was a jovial hilarity, a per- 
petual flow of easy good spirits, a sunshine of 
good humor upon his countenance, and a merri- 
ment in his eye, which bring him often to my 
mind, and always make me think of him with a 
great deal of kindness. He was remarkably fat, 
and might have sat for the picture of Bacchus, 
or of Bacchus's groom ; but he was active withal. 

Blair spent one summer holidays with his 
mother, Lady Mary, at Spa, and used to amuse 
me greatly by his accounts of the place and the 
people, and the delight of traveling abroad, but, 
above all, by his description of the French pos- 
tillions. He had brought back a postillion's 
whip, having learned to crack it in perfection ; 
and that French flogger, as he called it, did all 
his exercises for him ; for if Marsden, whom he 
had nominated to the office of secretary for this 
department, ever demurred when his services 
were required, crack went the French flogger, 
and the sound of what he never felt produced 
prompt obedience. The said Marsden was a 
person who could have poured out Latin verses, 
such as they were, with as much facility as an 
Italian improvisatore performs his easier task. I 
heard enough about Spa, at that time, to make 
me very desirous of seeing the place ; and when 
I went thither, after my first visit to the field of 
Waterloo, it was more for the sake of poor Blair 
than for any other reason. Poor fellow, the yel- 
low fever made short work with his plethoric 
frame, when he went with his regiment to the 
West Indies. The only station that he would 
thoroughly have become would have been that 
of abbot in some snug Benedictine abbey, where 
the rule was comfortably relaxed. In such a 
station, where the habit would just have imposed 
the restraint he needed, he would have made 



I monks, tenants, dependents, and guests all as 
I happy as indulgence, easy good-nature, and 
hearty hospitality could make them. As it was, 
flesh of a better grain never went to the land- 
crabs, largely as in those days they were fed. 

There was another person in the remove, who, 
when he allowed himself time for such idle en- 
tertainment, was as fond of Blair's conversation 
as I was (our intercourse with him was only 
during school hours), but to whom I was attach- 
ed by sympathies of a better kind. This was 
William Bean, the son of an apothecary at Cara- 
berwell, from which place he walked every day 
to school, a distance of more than three miles to 
and fro. He had a little of the Cockney pronun- 
ciation, for which Blair used to laugh at him 
and mimic him. His appearance was odd, as 
well as remarkable, and made the worse by his 
dress. One day, when he had gone into the 
boarding house with me, Dickenson (the pres- 
ent member for Somersetshire, a good-natured 
man) came into the room, and, fixing his eyes 
upon him, exclaimed, with genuine surprise, 
" you cursed quiz, what is your name ?" One 
Sunday afternoon, when with my two most inti- 
mate associates (Combe and Lambe) I had been 
taking a long ramble on the Surrey side of the 
river, we met Bean somewhere near the Ele- 
phant and Castle, returning home from a visit, 
in his Sunday's suit of dittos, and in a cocked 
hat to boot. However contented he might have 
been in this costume, I believe that, rather than 
have been seen in it by us, he would have been 
glad if the earth had opened, and he could have 
gone down for five minutes to Korah, Dathan, 
and Abiram. However, the next morning, when 
he threw himself upon our mercy, and entreated 
that we would not say that we had met him in 
a cock and pinch, my companions promised him, 
as willingly as I did, to be silent. 

With this quizzical appearance, there were 
in Bean's, swarthy face and in his dark eyes the 
strongest indications of a clear intellect, a steady 
mind, and an excellent heart, all which he had 
in perfection. He had been placed at Westmin- 
ster in the hope of his getting into college 5 but, 
being a day scholar, and having no connections 
acquainted with the school, he had not been put 
in the way of doing this, so that when the time 
came for what is called standing out, while all 
the other candidates were in the usual manner 
crammed by their helps, Bean stood alone, with- 
out assistance, and consequently failed. Had 
the mode of examination been what it ought to 
be, a fair trial of capacity and diligence, in which 
no cramming was allowed, his success would 
have been certain ; and had he gone off from 
Westminster to either university, he would most 
certainly have become one of the most distin- 
guished men there. Every thing might have 
been expected from him that could result from 
the best capacity and the best conduct. But he 
failed, and was immediately taken from school 
to learn his father's profession. I had too sin- 
cere a regard for him to lose sight of him thus, 
and several times, in summer afternoons, when 



58 



EARLY LIFE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. jEtat. 14, 15. 



the time allowed, walked to Camberwell Green 
just to see and shake hands with him, and hur- 
ry back ; and this I continued to do as long as 
I remained at Westminster. 

In 1797 or 1798, he stopped me one day in 
the street, saying he did not wonder that I should 
have passed without recognizing him. for he had 
had the yellow fever three times, and, not having 
long recovered, still bore strong vestiges of it in 
his complexion. He had gone into the army in 
his professional line, and had just then returned 
from the West Indies. I never saw him more ; 
but, going along Camberwell Green some ten 
years ago, and seeing the name still over the 
door, I went in and inquired for him of his broth- 
er, who immediately remembered my name, and 
told^me that William had been doing well in the 
East Indies, and that they soon hoped for his re- 
turn ; upon which I left a message for him, to 
be communicated in their next letter, and my 
direction, whenever he might arrive. Shortly 
after this I became acquainted with poor Nash, 
whose father's house was nearly opposite to 
Bean's ; and, to my great pleasure, I found that 
Nash knew him well, had seen him at Bombay, 
and spoke of him as having proved just such a 
man as I should have expected, that is, of ster- 
ling sense and sterling worth. You may imag- 
ine how I was shocked at learning subsequent- 
ly, through the same channel, what had been 
his fate. Tidings had been received, that, going 
somewhere by sea (about Malacca, I think) upon 
a short passage, with money for his regiment, of 
which he acted as paymaster at that time, for 
the sake of that money he had been murdered 
by the Malay boatmen. 

He had saved about 665000 or ^£6000, which 



he left to his mother, an unhappy and unworthy 
woman, who had forsaken her family, but still 
retained a strong affection for this eldest son, 
and wished, when he was a boy, to withdraw 
him from his father. With that view she came 
one day to Westminster, and waited in the clois- 
ters to waylay him when the school was over. 
A scene ensued which was truly distressing to 
those who felt as they ought to do, for he flew 
from her, and both were so much agitated as to 
act and speak as if there had been no spectators. 
I was not present, but what I heard of it strength- 
ened my regard for him ; and I had his situation 
with respect to his mother in my mind when 
certain passages in Roderick were written. 

Dr. Pinckland has mentioned him with respect 
in his notes on the West Indies, as one of the 
assistants in some military hospital in which the 
doctor was employed. I was pleased at meeting 
with this brief and incidental notice of his name 
while he was yet living, though with a melan- 
choly feeling that the abler man was in the subor- 
dinate station. That brief notice is the only me 
morial of one who, if he had not been thus misera 
bly]cut off, would probably have left some durable 
monument of himself; for, during twenty years 
of service in all parts of the globe, he had seen 
much, and I have never known any man who 
would more certainly have seen things in the 
right point of view, morally as well as intellect- 
ually. Had he returned, I should have invited 
him hither, and he would have come. We 
should have met like men who had answered 
each other's expectations, and whom years and 
various fortunes, instead of alienating, had drawn 
nearer in heart and in mind. That meeting 
will take place in a better world. 



THE 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 

OF 

ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



CHAPTER I. 

SCHOOL FRIENDSHIPS THE FLAGELLANT IS 

COMPELLED tO LEAVE WESTMINSTER WRECK 

OF HIS FATHER'S AFFAIRS AND HIS DEATH IS 

REFUSED ADMITTANCE AT CHRIST CHURCH, 

AND ENTERS AT BALIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 

COLLEGE LIFE HIS STUDIES PHILOSOPHIC- 
AL SPECULATIONS EXCURSION TO HEREFORD- 
SHIRE VISIT TO BRIXTON JOAN OF ARC 

RETURN TO BRISTOL LETTERS ON A UNI- 
VERSITY LIFE, ETC. FITS OF DESPONDENCY 

POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY MR. LOVEL 

AMERICA NUMBER OF VERSES DESTROYED 

AND PRESERVED A.D. 1791-1793. 

My father has entered so fully into the histo- 
ry of his family and the details of his early life, 
that it is only needful for me to take up the 
thread of the narrative where he has laid it 
down. I can not, however, but regret that he 
had not at least completed the account of his 
schoolboy days, and given us a little more in- 
sight into the course of his studies, feelings, and 
opinions at that period, and also into the origin 
of those more lasting friendships he formed dur- 
ing the latter part of his stay at Westminster. 

But, while it may justly be regretted that he 
has not carried down his autobiography to a 
later date, it is not much to be wondered at that 
he found the task becoming more difficult and 
more painful. Recollections must have crowded 
upon his mind almost faster than he could ar- 
range and relate them (as we perceive they had 
already done, from the many collateral histories 
into which he has diverged), and he was coming 
to that period of his life which of all others it 
would have been most difficult for him accurately 
to record. He had, indeed, in early life, often 
contemplated "writing the history of his own 
mind," and had imagined that it would be the 
most pleasing and the most profitable task he 
could engage in ; but he probably found it was 
more agreeable in anticipation than in reality, 
and when once the thread was broken, he seems 
neither to have found time nor inclination to re- 
sume it. 

He has spoken of his early Westminster ac- 
quaintances, but he has not mentioned the two 
chief friendships he formed there, apparently not 



having come to the time when they had com- 
menced : these were with Mr. C. W. W. Wynn, 
and Mr. Grosvenor Charles Bedford (late of the 
Exchequer), with whom he seems at school to 
have been on terms of the closest intimacy, and 
who continued through life among his most val- 
uable friends. That even long prior to his going 
to Westminster he had found his chief pleasure 
in his pen, and that he had both read and writ- 
ten largely, he has himself recorded, and he has 
also mentioned his having made an unsuccessful 
attempt to obtain admission for one of his youth- 
ful compositions in a Westminster Magazine call- 
ed " The Trifler," which appears to have had only 
a brief existence. It was not long, however, be- 
fore he found an opportunity of making his first 
essay in print, which proved not a little unfortu- 
nate in its results. Having attained the upper 
classes of the school, in conjunction with several 
of his more particular friends, he set on foot a 
periodical entitled " The Flagellant," which 
reached only nine numbers, when a sarcastic at- 
tack upon corporeal punishment, as then inflicted, 
it seems, somewhat unsparingly at Westminster, 
roused the wrath of Dr. Vincent, the head mas- 
ter, who immediately commenced a prosecution 
for libel against the publisher. 

This seems to have been a harsh and extraor- 
dinary proceeding, for the master's authority, ju- 
diciously exercised, might surely have controlled 
or stopped the publication ; neither was there 
any thing in the paper itself which ought to have 
made a wise man angry. Like most of the oth- 
ers, it is merely a schoolboy's imitation of a pa- 
per in the Spectator or Rambler. A letter of 
complaint from an unfortunate victim to the rod 
is supposed to have been called forth by the pre- 
vious numbers, and the writer now comments on 
this, and enters into a dissertation on flogging 
with various quotations, ascribing its invention 
to the author of all evil. The signature was a 
feigned one ; but my father immediately ac- 
knowledged himself the writer, and reluctantly 
apologized. The doctor's wrath, however, was 
not to be appeased, and he was compelled to 
leave the school. 

Having quitted Westminster under these un- 
toward circumstances early in the spring of the 
year 1792, he remained until the close cf it, as 



60 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 19. 



usual, with his aunt, Miss Tyler, in the College 
Green, Bristol : and there, partly from want of 
regular employment and society, partly from his 
naturally excitable disposition, we find him in 
every imaginable mood of mind, now giving way 
to fits of despondency, revolving first one scheme 
of future life and then another, and again bright- 
ening up under the influence of a buoyant and 
happy temper, continually writing verses, and 
eager again to come before the public as an au- 
thor, despite the unfortunate issue of his first 
attempt. 

" The Flagellant is gone," he writes at this 
tune to his schoolfellow and coadjutor in that 
luckless undertaking, Mr. Grosvenor Bedford ; 
" still, however, I think that our joint produc- 
tions may acquire some credit. The sooner we 
have a volume published, the better : ' The Med- 
ley,' 'The Hodge-podge,' 'The What-do-you- 
call-it,' or, to retain our old plan, ' Monastic Lu- 
cubrations j' any of these, or any better you may 
propose, will do. Shall we dedicate to Envy, 
Hatred, and Malice, and all Uncharitableness ? 
Powerful arbitrators of the minds of men, who 
have already honored us with your marked at- 
tention, ye who can convert innocence into trea- 
son, and, shielded by the arm of power, remain 
secure, &c, &c, &c. ; or shall we dedicate it to 
the doctor, or to the devil, or to the king, or to 
ourselves ? Gentlemen, to you in whose breasts 
neither envy nor malice can find a place, who 
will not be biased by the clamors of popular 
prejudice, nor stoop to the authority of igno- 
rance and power, &c, &c. 

" I see no reason why we should not publish 
pretty soon ; it will be at least four months be- 
fore we can prepare it for the press, and, surely, 
by that time we may venture again upon the 
world. 

" We have ventured, 

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
These last nine numbers in a sea of glory, 
But far above our depth ; the high-blown bubble 
A t length burst \mder us, and now has left us 
(Yet smarting from the rod of persecution 
Though yet unwearied) to the merciless rage 
Of the rude sea that swallowed Number Five." 

These boyish schemes, however, were not to 
be carried into effect; and " the wreck of his fa- 
ther's affairs," to which he has alluded in the 
Autobiography, taking place at this time, he 
was occupied for a while by some of the more 
painful realities of life. " Since my last," he 
writes again to Mr. Bedford, " I have been con- 
tinually going backward and forward upon busi- 
ness, which would not allow me to fix sufficient 
attention upon any thing else. It is now over. 
I have time to look about me ; I hope, with fair- 
er prospects for the future. One of my journeys 
was to my father's brother at Taunton, to re- 
quest him to assist my father to recover that 
situation into which the treachery of his rela- 
tions and injustice of his friends had thrown him. 
I had never seen this uncle, and you may guess 
how unpleasant so humiliating an errand must 
prove to so proud a spirit. He was absent. I 
left a letter, and two days ago received an an- 



swer and a refusal. Fortunately, my aunt had 
prevented the necessity ; but her goodness does 
not extenuate his unnatural parsimony. He is 
single, and possessed of property to the amount 
of £100,000, without a child to provide for. 
That part of his fortune which he inherited must 
one day be mine ; it will, I hope, enable me to 
despise the world and live independent."* 

But his father's health was now completely 
broken by his misfortunes : he sank rapidly ; and 
my father, having gone up to matriculate at Ox- 
ford, was only recalled in time to follow him to 
the grave. 

It had been intended that he should enter at 
Christ Church, and his name had been put down 
there for some time ; but the dean (Cyril Jack- 
son), having heard of the affair of the Flagel- 
lant, refused to admit him, doubtless supposing 
he would prove a troublesome and disaffected 
under-graduate, and little dreaming the time 
would come when the University would be proud 
to bestow on him her highest honors. 

Having been rejected at Christ Church, he 
entered at Baliol College, t and returned to his 
home at Miss Tyler's, to remain there till the 
time when his residence at Oxford should com- 
mence. The following letter will illustrate suf- 
ficiently his character at this period. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 
(With a rude sketch of a church.) 

"Nov. 20, 1792. 
" My dear Bedford, 
" I doubt not but you will be surprised at my 
sending a church neither remarkable for beauty 
of design nor neatness of execution. Waiving, 
however, all apologies for either, if you are dis- 
posed at some future time to visit the ' Verdant 
House' of your friend when he shall be at sup- 
per — ' not when he eats, but when he is eaten' 
— you will find it on the other side of this iden- 
tical church. The very covering of the vault 
affords as striking an emblem of mortality a?, 
would even the moldering tenant of the tomb. 
Yesterday, I know not from what strange hu- 
mor, I visited it for the second time in my life , 
the former occasion was mournful, and no earth- 
ly consideration shall ever draw me there upon 
a like. My pilgrimage yesterday was merely 
the result of a meditating moment when philos- 
ophy had flattered itself into apathy. I am re- 
ally astonished when I reflect upon the indiffer- 
ence with which I so minutely surveyed the heav- 
ing turf, which inclosed within its cold bosom 
ancestors upon whom fortune bestowed rather 
more of her smiles than she has done upon their 
descendants — men who, content with an inde- 
pendent patrimony, lay hid from the world, toe 
obscure to be noticed by it, too elevated to fear 
its insult. Those days are past. Three Ed- 



* Oct. 21, 1792. 

t The following is extracted from the Register of Ad- 
missions at Baliol College : 

" Termino Michaelis, 1792, Nov. 3. 
Robertus Southey Filius natu maximus Roberti Southey 
Generosi de Civitate Bristol ; Admissus est 
Commensalis." 



jEtat. 19. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



Gl 



ward Hills there sleep forever. I send the ep- 
itaph which, at present, is inscribed upon one of 
the cankered sides ; perhaps the production of 
some one of my forefathers, who possessed more 
piety than poetiy : 

" • Farewell this world 
With all Its Vanity ; 
We hope, through Christ, 
To live eternally.' 

"You have the exact orthography, and the 
inscription will probably cover the remains of 
one who has written so much for others, and 
must be content with so humble an epitaph him- 
self, unless you will furnish him with one more 
characteristical. 

" Were you to walk over the village (Ashton) 
with me, you would, like me, be tempted to re- 
pine that I have no earthly mansion here — it is 
the most enchanting spot that nature ©an pro- 
duce. My rambles would be much more fre- 
quent were it not for certain reflections, not al- 
together of a pleasant nature, which always re- 
cur. I can not wander like a stranger over 
lands which once were my forefathers', nor pass 
those doors which are now no more open, with- 
out feeling emotions altogether inconsistent with 
pleasure and irreconcilable with the indifference 
of philosophy. 

" What is there, Bedford, contained in that 
word of such mighty virtue ? It has been sound- 
ed in the ear of common sense till it is deafened 
and overpowered with the clamor. Artifice and 
vanity have reared up the pageant, science has 
adorned it, and the multitude have beheld at a 
distance and adored. It is applied indiscrimin- 
ately to vice and virtue, to the exalted ideas of 
Socrates, the metaphysical charms of Plato, the 
frigid maxims of Aristotle, the unfeeling dictates 
of the Stoics, and the disciples of the defamed 
Epicurus. Rousseau was called a philosopher 
while he possessed sensibility the most poignant. 
Voltaire was dignified with the name when he 
deserved the blackest stigma from every man of 
principle. Whence all this seeming absurdity? 
or why should reason be dazzled by the name 
when she can not but perceive its imbecility ? 

" So far I wrote last night ; upon running it 
over, I think you will fancy you have a rhapso- 
dy for the Flagellant instead of a letter ; and, 
really, had I continued it in the same mood, it 
would have been little different. If I had any 
knowledge of drawing, I would send you some 
of the most pleasing views you can conceive, 
whether rural, melancholy, pleasing, or grand. 
At some future period I hope to show you the 
place, and you will then judge whether I have 

praised it too lavishly In the course of 

next summer the Duke of Portland will be in- 
stalled at Oxford : the spectacle is only inferior 
to a coronation. I have rooms there, and am 
glad of the opportunity to offer them to you. 
We are permitted to have men in college upon 
the occasion : the whole University makes up 
the procession. It will be worth seeing, as per- 
haps coronations, like the secular games, will 
soon be as a tale that isiold. 



" Within this half hour I have received a let- 
ter from my uncle at Lisbon, chiefly upon a sub- 
ject which I have been much employed upon 
since March 1. I will show it you when we 
meet. It is such as I expected from one who 
has been to me more than a parent — without as- 
perity, without reproaches To-morrow I 

answer it, and, as he has desired, send him the 
Flagellant. I then hope to drop the subject for- 
ever in this world 5 in the next all hearts are 
open, and no man's intentions are hid. 

" I can now tell you one of the uses of philos- 
ophy : it teaches us to search for applause from 
within, and to despise the flattery and the abuse 
of the world alike ; to attend only to an inward 
monitor 5 to be superior to fortune : why, then, 
is the name so prostituted ? Do give me a lec- 
ture upon philosophy, and teach me how to be- 
come a philosopher. The title is pretty, and 
surely the philosophic S. would sound as well as 
the philosophic Hume or the philosopher of Fer- 
ney. Would it not be as truly applied ? I am 
loth to part with-my poor Flagellants ; they have 
cost me very dear, and perhaps I shall never see 
them more.* One copy ought to be preserved, 
in order to contradict the inventions of future 
malice. Are you not ashamed of your idleness ? 
"R. Southey. 

" P.S. — If I can one day have the honor of 
writing after my name Fellow of Baliol College, 
that will be the extent of my preferment. Some- 
times I am tempted to think that I was sent into 
this world for a different employment ; but, as 
the play says, beware of the beast that has three 
legs. Now, Bedford, as you might long puzzle 
to discover the genus of the beast, know that his 
grasp is always mortal ; that, in short (here fol- 
lows a sketch) . But, as that drawing wants ex- 
planation as much, if not more, than the descrip- 
tion, know it is — the gallows. 

" About the 17th of January I began my res- 
idence at Oxford, where the prime of my life is 
to pass in acquiring knowledge, which, when I 
begin to have some ideas of, it will be cut short 
by the doctor, who levels all ranks and degrees. 
Is it not rather disgraceful, at the moment when 
Europe is on fire with freedom — when man and 
monarch are contending — to sit and study Eu- 
clid or Hugo Grotius ? As Pindar says, a good 
button-maker is spoiled in making a king ; what 
will be spoiled when I am made a fellow of Ba- 
liol ? That question I can not resolve. I can 
only say I have spoiled a sheet of paper, and 
you fifteen minutes in reading it. 

"N.B. — If you do not soon answer it, you 
will spoil my temper." 

My father went up to reside at Baliol in Jan- 
uary, 1793, being at this time ill suited to a col- 
lege life both by his feelings and opinions. " My 
prepossessions," he writes, "are not very favor- 

* This proved to be the case : he never saw the latter 
numbers of the Flagellant again. Mr. Hill preserved the 
copy which had been sent to him, but in after years kept it 
carefully from my father's knowledge, thinking he would 
destroy it This copy is now before me, and is, perhaps, 
the only one in existence. 



62 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^TAT. 19. 



able. I expect to meet with pedantry, preju- 
dice, and aristocracy, from all which, good Lord, 
deliver poor Robert Southey."^ And almost 
immediately on his arrival : " Behold me, my 
friend, entered under the banners of science or 
stupidity — which you please — and, like a recruit 
got sober, looking to the days that are past, and 
feeling something like regret. Would you think 
it possible that the wise founders of an English 
university should forbid us to wear boots ?t 
What matters it whether I study in shoes or 
boots ? to me it is matter of indifference ; but 
folly so ridiculous puts me out of conceit with 
the whole. When the foundation is bad, the 
fabric must be weak. None of my friends are 
yet arrived, and as for common acquaintance, I 
do not wish for them. Solitude I do not dislike, 
for I fear it not ; but there is a certain demon 
called Reflection that accompanies it, whose ar- 
rows, though they rankle not with the poison of 
guilt, are yet pointed by melancholy. I feel 
myself entered upon a new scene of life, and, 
whatever the generality of Oxoaians conceive, it 
appears to me a very serious one. Four years 
hence I am to be called into orders, and during 
that time (short for the attainment of the requi- 
site knowledge) how much have I to learn ! I 
must learn to break a rebellious spirit, which 
neither authority nor oppression could ever bow : 
it would be easier to break my neck. I must 
learn to work a problem instead of writing an 
ode. I must learn to pay respect to men re- 
markable only for great wigs and little wisdom." J 

He was, indeed, but little disposed to pay much 
deference either to the discipline or the etiquette 
of the college. It was usual for all the members 
to have their hair regularly dressed and powder- 
ed according to the prevailing fashion, and the 
college barber waited upon the "freshmen" as 
a matter of course. My father, however, per- 
emptorily refused to put himself under his hands ; 
and I well remember his speaking of the aston- 
ishment depicted in the man's face, and of his 
earnest remonstrances on the impropriety he was 
going to commit in entering the dining hall with 
his long hair,§ which curled beautifully, in its 
primitive state. A little surprise was manifest- 
ed at first, but the example was quickly followed 
by others. 

It does not appear what particular course of 
reading he pursued while at the University ; but 
one of his college friends declares that he was a 
perfect " helluo librorum" then as well as 
throughout his life ; and among his diversified 
writings there is abundant evidence that he had 
drunk deeply both of the Greek and Latin poets. 

His letters, which at this time seem to have 
been exercises in composition, give evidence of 
his industry, and at the same time indicate a 
mind imbued with he? „nen philosophy and Gre- 
cian republicanism. They are written often in 



* To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Dec, 1792. 

t This law belongs to Baliol College, and is still, or was 
very lately, in force. 

J To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq., Jan. 16, 1793. 

§ There is a portrait of my father engraved in Mr. Cot- 
tle's Reminiscences, which shows the long hair, &c. 



a style of inflated declamation, which, as we 
shall see, before many years had passed, sub- 
sided into a more natural and tranquil tone un- 
der the influence of his matured taste. 

A few of these are here laid before the reader. 

To G. C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Friday, Jan. 25, 1793, 6 in the evening. 
" Such is the hour when I begin this letter; 
when it will be finished is uncertain. Expect- 
ing Wynn to drink tea with me every moment, 
I have not patience to wait without employ- 
ment, and know of none more agreeable than 
that of writing to you. My Mentor, while he 
prohibits my writing, must nevertheless allow 
an exception in your favor; and believe me, I 
look upon it as one great proof of my own ref- 
ormation, or whatever title you may please to 
give, "when I can pass a whole week without 
composing one word. Over the pages of the 
philosophic Tacitus the hours of study pass as 
rapidly as even those which are devoted to my 
friends, and I have not , found as yet one hour 
which I could wish to have employed otherwise : 
this is saying very much in praise of a collegi- 
ate life ; but remember that a mind disposed to 
be happy will find happiness every where ; and 
why we should not be happy is beyond my phi- 
losophy to account for. Heraclitus certainly 
was a fool, and, what- is much more rare, an 
unhappy one. I never yet met with any fool 
who was not pleased with the idea of his own 
sense ; but for your whimpering sages, let sen- 
timent say what it will, they are men possessed 
with more envy than wisdom." 

To G. C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Saturday, Feb. 12, 5 in the morning. 

" Now, Bedford, this is more than you would 
do for me — quit your bed after only five hours' 
rest, light a fire, and then write a letter ; really, 
I think it would not have tempted me to rise 
unless assisted by other inducements. To-day 
I am going to walk to Abingdon with three 
men of this college ; and having made the pious 
resolution (your good health in a glass of red 
negus) of rising every morning at five to study, 
that the rest of the day may be at my own dis- 
posal, I procured an alarum clock and a tinder- 
box. This morning w r as the first. I rose, 
called up a neighbor, and read about three hund- 
red lines of Homer, when I found myself hun- 
gry; the bread and cheese were called in as 
auxiliaries, and I made some negus : as I spiced 
it my eye glanced over the board, and the as- 
semblage seemed so curious that I laid all aside 
for your letter — a lexicon, Homer, inkstand, 
candles, snuffers, wine, bread and cheese, nut- 
meg grater, and hour-glass. But I have given 
up time enough to my letter; the glass runs 
fast, and for once the expression is not merely 
figurative. 

" Monday. 

" How rapidly does Time hasten on when his 
wings are not clogged by melancholy ! Perhaps 
no human being ever more forcibly experienced 



/Etat. 19. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



63 



this than myself. Often have I counted the 
hours with impatience when, tired of reflection 
and all her unpleasant train, I wished to forget 
myself in sleep. Now I allow but six hours to 
my bed. and every morning;, before the watch- 
man rises, my fire is kindled and my bed cold : 
this is practical philosophy ; but every thing is 
valued by comparison, and, when compared 
with my neighbor, I am no philosopher. Two 
years ago Seward drank wine, and ate butter 
and sugar ; now, merely from the resolution of 
abridging the luxuries of life, water is his only 
drink, tea and dry bread his only breakfast. In 
one who professed philosophy this would be only 
practicing its tenets, but it is quite different with 
Seward. To the most odd and uncommon ap- 
pearance he adds manners, which, as one gets 
accustomed to them, are the most pleasing. At 
the age of fourteen he began learning, and the 
really useful knowledge he possesses must be 
imputed to a mind really desirous of improve- 
ment. c Do you not find your attention flag ?' 
I said to him as he was studying Hutchinson's 
Moral Philosophy in Latin. ' If our tutors 
would but make our studies interesting, we 
should pursue them with pleasure.' ' Certainly 
we should,' he replied ; 'imt I feel a pleasure in 
studying them, because I Know it is my duty.' 
This I take to be true philosophy, of that species 
which tends to make mankind happy, because 
it first makes them good. We had verses here 
upon the 30th of January to the memory of 
Charles the Martyr. It is a little extraordinary 
that you should quote those very lines to poor- 
Louis which I prefixed to my ode : ' His virtues 
plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the 
deep damnation of his taking off.' .... Morose 
austerity and stern enthusiasm are the character- 
istics of superstition ; but what is, in reality, 
more cheerful or happy than Religion ? I have 
in my own knowledge more than one instance 
of this, and doubt not you have likewise. Ought 
not, therefore, that wretch who styles himself a 
philosopher to be shunned like pestilence, who, 
because Christianity has to him no allurement, 
seeks to deprive the miserable of their only re- 
maining consolation? .... I keep a daily jour- 
nal for myself, as an account of time which I 
ought to be strict in ; but this, being only des- 
tined for my own eye, is uninteresting and un- 
important. Boswell might compile a few quar- 
tos from the loose memorandums, but they would 
tire the world more than he has already done. 
Twenty years hence this journal will be either a 
•source of pleasure or of regret ; that is, if I live 
twenty years, and for life I have really a very 
strong predilection ; not from Shakspeare's fear- 
fully beautiful passage, ' Ay, but to die and go 
we know not whither,' but from the hope that 
my life may be serviceable to my family, and 
happy to myself; if it be the longer life the bet- 
ter, existence will be delightful, and anticipation 
glorious. The idea of meeting a different fate 
in another world is enough to overthrow every 
atheistical doctrine. The very dreadful trials 
under which virtue so often labors must surely 



be only trials. Patience will withstand the 
pressure, and faith will lead to hope. Religion 
soothes every wound, and makes the bed of 
death a couch of felicity. Make the contrast 
yourself: look at the warrior, the hypocrite, 
and the libertine, in their last moments, and re- 
flection must strengthen every virtuous resolu- 
tion. May I, however, practice what I preach. 
Let me have d£200 a year and the comforts of do- 
mestic life, and my ambition aspires not further. 
" Most sincerely yours, 

" Robert Southey." 

To G. C. Bedford, Esq. 

" March 16, 1793. 

" I am now sitting without fire in a cold day, 
waiting for Wynn to go upon the Isis, 'sil- 
ver-slippered queen,' as Warton calls her ; the 
epithet may be classical, but it certainly is ridic- 
ulous. Of all poetical figures, the prosopopoeia 
is that most likely to be adopted by a savage 
nation, and which adds most ornament, but not 
to composition ; but, in the name of common 
sense, what appropriate idea does 'silver-slip- 
pered' convey ? Homer's Xpvao7ri6t2.og* prob- 
ably alludes to some well-known statue so hab- 
ited. Nature is a much better guide than an- 
tiquity. 

" Wednesday. 

" On the water I went yesterday, in a little 
skiff, which the least deviation from the balance 
would overset. To manage two oars and yet 
unable to handle one !t My first setting off was 
curious. I did not step exactly in the middle ; 
the boat tilted up, and a large barge from which 
I embarked alone saved me from a good duck- 
ing ; my arm, however, got completely wet. I 
tugged at the oar very much like a bear in a 
boat ; or, if you can conceive any thing more 
awkw r ard, liken me to it, and you will have a 

better simile When I walk over these 

streets, what various recollections throng upon 
me ! what scenes fancy delineates from the hour 
w T hen Alfred first marked it as the seat of learn- 
ing ! Bacon's study is demolished, so I shall 
never have the honor of being killed by its fall. 
Before my window Latimer and Ridley were 
burned, and there is not even a stone to mark 
the place where a monument should be erected 

to religious liberty I have walked over 

the ruins of Godstow Nunnery with sensations 
such as the site of Troy or Carthage would in- 
spire : a spot so famed by our minstrels, so cele- 
brated by tradition, and so memorable in the an- 
nals of legendary, yet romantic truth. Poor 
Rosamond ! some unskillful impostor has paint- 
ed an epitaph upon the chapel wall, evidently 
within this century. The precise spot where 
she lies is forgotten, and the traces are still 
visible of a subterranean passage — perhaps the 
scene of many a deed of darkness ; but we should 
suppose the best. Surely, among the tribe who 



* " 'Aypvp-'iTiEsa" would have been nearer the mark. 
Warton was imitating Milton, who uses the term " tinsel- 
slippered." 

t My father used to say he learned two things only at 
Oxford, to row and to swim. 



64 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 19. 



were secluded from the world, there may have 
been some whose motives were good among so 
many victims of compulsion and injustice. Do 
you recollect Richardson's plan for Protestant 
nunneries ?* To monastic foundations I have 
little attachment ; but were the colleges ever to 
be reformed (and reformation will not come be- 
fore it is wanted), I would have a little more of 
the discipline kept up. Temperance is much 
wanted ; the waters of Helicon are far too much 
polluted by the wine of Bacchus ever to produce 
any effect. With respect to its superiors, Ox- 
ford only exhibits waste of wigs and want of 
wisdom ; with respect to under-graduates, every 
species of abandoned excess. As for me, I re- 
gard myself too much to run into the vices so 
common and so destructive. I have not yet 
been drunk, nor mean to be so. What use can 
be made of a collegiate life I wish to make ; but, 
in the midst of all, when I look back to Rousseau, 
and compare myself either with his Emilius or 
the real pupil of Madame Brulenck, I feel asham- 
ed and humbled at the comparison. Never shall 
child of mine enter a public school or a uni- 
versity. Perhaps I may not be able so well to 
instruct him in logic or languages, but I can at 
least preserve him from vice. 

" Yours sincerely, 

" Robert Soutiiey." 

To Charles Collins, Esq. 
" Ledbury, Herefordshire ; Easter Sunday, 1793. 
" Had I, my dear Collins, the pen of Rousseau, 
I would attempt to describe the various scenes 
which have presented themselves to me, and the 
various emotions occasioned by them. On Wed- 
nesday morning, about eight o'clock, we sallied 
forth. My traveling equipage consisted of my 
diary, writing-book, pen, ink, silk handkerchief, 
and Milton's Defense. We reached Woodstock 
to breakfast, where I was delighted with read- 
ing the Nottingham address for peace. Perhaps 
you will call it stupidity which made me pass 
the very walls of Blenheim without turning from 
the road to behold the ducal palace : perhaps it 
was so ; but it was the stupidity of a democratic 
philosopher who had appointed a day in summer 

for the purpose Evesham Abbey detained 

me some time : it was here where Edward de- 
feated and slew Simon de Montfort. Often did 
I wish for your pencil, for never did I behold so 
beautiful a pile of ruins. I have seen the ab- 
beys of Battle and Malmsbury, but this is a com- 
plete specimen of the simple Gothic : a tower, 
quite complete, fronts the church, whose roof is 
drooping down, and admits through the chasm 
the streaming light ; the high, pointed window 



* " Considering the condition of single women in the 
middle classes, it is not speaking too strongly to assert that 
the establishment of Protestant nunneries upon a wide 
plan and liberal scale would be the greatest benefit that 
could possibly be conferred upon these kingdoms. The 
name, indeed, is deservedly obnoxious, for nunneries, 
such as they exist in Roman Catholic countries, and such 
as at this time are being re-established in this, are connect- 
ed with the worst corruptions of popery, being only nurs- 
eries of superstition and of misery." — Southq/'s Colloquies, 
vol. i., p. 338. 



frames, where the high grass waves to the lone- 
ly breeze ; and that beautiful moss, which at 
once ornaments and carpets the monastic pile, 
rapt me to other years. I recalled the savage 
sons of superstition, I heard the deep-toned mass, 
and the chanted prayer for those that fell in 
fight; but fancy soon recurred to a more en- 
chanting scene — ' The Blind Beggar of Beth- 
nal Green and his Daughter :' you know how 
intimately connected with this now moldermg 
scene that ballad is. Over this abbey I could 
detain you, Collins, forever, so many, so various 
are the reveries it caused. We reached Wor- 
cester to dinner the second day Here we 

stayed three days; and I rode with Mr. Sev- 
ern to Kidderminster, with intent to breakfast 
at , but all the family were out. We re- 
turned by Bewdley. There is an old mansion, 
once Lord Herbert's, now moldering away, in 
so romantic a situation, that I soon lost myself 
in dreams of days of yore — the tapestried room — 
the listed fight — the vassal-filled hall — the hos- 
pitable fire — the old baron and his young daugh- 
ter : these formed a most delightful day-dream. 
How horrid it is to wake into common life from 
these scenes ! at a moment when you are trans- 
ported to happier times to descend to realities ! 
Could these visions last forever ! Yesterday we 
walked twenty-five miles over Malvern Hills to 
Ledbury, to Seward's brothers. Here I am before 
breakfast, and how soon to be interrupted I know 
not. Believe me, I shall return reluctantly to 
Oxford. These last ten days seem like years to 
look back — so crowded with different pictures. 
.... This peripatetic philosophy pleases me 
more and more ; the twenty-six miles I walked 
yesterday neither fatigued me then nor now. 
Who, in the name of common sense, would travel 
stewed in a leathern box when they have legs, 
and those none of the shortest, fit for use ? What* 
scene can be more calculated to expand the soul 
than the sight of Nature, in all her loveliest 
works ? We must walk over Scotland : it will 
be an adventure to delight us all the remainder 
of our lives. We will wander over the hills of 
Morven, and mark the driving blast, perchance 
bestrodden by the spirit of Ossian." 

On his return to Baliol he writes to another 
friend thus characteristically, affording a curious 
picture of his own mind at this time. 

" April 4, 1793. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" My philosophy, which has so long been of a 
kind peculiar to myself — neither of the school of 
Plato, Aristotle, Westminster, nor the Miller — is 
at length settled : I am become a peripatetic 
philosopher. Far, however, from adopting the 
tenets of any self-sufficient cynic or puzzling 
sophist, my sentiments will be found more en- 
livened by the brilliant colors of fancy, nature, 
and Rousseau than the positive dogmas of the 
Stagirite or the metaphysical refinements of his 
antagonist. I aspire not to the honorary titles 
of subtle disputant or divine doctor. I wish to 
found no school, to drive no scholars mad. Ideas 
rise up with the scenes I view ; some pass away 



iETAT. 19. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



65 



with the momentary glance, some are engraved 
upon the tablet of memory, and some impressed 
upon the heart. You have told me what phi- 
losophy is not, and I can give you a little more 
information upon the subject. It is not reading 
Johannes Secundus because he may have some 
poetical lines ; it is not wearing the hair un- 
dressed, in opposition to custom, perhaps (this I 
feel the severity of, and blush for) ; it is not re- 
jecting Lucan lest he should vitiate the taste, 
and reading without fear what may corrupt the 
heart ; it is not clapped on with a wig, or com- 
municated by the fashionable hand of the barber. 
It had nothing to do with Watson when he burn- 
ed his books ; it does not sit upon a wool-sack ; 
honor can not bestow it, persecution can not take 
it away. It illumined the prison of Socrates, 
but fled the triumph of Octavius : it shrank from 
the savage murderer, Constantine ; it dignified 
the tent of Julian. It has no particular love for 
colleges ; in crowds it is alone, in solitude most 
engaged ; it renders life agreeable, and death 

enviable I have lately read the : Man of 

Feeling :' if you have never yet read it, do now, 
from my recommendation ; few works have ever 
pleased me so painfully or so much. It is very- 
strange that man should be delighted with the 
highest pain that can be produced. I even be- 
gin to think that both pain and pleasure exist 
only in idea. But this must not be affirmed ; 
the first twinge of the toothache, or retrospective 
glance, will undeceive me with a vengeance. 

" Purity of mind is something like snow, best 
in the shade. Gibraltar is on a rock but it 
would be imprudent to defy her enemies, and call 
them to the charge. My heart is equally easy of 
impression with Rousseau, and perhaps more te- 
nacious of it. Refinement I adore, but to me the 
highest delicacy appears so intimately connect- 
ed with it, that the union is like body and soul." 

And again, a few weeks afterward, he says, 
m reference to some observations which had been 
made as to his not sufficiently cultivating his 
abilities : " Wynn accuses me of want of ambi- 
tion; the accusation gave me great pleasure. 
He wants me to wish distinction, and to seek it. 
I want it not, I wish it not. The abilities which 
Nature gave me, which Fashion has not cramp- 
ed, and which Vanity often magnifies, are never 
neglected. I will cultivate them with diligence, 
but only for my friends. If I can bring myself 
sometimes to their remembrance, I have attained 
the ne plus ultra of my ambition."* 

The early part of the long vacation was spent 
in an excursion into Herefordshire to visit a col- 
lege friend. " Like the Wandering Jew," he 
writes from thence, "you see I am here, and 
there, and every where ; now tramping it to 
Worcester, now peripateticating it to Cambridge, 
and now an equestrian in the land of cider, trav- 
ersing the shores of the Wye, and riding list- 
lessly over the spot where Ariconium stood, 
walking above the dusty tombs of my progeni- 
tors in the Cathedral. "f 



* To G. C Bedford, May 6, 1793. 
t To Grosvenor C. Bedford, July 31, 1793. 
E 



In the following month (August) he went to 
visit his old schoolfellow and constant corre- 
spondent, Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, who then re- 
sided with his parent at Brixton Causeway, four 
miles on the Surrey side of the metropolis ; and 
there, the day after completing his nineteenth 
year, he resumed, and in six weeks completed, 
his poem of Joan of Arc, the subject of which 
had been previously suggested to him in con- 
versation with Mr. Bedford, and of which he had 
then written above three hundred lines. In one 
of the prefaces to the collected edition of his 
poems, he says, " My progress would not have 
been so rapid had it not been for the opportuni- 
ty of retirement which I enjoyed there, and the 
encouragement I received. Tranquil, indeed, 
the place was, for the neighborhood did not 
extend beyond half a dozen families, and the 
London style and habits of life had not obtained 
among them. Uncle Toby might have enjoyed 
his rood and a half of ground there, and not have 
had it known. A fore-court separated the house 
from the foot-path and the road in front ; behind 
these was a large and^ well-stocked garden, with 
other spacious premises, in which utility and 
ornament were in some degree combined. At 
the extremity of the garden, and under the shade 
of four lofty Linden-trees, was a summer-house, 
looking on an ornamented grass-plat, and fitted 
up as a conveniently habitable room. That sum- 
mer-house was allotted to me, and there my 
mornings were passed at the desk." 

Three months were most happily spent here 
in various amusements and occupations, of which 
writing Joan of Arc was the chief; but the poet- 
ical bow was not always bent ; a war of exterm- 
ination was carried on against the wasps, which 
abounded in unwonted numbers, and which they 
exercised their skill in shooting with horse-pis- 
tols loaded with sand, the only sort of sporting, 
I have heard my father say, he ever attempted. 

The following amusing letter was written 
soon after this visit. 

To Grosvenor Charles Bedford, Esq. 

" Bristol, Oct. 26, 1793. 

" Never talk to me of obstinacy, for, contrary 
to all the dictates of sound sense, long custom, 
and inclination, I have spoiled a sheet of paper 
by cutting it to the shape of your fancy. Ac- 
cuse* me not of irascibility, for I wrote to you ten 
days back, and, though you have never vouch- 
safed me an answer, am now writing with all 
the mildness and goodness of a philosopher. 

"Call me Job, for I am without clothes, ex- 
pecting my baggage from day to day ; and much 
as I fear its loss unrepining, own I am modest in 
assuming no merit for all these good qualities. 
Know then, most indolent of mortals, that my 
baggage is not yet arrived, that I am fearful of 
its safety, and yet less troubled than all the rest 
of the family, who cry out loudly upon my pup- 
pet-show dress, and desire I will write to inquire 
concerning it 

" Now I am much inclined to fill this sheet, and 
that with verse, but I will punish myself to tor- 



66 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 20. 



raent you : you shall have half a prose letter. The j 
tollege bells are dinning the king's proclamation 
in my ear, the linings of my breeches are torn, 
you are silent, and all this makes me talkative j 
and angrily communicative ; so that, had you ; 
merited it, you would have received such a let- ! 
ter — so philosophic, poetical, grave, erudite, 
amusing, instructive, elegant, simple, delightful, 
simplex munditiis — in short, to ayadov ncu to 
apioTov, -o j3e?<.Tio~Tov — such a letter, Grosvenor, , 
full of odes, elegiacs, epistles, monodramas, co- 
modramas, tragodramas, all sorts of dramas, j 
though I have not tasted spirits to-day. Don't j 
think me drunk, for if I am, 'tis with sobriety ; 
and I certainly feel most seriously disposed to be 
soberly nonsensical. Now you wish I would dis- 
pose my folly to a short series ; which sentence 
if you comprehend, you will do more than I can. 
You must not be surprised at nonsense, for I 
have been reading the history of philosophy, the 
ideas of Plato, the logic of Aristotle, and the 
heterogeneous dogmas of Pythagoras, Antis- 
thenes, Zeno, Epicurus, and Pyrrho, till I have 
metaphysicized away all my senses, and so you 

are the better for it 

" Now good-night ! Egregious nonsense, ex- 
ecrably written, is all you merit. my clothes ! 

Joan !"* 

" Sunday morning. 
" Now. my friend, whether it be from the day 
itself, from the dull weather, or from the dream 
of last night, I know not, but I am a little more 
serious than when I laid down the pen. My 
baggage makes me very uneasy : the loss of 
what is intrinsically worth only the price of the 
paper would be more than ever I should find 
time, or perhaps ability, to repair ; and even sup- 
posing some rascal should get them and publish 
tnem, I should be more vexed than at the utter 
loss. Do write immediately. I direct to you, j 
that you may have this the sooner. Inform me 
when you receive it, and with what direction. 
It is almost a fortnight since I left Brixton, and 

1 am equipped in such old shirts, stockings, and 
shoes, as have been long cast off, and have lost 
all this time, in which I should have transcribed 
half of Joan 

" Of the various sects that once adorned the 
republic of Athens, to me that of Epicurus, while 
it maintained its original purity, appears most 
consonant to human reason. I am not speaking 
of his metaphysics and atomary system ; they are 
(as all cosmogonies must be) ridiculous ; but of 
that system of ethics and pleasure combined, 
which he taught in the garden. When the phi- 
losopher declared that the ultimate design of life 
is happiness, and happiness consists in virtue, he 
laid the foundation of a system which might have 
benefited mankind. His life was the most tem- 
perate, his manner the most affable, displaying 
that urbanity which can not fail of attracting 
esteem. Plotinus, a man memorable for cor- 
rupting philosophy, was in favor with Gallienus, 
with whose imperial qualifications you are well 

* The first MS. of Joan of Arc was in his bassrase. 



acquainted : the enthusiast requested his royal 
highness would give him a ruined city in Campa- 
nia, which he might rebuild and people with phi- 
losophers, governed by the laws of Plato, and from 
whom the city should be called Platonopolis. Gal- 
lienus, who was himself an elegant scholar, was 
pleased with the plan, but his friends dissuaded 
him from the experiment. The design would 
certainly have proved impracticable in that de 
clining and degenerate age — most probably in 
any age. New visionary enthusiasts, would have 
been continually arising, fresh sects formed, and 
each would have been divided and subdivided till 
all was anarchy. Yet I can not help wishing 
the experiment had been tried ; it could not have 
been productive of evil, and we might, at thi? 
period, have received instruction from the history 
of Platonopolis. Under the Antonines or undei 
Julian the request would have been granted : 
despotism is perhaps a blessing under such men. 
.... I could rhapsodize most delightfully upon 
this subject ; plan out my city — her palaces, her 
hovels — all simplex munditiis (my favorite quo- 
tation) ; but if you were with me, Southeyopolis 
would soon be divided into two sects: while I 
should be governing- with Plato (correcting a few 
of Plato's absurdities with some of my own), 
and almost deifying Alcaeus, Lucan, and Milton, 
you (as visionary as myself) would be dreaming 
of Utopian kings possessed of the virtue of the 
Antonines, regulated by peers every one of whom 
should be a Falkland, and by a popular assem- 
bly where every man should unite the integrity 
of a Cato, the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and 
the loyalty of a Jacobite. 

" Yours most sincerely, 

"R. S." 

For some reason which does not appear, he 
did not reside during the following term at Ba 
liol, and the latter part of the year was conse- 
quently passed at Bristol at Miss Tyler's. Some 
extracts from his letters will sufficiently illus- 
trate this period. 

" For once in my life I rejoiced that Gros- 
venor Bedford's paper was short, and his letter 
at the end. To suppose that I felt otherwise 
than grieved and indignant at the fate of the un- 
fortunate Queen of France was supposing me a 
I brute, and to request an avowal of what I felt 
' implied a suspicion that I did not feel. You 
seemed glad, when arguments against the sys- 
j tem of republicanism had failed, to grasp at the 
crimes of wretches who call themselves Repub- 
Hcans, and stir up my feelings against my judg- 
ment."* 

To another of his Westminster friends at Christ 
! Church he writes : " Remember me to Wynn. 
i . . . I have much for his perusal. Perhaps all 
! my writings are owing to my acquaintance with 
' him ; he saw the first, and I knew the value of 
. his praise too much to despise it. Wynn will 
like many parts of my Joan, but he will shake 
j his head at the subject, and with propriety, if I 
i had designed it for publication ; but as the amuse- 

* Oct. 29, 1793. 



/Etat. 00. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



67 



ment of my leisure, I heeded no laws but those 
of inclination. He will be better pleased to hear 
I have waded through the task of correcting and 
expunging my literary rubbish. There is some- 
thing very vain in thus writing of myself, but I 
know that the regard which Wynn entertains 
for me, while he sees the vanity, will make him 
pleased with the intelligence."* 

Soon afterward he again refers to the then 
all-engrossing topic of the day — the French Rev- 
olution, the heinous enormities of which were 
beginning a little to disturb his democratic views. 
" I am sick of this world, and discontented with 
every one in it. The murder of Brissot has com- 
pletely harrowed up my faculties, and I begin to 
believe that virtue can only aspire to content in 
obscurity ; for happiness is out of the question. 
I look round the world, and every where find 
the same mournful spectacle — the strong tyran- 
nizing over the weak, man and beast. The same 
depravity pervades the whole creation ; oppres- 
sion is triumphant every where, and the only dif- 
ference is, that it acts in Turkey through the 
anger of a grand seignior, in France of a revo- 
lutionary tribunal, and in England of a prime 
minister. There is no place for virtue. Seneca 
was a visionary philosopher ; even in the deserts 
of Arabia, the strongest will be the happiest, and 
the same rule holds good in Europe and in Abys- 
sinia. Here are you and I theorizing upon prin- 
ciples we can never practice, and wasting our 
time and youth — you in scribbling parchments, 
and I in spoiling quires with poetry. I am ready 
to quarrel with my friends for not making me a 
carpenter, and with myself for devoting myself to 
pursuits certainly unimportant, and of no real 
utility either to myself or toothers."t 

In a letter to another friend, Horace Bedford, 
that heavy depression which the objectless na- 
ture of his life at this time brought upon him is 
painfully shown. 

" I read and write till my eyes ache, and still 
find time hanging as heavy round my neck as the 
stone round the neck of a drowning dog. . . . 
Nineteen years have elapsed since I set sail upon 
the ocean of life, in an ill-provided boat ; the ves- 
sel weathered many a storm, and I took every 
distant cloud for land. Still pushing for the 
Fortunate Islands, I discovered that they existed 
not for me, and that, like others wiser and bet- 
ter than myself, I must be content to wander 
about and never gain the port. Nineteen years ! 
certainly a fourth part of my life ; perhaps how 
great a part ; and yet I have been of no service 
to society. Why, the clown who scares crows 
for twopence a day is a more useful member of 
society ; he preserves the bread which I eat in 

idleness Yesterday is just one year since 

I entered my name in the vice-chancellor's book. 
It is a year of which I would wish to forget the 
transactions, could I only remember their effects. 
My mind has been very much expanded ; my 
hopes, I trust, extinguished ; so adieu to hope 
and fear, but not to folly."J 



* To Charles Collins, Esq., Bristol, Oct. 30, 1793. 

t To Gros venor Bedford, Nov. 11, 1793. J Nov. 3, 1793. 



To Horace Walpoh Bedford, Esq. 
(With verses.) 
" College Green, Bristol, Nov. 13, 1793. 

TV ^ ^f TT * * ^ 

"I lay down Leonidas to go on with your let- 
ter. It has ever been a favorite poem with me. 
I have read it, perhaps, more frequently than any 
other composition, and always with renewed 
pleasure : it possesses not the " thoughts that 
breathe and words that burn," but there is a 
something very different from those strong efforts 
of imagination, that please the judgment and feed 
the fancy without moving the heart. The in- 
terest I feel in the poem is, perhaps, chiefly ow- 
ing to the subject, certainly the noblest ever un- 
dertaken. It needs no argument to prove this 
assertion. 

" Milton is above comparison, and stands alone 
as much from the singularity of the subject as 
the excellence of the diction : there remain Ho- 
mer, Virgil, Lucan, Statius, S. Italicus, and V. 
Flaccus, among the ancients. I recollect no 
others, and among their subjects you will find 
none so interesting as the self-devoted Leonidas. 

" Among the moderns we know Ariosto, Tasso, 
Camoens, Voltaire, and our own immortal Spen- 
ser ; the other Italian authors in this line, and the 
Spanish ones, I know not. Indeed, that period of 
history upon which Glover's epics are founded is 
the grandest ever yet displayed. A constellation 
of such men never honored mankind at any other 
time, or, at least, never were called into the ener- 
gy of action. Leonidas and his immortal band — 
iEschylus, Themistocles, and Aristides the per- 
fect republican — even the satellites of Xerxes 
were dignified by Artemisia and the injured Spar- 
tan, Demaratus. To look back into the page of 
history — to be present at Thermopylae, at Sala- 
mis, Plataea — to hear the songs of uEschylus and 
the lessons of Aristides — and then behold what 
Greece is — how fallen even below contempt — 
is one of the most miserable reflections the classic 
mind can endure. What a republic ! what a 
province ! 

" If this world did but contain ten thousand 
people of both sexes visionary as myself, how 
delightfully would we repeople Greece and turn 
out the Moslem. I would turn Crusader, and 
make a pilgrimage to Parnassus at the head of 
my republicans (N.B., only lawful head), and 
there reinstate the Muses in their original splen- 
dor. We would build a temple to Eleutherian 
Jove from the quarries of Paros — replant the 
grove of Academus — ay, and the garden of Epi- 
curus, where your brother and I would com- 
mence teachers ; yes, your brother ; for if he 
would not comb out the powder and fling away 
the poultice to embark in such an expedition, he 
deserves to be made a German elector or a West 
India planter. Charles Collins should occupy the 
chair of Plato, #nd hold forth to the Societas Sci- 
entium Literariorum Studiosorum (not unaptly 
styled the ' Jlociety of Knowing Ones') ; and we 
would actually send for to represent Eu- 
clid. No-#, could I lay down my whole plan — 
build my house in the f> -^'tvest Doric stif*— 



68 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 20. 



plant out the garden like Wolmer's, and imagine 1 
just such a family to walk in it, when here comes 
a rascal by crying ' Hare skins and rabbit skins,' 
and my poor house, which was built in the air, 
falls to pieces, and leavesme, like most visionary 
projectors, staring on disappointment. * * 

##•#'#### # 

When we meet at Oxford, which I hope we shall 
in January, there are a hundred things better 
communicated in conversation than by corre- 
spondence. I have no object of pursuit in life 
but to fill the passing hour and fit myself for 
death ; beyond these views I have nothing. To 
be of service to my friends would be serving my- 
self most essentially ; and there are few enter- 
prises, however hazardous and however roman- 
tic, in which I would not willingly engage. 

" It was the favorite intention of Cowley to 
retire with books to a cottage in America, and 
seek that happiness in solitude which he could 
not find in society. My asylum there would be 
sought for different reasons (and no prospect in 
life gives me half the pleasure this visionary one 
affords) . I should be pleased to reside in a coun- 
try where men's abilities would insure respect ; 
where society was upon a proper footing, and man 
was considered as more valuable than money ; 
and where I could till the earth, and provide by 
honest industry the meat which my wife would 
dress with pleasing care — redeunt spectacula 
mane — reason comes with the end of the paper. 
" Yours most sincerely, 

"R. Southey." 

To a proposal from Mr. Grosvenor Bedford to 
join with him in some publication, something, I 
suppose, after the manner of the Flagellant, he 
replies : 

" Your plan of a general satire I am ready to 
partake when you please. Pope, Swift, and At- 
terbury, you know, once attempted it, but malev- 
olence intruded into the design, and Martin Scrib- 
lerus bore too strong a resemblance to Woodward. 
Swift's part is more leveled at follies than at vice : 
establish the empire of justice, and vice and folly 
will be annihilated together. Draw out your plan 
and send it me, if you have resolution for so ar- 
duous a task •, you know mine. 

" I have plans lying by me enough for many 
years or many lives. Yours, however, I shall be 
glad to engage in. Whether it be the devil or 
not, I know not, but my pen delights in lashing 
vice and folly."* 

The following letters will conclude the year. 
In the latter one we have a curious picture of the 
marvelous industry with which he must have fol- 
lowed his poetical pursuits. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Bath, Dec. 14, 1793. 
t; The gentleman who brings this letter must 
occupy a few lines of it. His name is Lovel. 
I know him but very little personally, though 
long by report : you must already see he is ec- 
centric. Perhaps I do wrong in giving him this, 
Dut I wish your opinion of him. Those who are 

* Nov. 22, 1793. 



superficially acquainted with him feel wonder ; 
those who know him, love. This character I 
hear. He is on the point of marrying a young 
wnman with whom I spent great part of my 
younger years. We were bred up together, I 
may; almost say, and that period was the happi- 
est of my life. Mr. Lovel has very great abili- 
ties : I^e writes well ; in short, I wish his ac- 
quaintance myself; and, as his stay in town is 
very short, you will forgive the introduction. 
Perhaps you may rank him with Duppa, and, 
supposing excellence to be at 100, Duppa is 
certainly much above 50. Now, my dear Gros- 
venor, I doubt I am acting improperly ; it was 
enough to introduce myself so rudely ; but abil- 
ities always claim respect, and that Lovel has 
these I think very certain. Characters, if any- 
ways marked, are well worth studying ; and a 
young man of two-and-twenty, who has been his 
own master since fifteen, and who owes all his 
knowledge to himself, is so far a respectable 
character. My knowledge of him, I again re- 
peat, is very confined. His intended bride I 
look upon as almost a sister, and one should 
know one's brother-in-law 

"What is to become of me at ordination, 
Heaven only knows ! After keeping the strait 
path so long, the Test Act will be a stumbling- 
block to honesty ; so chance and Providence 
must take care of that, and I will fortify myself 
against chance. The wants of man are so very 
few that they must be attainable somewhere, 
and, whether here or in America, matters little. 
I have long learned to look upon the world as 
my country. 

" Now, if you are in the mood for a reverie, 
fancy only me in America ; imagine my ground 
uncultivated since the creation, and see me wield- 
ing the ax, now to cut down the tree, and now 
the snakes that nestled in it. Then see me grub- 
bing up the roots, and building a nice, snug little 
dairy with them : three rooms in my cottage, and 
my only companion some poor negro whom I have 
bought on purpose to emancipate. After a hard 
day's toil, see me sleep upon rushes, and, in very 
bad weather, take out my casette and write to 
you, for you shall positively write to me in Amer- 
ica. Do not imagine I shall leave rhyming or 
philosophizing ; so thus your friend will realize 
the romance of Cowley, and even outdo the se- 
clusion of Rousseau ; till at last comes an ill- 
looking Indian with a tomahawk, and scalps me 
— a most melancholy proof that society is very 
bad, and that I shall have done very little to im- 
prove it ! So vanity, vanity will come from my 
lips, and poor Southey will either be cooked for 
a Cherokee T or oysterized by a tiger. 

" I have finished transcribing Joan, and bound 
her in marble paper with green ribbon, and now 
am about copying all my remainables to carry 
to Oxford. Thence once more a clear field, and 
then another epic poem, and then another, and 
so on, till Truth shall write on my tomb, * Here 
lies an odd mortal, whose life only benefited the 
paper manufacturers, and whose death will onlj 
hurt the post-office.' 



Mtat. 20. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



69 



" Do send my great-coat, &e. My distresses 
are so great that I want words to express the in- 
convenience I suffer. So, as breakfast is not yet 
ready (it is almost nine o'clock), you shall have 
an ode to my great-coat. Excellent subject, ex- 
cellent trifler — or blockhead, say you ; but, Bed- 
ford, I must either be too trifling or too serious ; 
the first can do no harm, and I know the last 
does no good. So come forth, my book of Epis- 
tles." 

To Horace Bedford, Esq. 

"Dec. 22, 1793. 

" I have accomplished a most arduous task, 
transcribing all my verses that appear worth the 
trouble, except letters. Of these I took one list, 
another of my pile of stuff and nonsense, and a 
third of what I have burned and lost. Upon an 
average, 10,000 verses are burned and lost, the 
same number preserved, and 15,000 worthless. 
Consider that all my letters* are excluded, and 
you may judge what waste of paper I have oc- 
casioned. Three years yet remain before I can 
become anyways settled in life, and during that 
interval my object must be to pass each hour in 
employment. The million would say I must 
study divinity ; the bishops would give me folios 
to peruse, little dreaming that to me every blade 
of grass and every atom of matter is worth all 
the Fathers. I can bear a retrospect ; but when 
I look forward to taking orders, a thousand dread- 
ful ideas crowd at once upon my mind. Oh, 
Horace, my views in life are surely very hum- 
ble ; I ask but honest independence, and that 
will never be my lot 

" I have many epistolary themes in embryo. 
Your brother's next will probably be upon the 
advantages of long noses, and the recent service 
mine accomplished in time of need. Philosophy 
and folly take me by turns. I spent three hours 
one night last week in cleaving an immense 
wedge of old oaken timber without ax, hatchet, 
or wedges ; the chopper was one instrument, 
one piece of wood wedged another, and a third 
made the hammer. Shadf liked it as well as 
myself, so we finished the job and fatigued our- 
selves. I amused myself, after writing your let- 
ter, with taking profiles ; to-day I shall dignify 
my own and Shad's with pasteboard, marbled 
border, and a bow of green ribbon, to hang up 

in my collection room The more I see of 

this strange world, the more I am convinced 
Jhat society requires desperate remedies. The 
friends I have (and you know me to be cautious 
in choosing them), are many of them struggling 
with obstacles, which never could happen were 
man what Nature intended him. A torrent of 
ideas bursts into my mind when I reflect upon 
this subject. In the hours of sanguine expecta- 
tion these reveries are agreeable, but more fre- 
quently the visions of futurity are dark and 
gloomy, and the only ray that enlivens the scene 
beams on America. You see I must fly from 



* Many of his early letters are written in verse, often 
on four skies of folio paper, 
t A servant of his aunt's. Miss Tyler. 



thought : to-day I begin Cowper's Homer, and 
write an ode ; to-morrow read and write some- 
thing else." 



CHAPTER II. 

OPINIONS, POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS SCHEMES 

OF FUTURE LIFE FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH 

MR. COLERIDGE PANTISOCRACY QUARREL 

WITH MISS TYLER LETTER TO THOMAS 

SOUTHEY. A.D. 1794. 

So passed the close of 1793. At the latter 
end of the following January my father was 
again in residence at Baliol. Before, however, 
we come to the events of the year, it is necessa- 
ry to. make a few preliminary remarks. 

The expenses of my father's education, both 
at school and college, had been defrayed by his 
uncle, the Rev. Herbert Hill, at that time chap- 
lain to the British Factory at Lisbon, whom he 
so touchingly addresses in the Dedication to the 
" Colloquies :" 

" O friend ! O more than father ! whom I found 
Forbearing always, always kind ; to whom 
No gratitude can speak the debt I owe." 

And the kindness with which this was done had 
been the more perfectly judicious, as, although 
it had been both wished and hoped that my fa- 
ther would take holy orders, his uncle had never 
even hinted to him that he was educating him 
with that view. Other friends, however, had 
not shown the same judgment, and he had up to 
this time considered himself as " destined for the 
Church" — a prospect to which he had never rec- 
onciled himself, and which now began to weigh 
heavily upon him. 

It is not to be concealed or denied that the 
state of my father's mind with respect to relig- 
ion, and more especially with respect to the 
doctrines of the Church of England, was very 
different in very early life from the opinions and 
feelings which he held in the maturity of his lat- 
er years. Neither is this much to be wondered 
at when we remember the sort of "bringing up" 
he had received, the state of society at that time, 
and the peculiar constitution of his own mind. 
His aunt, Miss Tyler, although possessing many 
good qualities, could hardly be said to have been 
a religiously-minded person. He had been re- 
moved from one school to another, undergoing 
" many of those sad changes through which a 
gentle spirit has to pass in this uneasy and dis- 
ordered world;"* and he has said himself, 
doubtless from his own experience, that such 
schools are " unfavorable to devotional feelings, 
and destructive to devotional habits ; that noth- 
ing which is not intentionally profane can be 
more irreligious than the forms of worship which 
are observed there ; and that at no time has a 
schoolboy's life afforded any encouragement, any 
inducement, or any opportunity for devotion."! 
It must also be borne in mind that the aspect 
of the Church in this country at that time, as it 
presented itself to those who did not look below 
* Life of Cowper, vol. i., p. 6. t Ibid., p. 12. 



70 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



.SEtat. 20 



the surface, was very different from that which 
it now presents. A cloud, as it were, hung 
over it ; if it had not our unhappy divisions, it 
had not, also, the spur to exertion, and the sort 
of spiritual freshness, which the storms of those 
dissensions have infused into it — good coming 
out of evil, as it so often does in the course of 
God's providence. 

It is not so strange, therefore, that he should 
have entertained an invincible repugnance to 
taking holy orders. Enthusiastic and visionary 
in the extreme, imbued strongly with those po- 
litical views* which rarely fail to produce lax 
and dangerous views in religion, as his uncle 
quietly observes in one of his letters to him — 
" I. knew what your politics were, and therefore 
had reason to suspect what your religion might 
be" — viewing the Church only as she appeared 
in the lives and preaching of many of her un- 
worthy, many of her cold and indolent minis- 
ters ; never directed to those studies which 
would probably have solved his doubts and set- 
tled his opinions, and unfortified by an acquaint- 
ance with " that portion of the Church's history, 
the knowledge of which," as he himself says, 
; ' if early inculcated, might arm the young heart 
against the pestilent errors of these distempered 
times,"! it is little to be wondered at if he fell 
into some of these errors. 

His opinions at this time were somewhat 
unsettled, although they soon took the form 
of Unitarianism, from which point they seem 
gradually to have ascended, without any abrupt 
transition, as the troubles of life increased his 
devotional feelings, and the study of religious 
authors informed his better judgment, until they 
finally settled down into a strong attachment to 
the doctrines of the Church of England. For 
the present he felt he could not assent to those 
doctrines, and therefore, although no man could 
possibly have been more willing to labor perse- 
veringly and industriously for a livelihood, he 
began to feel much anxiety and distress of mind 
as to his future prospects, and to make several 
fruitless attempts to find some suitable profession. 

These several projects are best narrated by 
himself : 

M Once more am I settled at Baliol, once more 
among my friends, alternately studying and phi- 
losophizing, railing at collegiate folly, and en- 
joying rational society. My prospects in life 
are totally altered. I am resolved to come out 
iEsculapius secundus Our society at Ba- 
liol continues the same in number. The fresh- 
men of the term are not estimable (as Duppa 
says), and we are enough with the three Corpus 
men, who generally join us. The fiddle with 
one string is gone, and its place supplied with a 



* In the following passage, written with reference to 
the times of Charles I., my father has evidently in view 
the causes of his own early Republican bias : " And, at 
the same time, many of the higher classes had imbibed 
from their classical studies prejudices in favor of a popu- 
lar government, which were as congenial to the generous 
temper of inexperienced youth as they are inconsistent 
with sound knowledge and mature judgment." — Book of 
Jie Church, vol. ii., p. 356. 

t Book of the Church ; Preface, p. 1. 



harpsichord in Burnett's room. Lightfoot stil 
melodizes on the flute, and, had I but a Jews 
harp, the concert would be complete .... Or 
Friday next my anatomical studies begin ; thej 
must be pursued with attention. Apollo ha? 
hitherto only received my devotion as the deitj 
of poets ; I must now address him as a physi 
cian. I could allege many reasons for my pref 
erence of physic. Some disagreeable circum 
stances must attend the study, but they are more 
than counterbalanced by the expansion it give? 
the mind, and the opportunities it affords of do 
ing good. Chemistry I must also attend : of 
this study I have always been fond, and it is now 
necessary to pursue it with care."* 

And again, a few days after, he writes to Mr. 
Grosvenor Bedford : " I purpose studying phys- 
ic : innumerable and insuperable objections ap- 
peared to divinity : surely the profession I have 
chosen affords at least as many opportunities of 
benefiting mankind In this country, a lib- 
eral education precludes the man of no fortune 
from independence in the humbler lines of life : 
he may either turn soldier, or embrace one of 
three professions, in all of which there is too 

much quackery Very soon shall I com- 

j mence my anatomical and chemical studies. 

j When well grounded in these, I hope to study 

under Cruikshank to perfect myself in anatomy. 

attend the clinical lectures, and then commence 

— Doctor Southey ! ! !" 

He accordingly attended, for some little time, 
the anatomy school, and the lectures of the med- 
ical professors, but he soon abandoned the idea 
as hastily as he had adopted it ; partly from be- 
ing unable to overcome his disgust to a dissect- 
ing-room, and partly because the love of literary 
pursuits was so strong within him, that, without 
his being altogether aware of it at the time, it 
prevented his applying his mind sufficiently to 
the requisite studies. His inclinations pointed 
ever to literature as the needle to the north; 
and however he might resolve, and however 
temporary circumstances led him for some years 
to attempt other objects and to frame other plans, 
an invisible arm seemed to draw him away from 
them, and place him in that path which he was 
finally destined to pursue, for which he had been 
fitted by Providence, and in which he was to 
find happiness, distinction, and permanent use- 
fulness both to his country and to his kind. 

Among other schemes which at this time 
crossed his mind was the possibility of selling . 
the reversion of some property which he con- 
ceived he should inherit from his uncle, John 
Southey, of Taunton ; and he now requests his 
friend, Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, to make some 
inquiries at Doctors Commons on the subject. 
" The information you may there receive," he 
writes, " will perhaps have some weight in my 
scale of destiny : it rests partly on the will of 
John Cannon Southey, who died in 1760. Hope 
and fear have almost lost their influence over m 
If my reversion can be sold for any comfortable 
independence, I am sure you would advise mo 
* To Horace Bedford, Esq., Jan. 24, 1794. 



^TAT. 20. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



to seize happiness with mediocrity than lose it 
in waiting for affluence. My wishes are not 

above mediocrity Every day do I repine 

at the education that taught me to handle a lex- 
icon instead of a hammer, and destined me for 
one of the drones of society. Add to this, that 
had I a sufficiency in independence, I have ev- 
ery reason to expect happiness. The most 
pleasing visions of domestic life would be real- 
ized When I think on this topic, it is 

rather to cool myself with philosophy than to in- 
dulge in speculation. Twenty is young for a 
Stoic, you will say ; but they have been years 

of experience and observation They have 

shown me that happiness is attainable ; but, 
withal, taught me by repeated disappointments 
never to build on so sandy a foundation. It will 
be all the same a hundred years hence, is a vul- 
gar adage which has often consoled me. Now 
do I execrate a declamation which I must make. 

for emancipation from these useless forms, 
this useless life, fliese haunts of intolerance, vice, 
and folly !"* 

Respecting the reversion here mentioned no 
satisfactory information could be obtained, and 
he next turned his thoughts toward obtaining 
some official employment in London. " You 
know my objection to orders," he writes to Mr. 
Grosvenor Bedford, " and the obstacles to any 
other profession : it is now my wish to be in the 
same office with you Do, my dear Grosve- 
nor, give me some information upon this topic. 

1 speak to you without apologizing ; you will 
serve me if you can, and tell me if you can not : 
it would be a great object to be in the same of- 
fice with you. In this plan of life, the only dif- 
ficulty is obtaining such a place, and for this my 
hopes rest on Wynn and you. In case of suc- 
cess, I shall joyfully bid adieu to Oxford, settle 
myself in some economical way of life, and, 
when I know my situation, unite myself to a 
woman whom I have long esteemed as a sister, 
and for whom I now indulge a warmer senti- 
ment Write to me soon. I am sanguine 

in my expectations if you can procure my ad- 
mission. Promotion is a secondary concern, 
though of that I have hopes. My pen will be 
my chief dependence. In this situation, where 
a small income relieves from want, interest will 
urge me to write, but independence secures me 
from writing so as to injure my reputation. 
Even the prospect of settling honestly in life has 
relieved my mind from a load of anxiety. 

" In this plan of life every thing appears with- 
in the bounds of probability ; the hours devoted 
to official attendance, even if entirely taken up 
by business, would pass with the idea that I was 
doing my duty and honestly earning my subsist- 
ence. If they should not be fully occupied, I 
can pursue my own studies ; and should I be 
fortunate enough to be in the same office with 
you, it would be equally agreeable to both. 
What situation can be pleasanter than that which 
places me with all my dearest friends?"! 



* May 11, 1794. 



t May 28, 1794. 



In reply to this, Mr. Bedford urges upon hhr 
all the objections to which such a situation woii 
be liable, and begs him to reconsider his deterrn 
ination with respect to taking holy orders, prob 
ably thinking that a little time might calm nis 
feelings and settle his opinions. His arguments, 
however, were of no avail. My father repeats 
his determination not to enter the Church, and 
continues : " Is it better that I should suffer in- 
convenience myself, or let my friends suffer it 
for me ? Is six hours' misery to be preferred to 
wretchedness of the whole twenty-four ? .... I 
have only one alternative — some such situation, 
or emigration. It is not the sally of a moment- 
ary fancy that says this ; either in six months I 
fix myself in. some honest way of living, or I 
quit my country, my friends, and every fondest 
hope I indulge forever." 

But, before many steps had been taken in the 
matter, an obstacle appeared which had not pre- 
viously occurred to my father's mind, and which 
at once put a stop to all further anticipations of 
the kind. It was evident that, before an official 
appointment of any kind, however trifling, could 
be procured, inquiry would be made at Oxford 
respecting his character and conduct; and, his 
political opinions once known, all chances of 
success would be destroyed. His Republican 
views were so strong and so freely expressed, 
that there was no possibility of any inquiry be- 
ing made that would not place an insurmounta- 
ble obstacle to his obtaining any employment un- 
der a Tory ministry. This being once suggest- 
ed by a friend, was so apparent, that the scheme 
was as quickly abandoned as it had been hastily 
and eagerly conceived.* 

"I think 's objection is a very strong one," 

he writes : t: my opinions are very well known. 
I would have them so ; Nature never meant me 
for a negative character : I can neither be good 
nor bad, happy nor miserable, by halves. You 
know me to be neither captious nor quarrelsome, 
yet I doubt whether the quiet, harmless situation 
I hoped for were proper for me : it certainly, by 
imposing a prudential silence, would have sul- 
lied my integrity. I think I see you smile, and 
your imagination turns to a strait waistcoat and 
Moorfields. Aussi bien. 

" Some think him wondrous wise, 
And some believe him mad."t 

In the midst of his disappointment at the fail- 
ure of these plans, upon which he seems to have 
set his hopes somewhat strongly, his first ac- 
quaintance commenced with Mr. Coleridge, and 
from this sprang a train of circumstances fraught 
with much importance to the after lives of both. 

Mr. Coleridge was at this time an under-grad- 
uate of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he had 
entered in February, 1791, and he had already 
given proofs both of his great talents and his ec- 
centricities. In the summer of that year he had 
gained Sir William Brown's gold medal for the 
Greek ode. It was on the slave trade, and its 
poetic force and originality were, as he said 



* June 1, 1794. 

t To Grosvenor Bedford, Esq., June 25, 1794. 



Tz 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 20 



himself, much beyond the language in which 
they weie conveyed. In the winter of 1792-3 
he had stood for the University (Craven) schol- 
arship with Dr. Keats, the late head master of 
Eton, Mr. Bethell, of Yorkshire, and Bishop But- 
ler, who was the successful candidate. In 1793 
he had written without success for the Greek 
ode on astronomy, a translation of which is 
among my father's minor poems. In the latter 
part of this year, " in a moment of despondency 
and vexation of spirit, occasioned principally by 
some debts, not amounting to 66100, he sudden- 
ly left his college and went to London," and 
there enlisted as a private in the 15th Light 
Dragoons, under an assumed name bearing his 
own initials. In this situation, than which he 
could not, by possibility, have chosen one more 
incongruous to all his habits and feelings, he re- 
mained until the following April, when the term- 
ination of his military career was brought abont 
by a chance recognition in the street. His fam- 
ily were apprised of his situation : and, after 
some difficulty, he was duly discharged on the 
10th of April, 1794, at Hounslow.* 

In the following June Mr. Coleridge went to 
Oxford, on a visit to an*' old schoolfellow ; and, 
being accidentally introduced to my father, an 
intimacy quickly sprung up between them, hast- 
ened by the similarity of the views they then 
held, both on the subjects of religion and pol- 
itics. Each seems to have been mutually taken 
with the other. Coleridge was seized with the 
most lively admiration of my father's person and 
conversation ; my father's impression of him is 
well told by himself. " Allen is with us daily, 
and his friend from Cambridge, Coleridge, whose 
poems you will oblige me by subscribing to, ei- 
ther at Hookham's or Edwards's. He is of 
most uncommon merit — of the strongest genius, 
the cleares-t judgment, the best heart. My 
friend he already is, and must hereafter be 
yours. It is, I fear, impossible to keep him 
till you come, but my efforts shall not be want- 
ing- ;; t 

We have seen that in one or two of his ear- 
ly letters my father speaks of emigration and 
A'tnerica as having entered his mind, and the 
failure of the plans I have just mentioned now 
caused him to turn his thoughts more decidedly 
in that direction, and the result was a scheme 
of emigration, to whieli those who conceived it 
gave the euphonious name of " Pantisocracy." 
This idea, it appears, was first originated by 
Mr. Coleridge and one or two of his friends, and 
he mentioned it to my father on becoming ac- 
quainted with him at Oxford. Their plan was 
to collect as many brother adventurers as they 
could, and to establish a community in the New 
World upon the most thoroughly social basis. 
Land was to be purchased with their common 
contributions, and to be cultivated by their com- 
mon labor. Each was to have his portion of 
work assigned him ; and they calculated that a 

* Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. Biographical Sup- 
plement, vol. ii., p. 336, 537. 
t To Groavenor Bedford. Esq., June 12, 1794. 



large part of their time would still remain foi 
social converse and literary pursuits. The fe- 
males of the party — for all were to be married 
men — were to cook and perform all domestic 
offices • and having even gone so far as to plan 
the architecture of their cottages and the form 
of their settlement, they had pictured as pleas- 
ant a Utopia as ever entered an ardent mind. 

The persons who at first entered into the 
scheme were my father ; Robert Lovell, the son 
of a wealthy Quaker, who married one of the 
Misses Fricker ; George Burnett, a fellow-colle- 
gian from Somersetshire ; Robert Allen, then at 
Corpus Christi College ; and Edmund Seward, 
of a Herefordshire family, also a fellow-colle- 
gian, for whom my father entertained the sin- 
cerest affection and esteem. 

Seward, however, did not long continue to ap- 
prove of the plan ; his opinions were more moder- 
ate than those of his friends, although he was in- 
clined to hold democratic views, and he was 
strongly attached to the doctrines of the Church 
of England, in which he intended to take orders. 
His letters on the subject of Pantisocracy are in- 
I dicative of a very thoughtful and pious mind, and 
| he expresses much regret that he should at first 
! have given any encouragement to a scheme 
which he soon saw must fail, if attempted to be 
carried out. 

He perceived that the two chief movers, my 
father and Mr. Coleridge, were passing through . 
a period of feverish enthusiasm which could not 
last ; and he especially expresses his fear that 
the views on religious subjects held by the par- 
ty generally were not sufficiently fixed and prac- 
tical, and that discussions and differences of 
opinion on these points would probably arise, 
which, more than on any other, would tend to 
destroy that perfect peace and unanimity they so 
fondly hoped to establish. 

These apprehensions, however, were not par- 
ticipated in by the rest of the party. Mr. Cole- 
ridge quitted Oxford for a pedestrian tour in 
Wales ; and from Gloucester he writes his first 
letter to my father : " You are averse," he says, 
to gratitudinarian flourishes, else would I talk 
about hospitality, attention, &c, &c. ; however, 
as I must not thank you, I will thank my stars. 
Verily, Southey, I like not Oxford, nor the in- 
habitants of it. I would say thou art a nightin- 
gale among owls ; but thou art so songless and 
heavy toward night that I will rather liken thee 
to the matin lark ; thy nest is in a blighted corn- 
field, where the sleepy poppy nods its red-cowl- 
ed head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark 
work, but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or 
let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly 
canine at this moment), that as the Italian no- 
bles their new-fashioned doors, so thou dost 
make the adamantine gate of Democracy turn 
on its golden hinges to most sweet music."* 

The long vacation having commenced, my 
father went down to his aunt at Bath, and from 
thence writes as follows : 



July 6, 1794. 



jEtat. 20. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



73 



To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Bath, July 20, 1794. 

" Grosvenor, I believe nearly three weeks have 
elapsed since your last letter at Oxford damped 
my breakfast with disappointment. To see you 
at all times would be a source of much pleasure ; 
but I should have been particularly glad to have 
introduced you to Allen and Coleridge ; they 
shared in my disappointment, but that part of 
human unhappiness is not alleviated by partition. 
Coleridge is now walking over Wales. You 
have see* a specimen of Allen's poetry, but nev- 
er of his friend's ; take these ; they are the only 
ones I can show, and were written on the wain- 
scot of the inn at Ross, which was once the dwell- 
ing-house of Kyrle." 

[Here follow the well-known lines to " The 
Man of Ross."] 

•"Admire the verses, Grosvenor, and pity that 
mind that wrote them from its genuine feelings. 
'Tis my intention soon to join him in Wales, then 
proceed to Edmund Seward, seriously to arrange 
with him the best mode of settling in America. 
Yesterday I took my proposals for publishing 
Joan of Arc to the printer ; should the publica- 
tion be any ways successful, it will carry me 
over, and get me some few acres, a spade, and 
a plow. My brother Thomas will gladly go 
with us, and perhaps two or three more of my 
most intimate friends. In this country I must 
either sacrifice happiness or integrity : but when 
we meet I will explain my notions more fully. 

" I shall not reside next Michaelmas at Oxford, 
because the time will be better employed in cor- 
recting Joan and overlooking the press. If I get 

fifty copies subscribed for by that time 

Grosvenor, I shall inscribe Joan of Arc to you, 
unless you are afraid to have your name prefixed 
to a work that breathes some sentiments not per- 
fectly in unison with court principles. Correc- 
tions will take up some time, for the poem shall 
go into the world handsomely : it will be my 
legacy to this country, and may, perhaps, pre- 
serve my memory in it. Many of my friends 
will blame me for so bold a step, but as many 
encourage me : and I want to raise money 
enough to settle myself across the Atlantic. If 
I have leisure to write there, my stock of image- 
ry will be much increased My proposals 

will be printed this evening. I remain here till 
to-morrow morning, for the sake of carrying some 
to Bristol. Methinks my name will look well in 
print. I expect a host of petty critics will buzz 
about my ears, but I must brush them off. You 
know what the poem was at Brixton ; when well 
corrected, I fear not its success. 

" I have a linen coat making, much like yours ; 
'tis destined for much service. Burnett ambu- 
lated to Bristol with me from Oxford ; he is a 
worthy fellow, whom I greatly esteem. We 
have a wild Welshman, red hot from the mount- 
ains, at Baliol, who would please and amuse you 
much. He is perfectly ignorant of the world, 
but with all the honest, warm feelings of nature, 
a good head, and a good heart. Lightfoot is 
A.B. ; old Baliol Coll. has lost its best inhabit- 



ants in him and Seward ; Allen, too, resides only 
six weeks longer in the University ; so it would 
be a melancholy place for me, - were I to visit it 
again for residence. My tutor will much wonder 
at seeing my name •* but, as Thomas Howe is 
half a Democrat, he will be pleased. What mir- 
acle could illuminate him, I know not ; but he 
surprised me much by declaiming against the 
war, praising America, and asserting the right 
of every country to model its own form of gov- 
ernment. This was followed by, ' Mr. Southey, 
you won't learn any thing by my lectures, sir ; 
so, if you have any studies of your own, you had 
better pursue them.' You may suppose I thank- 
fully accepted the offer. Let me hear from you 
soon. You promised me some verses. 
" Sincerely yours, 

"Robert Southey. 

"P.S. — How are the wasps this year? My 
dog eats flies voraciously, and hunts wasps for 
the same purpose. ' If he catches them, I fear 
he will follow poor Hyder.f I saved him twice 
to-day from swallowing them like oysters." 

The Pantisocratic scheme seemed now to 
flourish; all were full of eager anticipation. 
" Every thing smiles upon me," says my father; 
"my mother is fully convinced of the propriety 
of our resolution ; she admires the plan ; she goes 
with us. Never did so delightful a prospect of 
happiness open upon my view before ; to go with 
all I love ; to go with all my friends, except your 
family and Wynn ; to live with them in the most 
agreeable and most honorable employment; to 
eat the fruits I have raised, and see every face 
happy around me ; my mother sheltered in her 
declining years from the anxieties which have 
pursued her ; my brothers educated to be useful 
and virtuous. "$ 

In the course of this month (August), Mr. 
Coleridge, having returned from his excursion 
in Wales, came to Bristol ; and my father, who 
was then at Bath, having gone over to meet him, 
introduced him to Robert Lovell, through whom, 
it appears, they both at this time became known 
to Mr. Cottle ; and here, also, Mr. Coleridge 
first became acquainted with his future wife, 
Sarah Fricker, the eldest of the three sisters, one 
of whom was married to Robert Lovell, the other 
having been engaged for some time to my father. 
They were the daughters of Stephen Fricker, 
who had carried on a large manufactory of sugar- 
pans or molds at Westbury, near Bristol, and 
who, having fallen into difficulties in consequence 
of the stoppage of trade by the American war, 
had lately died, leaving his widow and six chil- 
dren wholly unprovided for. 

During this visit to Bath, the tragedy entitled 
"The Fall of Robespierre"^ was written, the 
history of which is best explained by the follow- 
ing extract of a letter from my father to the late 
Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq. : " It originated 
in sportive conversation at poor Lovell's, and 



* As the author of Joan of Arc. 

t A dog belonging to Mr. Bedford's father, which died 
from the sting of a wasp in the throat, 
t To Grosvenor Bedford, Esq., August 1, 1794. 
§ Printed in " Remains of S. T. Coleridge." 



74 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OP 



Mtat. 21. 



we agreed each to produce an act by the next 
evening — S. T. C. the first, I the second, and Lov- 
ell the third. S. T. C. brought part of his ; I and 
Lovell, the whole of ours. But L.'s was not in 
keeping, and therefore I undertook to supply the 
third also by the following day. By that time 
S. T. C. had filled up his. A dedication to Mrs. 
Hannah More was concocted, and the notable 
performance was offered for sale to a bookseller 
in Bristol, who was too wise to buy it. Your 
uncle took the MSS. with him to Cambridge, and 
there rewrote the first act at leisure, and pub- 
lished it. My portion I never saw from the 
time it was written till the whole was before the 
world. It was written with newspapers before 
me as fast as newspapers could be put into blank 
verse. I have no desh-e to claim it now; but 
neither am I ashamed of it ; and, if you think 
proper to print the whole, so be it." 

From Bath Mr. Coleridge went up to London, 
apparently with the view of consulting some 
friend respecting the publication of the " Fall of 
Robespierre." From thence he thus writes to 
my father : " The day after my arrival I finish- 
ed the first act : I transcribed it. T 5 next 
morning Franklin (of Pembroke Coll., ^am., a 
ci-devant Grecian of our school — so we call the 
first boys) called on me, and persuaded me to go 
with him and breakfast with Dyer, author of 
' The Complaints of the Poor/ ' A Subscription,' 
&c, &c. I went ; explained our system. He was 
enraptured ; pronounced it impregnable. He is 
intimate with Dr. Priestley, and doubts not that 
the doctor will join us. He showed me some 
poetry, and I showed him part of the first act, 
which I happened to have about me. He liked 
it hugely ; it was ! a nail that would drive.' .... 
Every night I meet a most intelligent young man, 
who has spent the last five years of his life in 
America, and is lately come from thence as an 
agent to sell land. He was of our school. I 
had been kind to him : he remembers it, and 
comes regularly every evening to 'benefit by 
conversation,' he says. He says d£2000 will 
do ; that he doubts not we can contract for our 
passage under c£400 ; that we shall buy the land 
a great deal cheaper when we arrive at America 
than we could do in England ; ' or why,' he adds, 
' am I sent over here ?' That twelve men may 
easily clear 300 acres in four or five months ; 
and that, for 600 dollars, a thousand acres may 
be cleared, and houses built on them. He rec- 
ommends the Susquehanna, from its excessive 
beauty, and its security from hostile Indians. 
Every possible assistance will be given us : we 
may get credit for the land for ten years or more, 
as we settle upon it. That literary characters 
make money there, &c, &c. He never saw a 
bison in his life, but has heard of them : they are 
quite backward. The musquitoes are not so bad 
as our gnats ; and, after you have been there a 
little while, they don't trouble you much."* 

From London Mr. Coleridge returned to Cam- 
bridge, and writes from thence, immediately on 
his arrival, full of enthusiasm for the grand plan : 



September 6, 1794, 



" Since I quitted this room, what and how im- 
portant events have been evolved \ America ! 
Southey ! Miss Fricker ! . . . Pantisocracy ! 
Oh ! I shall have such a scheme of it ! My 
head, my heart, are all alive. I have drawn up 
my arguments in battle array : they shall have 
the tactitian excellence of the mathematician, 
with the enthusiasm of the poet. The head shall 
be the mass ; the heart, the fiery spirit that fills, 
informs, and agitates the whole." And then, in 
large letters, in all the zeal of Pantisocratic fra- 
ternity, he exclaims, " SHAD GOES* WITH 
US : HE IS MY BROTHER ! !" and, descend- 
ing thence to less emphatical calligraphy, " I am 
longing to be with you : make Edith my sister. 
Surely, Southey, we shall be frendotatoi meta 
frendous — most friendly where all are friends. 
She must, therefore, be more emphatically my 

sister. . . . C , the most excellent, the most 

Pantisocratic of aristocrats, has been laughing 
at me. Up I arose, terrible in reasoning. He 
fled from me, because ' he would not answer for 
his own sanity, sitting so near a madman of gen- 
ius.' He told me that the strength of my im- 
agination had intoxicated my reason, and that 
the acuteness of my reason had given a direct- 
ing influence to my imagination. Four months 
ago the remark would not have been more ele- 
gant than just; now it is nothing."* 

In the mean time, my father, though not quite 
so much carried away as Mr. Coleridge, was 
equally earnest in forwarding the plan as far as 
it could be forwarded without that which is the 
sinews of emigration as well as of war, and with- 
out which, though the " root of all evil," not even 
Pantisocracy could flourish. " In March we 
depart for America," he writes to his brother 
Thomas, then a midshipman on board the Aqui- 
lon frigate ; " Lovell, his wife, brother, and two 
of his sisters ; all the Frickers ; my mother, Miss 
Peggy, and brothers ; Heath, apothecary, &c. ; 
G. Burnett, S. T. Coleridge, Robert Allen, and 
Robert Southey. Of so many we are certain, 
and expect more. Whatever knowledge of nav- 
igation you can obtain will be useful, as we shall 
be on the bank of a navigable river, and appoint 
you admiral of a cock-boat. . . . 

" My aunt knows nothing as yet of my in- 
tended plan ; it will surprise her, but not very 
agreeably. Every thing is in a very fair train, 
and all parties eager to embark. What do your 
common blue trowsers cost ? Let me know, as 
I shall get two or three pairs for my working 
winter dress, and as many jackets, either blue 
or gray : so my wardrobe will consist of two 
good coats, two cloth jackets, four linen ones, 
six brown Holland pantaloons, and two nankeen 
ditto for dress 

" My mother says I am mad ; if so, she is bit 
by me, for she wishes to go as much as I do. 
Coleridge was with us nearly five weeks, and 
made good use of his time. We preached Pan* 
tisocracy and Aspheteism every where. These, 
Tom, are two new words, the first signifying the 
equal government of all, and the other the gen. 
* September 18, 1794. 



Mtat. 21. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY, 



eralization of individual property ; words well 
understood in the city of Bristol. We are busy 
in getting our plan and principles ready to dis- 
tribute privately The thoughts of the 

day and the visions of the night all center in 
America. Tune lags heavily along till March, 
but we have done wonders since you left me. 
.... I hope to see you in January ; it will then 
be time for you to take leave of the navy, and 
become acquainted with all our brethren, the 
Pantisocrats. You will have no objection to par- 
take of a wedding dinner in February."* .... 

By the middle of the following month the plan 
was still progressing favorably, but the main dif- 
ficulty was beginning to occur to them. My fa- 
ther writes again to his brother : " Our plan is 
in great forwardness ; nor do I see how it can 
be frustrated. We are now twenty-seven ad- 
venturers. Mr. Scott talks of joining us ; and 

if so, five persons will accompany him 

I wish I could speak as satisfactorily upon money 
matters. Money is a huge evil which we shall 
not long have to contend with. All well. 

" Thank you for the hanger ; keep it for me. 
You shall not remain longer in the navy than 
January. Live so long in hope ; think of Ameri- 
ca ! and remember that while you are only think- 
ing of our plan, we are many of us active in for- 
warding it. 

" Would you were with us ! we talk often of 
you with regret. This Pantisocratic scheme has 
given me new life, new hope, new energy ; all 
the faculties of my mind are dilated ; I am weed- 
ing out the few lurking prej udices of habit, and 
looking forward to happiness. I wish I could 
transfuse some of my high hope and enthusiasm 
into you ; it would warm you in the cold winter 
nights, "f .... 

Hitherto all had gone on pretty smoothly. The 
plan of emigration, as well as my father's engage- 
ment to marry, had been carefully concealed from 
his aunt, Miss Tyler, who, he was perfectly aware, 
would most violently oppose both ; and now, when 
at last she became acquainted with his intention, 
her anger knew no bounds. The consequence 
can not be more graphically described than by 
himself. 

To Thomas Southey. 

" Bath, October 19, 1794. 
" My dear Brother Admiral, 
11 Here's a row ! here's a kick-up ! here's a 
pretty commence ! We have had a revolution 
in the College Green, and I have been turned 
out of doors in a wet night. Lo and behold, 
even like mine own brother, I was penniless. It 
was late in the evening ; the wind blew and the 
rain fell, and I had walked from Bath in the 
morning. Luckily, my father's old great-coat 
was at Lovell's. I clapped it on, swallowed a 
glass of brandy, and set off. I met an old drunk- 
en man three miles off, and was obliged to drag 
him all the way to Bath, nine miles ! Oh, Pa- 
tience, Patience, thou hast often helped poor 
Robeit Southey, but never didst thou stand him 



September 20, 1794. 



t Bath, October 14, 1794. 



in more need than on Friday, the 17th of Octo- 
ber, 17*94. 

" Well, Tom, here I am. My aunt has de- 
clared she will never see my face again, or open 
a letter of my writing. So be it ; I do my duty, 
and will continue to do it, be the consequences 
what they may. You are unpleasantly situated ; 
so is my mother ; so were we all till this grand 
scheme of Pantisocracy flashed upon our minds, 
and now all is perfectly delightful. , 

" Open war — declared hostilities ! the chil- 
dren are to come here on Wednesday, and I meet 
them at the Long Coach on that evening. My j 
aunt abuses poor Lovell most unmercifully, and ' 
attributes the whole scheme to him ; you know 
it was concerted between Burnett and me. But, 
of all the whole catalogue of enormities, nothing 
enrages my aunt so much as my intended mar- 
riage with Mrs. Lovell's sister Edith ; this will 
hardly take place till we arrive in America ; it 
rouses all the whole army of prejudices in my 
aunt's breast. Pride leads the fiery host, and a 
pretty kick-up they must make there. 

"I expect some money in a few days, and 
then yop.t shall not want ; yet, as this is not quite 
certain, 'm can not authorize you to draw on me. 
Lovell is in London ; he will return on Tuesday 
or Wednesday, and I hope will bring with him 
some ten or twenty pounds ; he will likewise ex- 
amine the wills at Doctors' Commons, and see 
what is to be done in the reversion way. Every 
thing is in the fairest train. Favell and Le Grice, 
two young Pantisocrats of nineteen, join us ; they 
possess great genius and energy. I have seen 
neither of them, yet correspond with both. You 
may, perhaps, like this sonnet on the subject of 
our emigration, by Favell : 

"'No more my visionary soul shall dwell 

On joys that were ; no more endure to weigh 

The shame and anguish of the evil day, 

Wisely forgetful ! O'er the ocean swell, 

Sublime of Hope, I seek the cottaged dell 

Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray, 

And, dancing to the moonlight roundelay, 

The wizard passion wears a holy spell. 

Eyes that have ached with anguish ! ye shall weep 

Tears of doubt-mingled joy, as those who start 

From precipices of distemper' d sleep, 

On which the fierce- eyed fiends their revels keep, 

And see the rising sun, and feel it dart 

New rays of pleasure trembling to the heart' 

" This is a very beautiful piece of poetry, and 
we may form a very fair opinion of Favell from 
it. Scott, a brother of your acquaintance, goes 
with us. So much for news relative to our pri- 
vate politics. 

" This is the age of revolutions, and a huge 
one we have had on the College Green. Poor 
Shadrach is left there, in the burning fiery fur- 
nace of her displeasure, and a prime hot birth 
has he got of it : he saw me depart with aston- 
ishment. ' Why, sir, you be'nt going to Bath at 
this time of night, and in this weather ! Do let 
me see you sometimes, and hear from you, and 
send for me when you are going.' 

" We are all well, and all eager to depart. 
March will soon arrive, and I hope you will be 
with us before that time. 

" Why should the man who acts from convic- 



re 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. sk 



tion of rectitude grieve because the prejudiced 
are offended ? For me, I am fully possessed by 
the great cause to which I have devoted myself; 
my conduct has been open, sincere, and just ; 
and, though the world were to scorn and neglect 
me, I should bear their contempt with calmness. 
Fare thee well. 

" Yours in brotherly affection, 

"Robert Southey." 

It might 'have been hoped that this storm 
would have blown over, and that, when Pantis- 
ocracy had died a natural death, and the mar- 
riage had taken place, Miss Tyler's angry feel- 
ings might have softened down ; but it was not 
so, and the aunt and nephew never met again ! 

One other incident belongs to the close of this 
year — the publication of a small volume of po- 
ems, the joint production of Mr. Lovell and my 
father. Many of them have never been repub- 
lished. The motto prefixed to them was an ap- 
propriate one : 

" Minuentur atrae 
Carmine curae." 



CHAPTER HI. 

PANTISOCRACY PROPOSED TO BE TRIED IN WALES 
LETTERS TO MR. G. C. BEDFORD DIFFICUL- 
TIES AND DISTRESSES HISTORICAL LECTURES 

DEATH OF EDMUND SEWARD MR. COTTLE 

PURCHASES THE COPYRIGHT OF JOAN OF ARC 
PANTISOCRACY ABANDONED MISUNDER- 
STANDING WITH MR. COLERIDGE LETTER TO 

MR. G. C. BEDFORD MEETING WITH HIS UN- 
CLE, MR. HILL CONSENTS TO ACCOMPANY HIM 

TO LISBON MARRIAGE LETTERS TO MR. BED- 
FORD AND MR. COTTLE. 1794-1795. 

My father was now a homeless adventurer ; 
conscious of great resources in himself, but not 
knowing how to bring them into use ; full of 
hope and the most ardent aspirations, but sur- 
rounded with present wants and difficulties. 
America w T as still the haven of his hopes, and 
for a little while he indulged in the pleasing an- 
ticipation, "Would that March were over!" he 
writes at this time to Mr. Bedford. " Affection 
has one or two strong cords round my heart, and 
will try me painfully — you and Wynn ! A little 
net-work must be broken here ; that I mind not, 
but my mother does. My mind is full of futu- 
rity, and lovely is the prospect ; I am now like 
a traveler crossing precipices to get home, but 
my foot shall not slip."* 

The difficulty of raising sufficient funds for 
their purpose was now, however, becoming daily 
more and more evident ; and it appears to have 
been next proposed by my father that the exper- 
iment of Pantisocracy should be first tried in 
some retired part of Wales, until some lucky 
turn of fortune should enable them to carry out 
their scheme of transatlantic social colonization. 
To this Mr. Coleridge at first strongly objects, 
and sees now more clearly the difficulties of the 



Oct. 19, 1794. 



plan, which the roll of the Atlantic seemed to 
obscure from their sight. " For God's sake, my 
dear fellow," he writes in remonstrance to my 
father, " tell me what we are to gain by taking 
a Welsh farm ? Remember the principles and 
proposed consequences of Pantisocracy, and re 
fleet in what degree they are attainable by Cole 
ridge, Southey, Lovell, Burnett, and Co., some 
five men going partners together ! In the next 
place, supposing that we have found the pre- 
ponderating utility of our aspheterizing in Wales, 
let us, by our speedy and united inquiries, dis 
cover the sum of money necessary. Whether 
such a farm, with so very large a house, is to be 
procured without launching our frail and unpi 
loted bark on a rough sea of anxieties. How 
much money will be necessary for furnishing so 
large a house. How much necessary for the 
maintenance of so large a family — eighteen peo 
pie — for a year at least." 

But the plan of going into Wales did not pros- 
per any more than that of genuine Pantisocracy : 
the close of the year and the beginning of tha 
next found matters still in the same unsatisfac 
tory state. Mr. Coleridge had kept the Mich 
aelmas Term at Cambridge — the last he kept ; 
and, having gone from thence to London, re 
mained there until early in the following Janu 
ary, when he returned to Bristol with my father, 
who had chanced to go up to town at that time. 

The following letters will illustrate this peri- 
od. In the latter one we have a vivid picture 
of the distresses and difficulties of his present 
position. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Bath, Jan. 5, 1795. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" If I were not very well acquainted with your 
disposition, I should apprehend, by your long si- 
lence, that you are offended with me. In one 
letter I spoke too warmly, but you know my af- 
fections are warm. I was sorry at having done 
so, and wrote to say so. The jolting of a rough 
cart over rugged roads is very apt to excite tu- 
mults in the intestinal canal ; even so are the 
rubs of fortune prone to create gizzard grum- 
blings of temper. 

" Now, if you are not angry (and, on my soul, 
I believe you and anger to be perfectly hetero- 
geneous), you will write to me very shortly; if 
you are, why, you must remain so for a fort- 
night : then, it is probable, I shall pass two days 
in London, on my way to Cambridge ; and as 
one of them will be purely to be with you, if I 
do not remove all cause of complaint you have 
against Robert Southey, you shall punish him 
with your everlasting displeasure. 

"From Horace, too, I hear nothing. Were 
I on the Alleghany Mountains, or buried in the 
wilds of Caernarvonshire, I could not have less 
intercourse with you. Perhaps you are wean- 
ing me, like a child. And now, Bedford, I shall 
shortly see G. S.,* if he be in London or at Trin- 



* A schoolfellow with whom he had once been very in' 
timate. 



Mtat. 21. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



77 



lty. Two days in London : one with you, when 
I shall call on him ; the other with some friends 
of Coleridge and correspondents of mine, admi- 
rable poets and Pantisocrats. How will G. S. 
receive me ? is he altered ? will he be reserved, 
and remember only our difference ? or is there 
still the same goodness of heart in him as w T hen 
we first met ? I feel some little agitation at the 
thought. G. S. was the first person I ever met 
with who at all assimilated with my disposition. 
I was a physiognomist without knowing it. He 
was my substance. I loved him as a brother 
once : perhaps he is infected with politesse ; is 
polita to all, and affectionate to none. 

" Coleridge is a man w T ho has every thing of 

but his vices : he is what would 

have been, had he given up that time to study 
which he consumed you know how lamentably. 

" I will give you a little piece which I wrote, 
and w T hich he corrected. 'Twas occasioned by 
the funeral of a pauper, without one person at- 
tending it.* 

" I like this little poem, and there are few of 
mine of which I can say that. 

"Bedford, I can sing eight songs: 1. The 
antique and exhilarating Bacchanalian, Back and 
Sides go Bare. 2. The Tragedy of the Mince- 
pie, or the Cruel Master Cook. 3. The Comical 
Jest of the Farthing Rush-light. 4. The Bloody 
Gardener's Cruelty. 5. The Godly Hymn of 
the Seven Good Joys of the Virgin Mary ; being 
a Christmas Carol. 6. The Tragedy of the Bea- 
ver Hat ; or, as newly amended, The Brunswick 
Bonnet ; containing three apt Morals. 7. The 
Quaint Jest of the Three Crows. 8. The Life 
and Death of Johnny Bulan. 

" Now I shall outdo Horace ! . . . Farewell, 
and believe me always 

" Your sincere and affectionate 

"Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Bristol, Feb. 8, 1795. 

"I have been reading the first four numbers 
of ' The Flagellant :' they are all I possess. My 
dearest Grosvenor, they have recalled past times 
forcibly to my mind, and I could almost weep at 
the retrospect. Why have I not written to you 
before ? Because I could only have told you 
of uncertainty and suspense. There is nothing 
more to say now. The next six months will af- 
ford more variety of incidents. But, my dear 
Bedford, though you will not love me the less, 
you will shake your head, and lament the effects 
of what you call enthusiasm. Would to God that 
we agreed in sentiment, for then you could en- 
ter into the feelings of my heart, and hold me 
still dearer in your own. 

" There is the strangest mixture of cloud and 
of sunshine ! an outcast in the world ! an adven- 
turer ! living by his wits ! yet happy in the full 
conviction of rectitude, in integrity, and in the 
affection of a mild and lovely woman ; at once 
the object of hatred and admiration ; wondered 



* Here follows " The Pauper's Funeral," printed among 
my father's minor poems. 



at by all ; hated by the aristocrats ; the very 
oracle of my own party. Bedford ! Bedford ! 
mine are the principles of peace, of non-resist- 
ance ; you can not burst our bonds of affection. 
Do not grieve that circumstances have made me 
thus ; you ought to rejoice that your friend acts 
up to his principles, though you think them 
wrong. 

" Coleridge is writing at the same table ; our 
names are written in the book of destiny, on the 
same page. 

" Grosvenor, I must put your brains in requi 
sition. We are about to publish a magazine on 
a new plan. One of the prospectuses, when 
printed, will be forwarded to you. 'Tis our in- 
tention to say in the title-page, S. T. C. and R. 
S., Editors ; and to admit nothing but what is 
good. A work of the kind must not be under- 
taken without a certainty of indemnification, and 
then it bids very fair to be lucrative, so the book- 
sellers here tell us. To be called The Provincial 
Magazine, and published at Bristol if we settle 
here. We mean to make it the vehicle of all 
our poetry : will you not give us some essays, 
&c, &c. ? We can undoubtedly make it the 
best thing of the kind ever published ; so, Bed- 
ford, be very wise and very witty. Send us 
whole essays, hints, good things, &c, &c, and 
they shall cut a most respectable figure. The 
poetry will be printed so as to make a separate 
volume at the end of the year. 

" What think you of this ? I should say that 
the work will certainly express our sentiments, 
so expressed as never to offend ; but, if truth 
spoken in the words of meekness be offense, we 
may not avoid it. 

" I am in treaty with The Telegraph, and hope 
to be their correspondent. Hireling writer to a 
newspaper ! 'Sdeath ! 'tis an ugly title : but, 
nHmporte, I shall write truth, and only truth. 
Have you seen, in Friday's Telegraph, a letter 
to Canning, signed Harrington? 'Twas the 
specimen of my prose. 

" You will be melancholy at all this, Bedford; 
I am so at times, but what can I do ? I could 
not enter the Church, nor had I finances to study 
physic ; for public offices I am too notorious. I 
have not the gift of making shoes, nor the happy 
art of mending them. Education has unfitted 
me for trade, and I must, perforce, enter the 
muster-roll of authors." 

" Monday morning. 
" My days are disquieted, and the dreams of 
the night only retrace the past to bewilder me 
in vague visions of the future. America is still 
the place to which our ultimate views tend ; but 
it will be years before we car. go. As for Wales, 
it is not practicable. The point is, where can I 
best subsist ? . . . London is certainly the place 

for all who, like me, are on the world 

London must be the place. If I and Coleridge 
can only get a fixed salary of <£ 100 a year be- 
tween us, our own industry shall supply the 
rest. I will write up to { The Telegraph :' they 
offered me a reporter's place, but nightly em- 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 21. 



ployments are out of the question. My trouble- 
some guest, called honesty, prevents ray writing 
in The True Briton. God knows I want not to 
thrust myself forward as a partisan : peace and 
domestic life are the highest blessings I could 
implore. Enough ! this state of suspense must 
soon be over : I am worn and wasted with anx- 
iety, and, if not at rest in a short time, shall be 
disabled from exertion, and sink to a long repose. 
Poor Edith ! Almighty God protect her ! 

" You can give me no advice, nor point out 
any line to pursue ; but you can write to me, and 
tell me how you are, and of your friends. Let 
me hear from you as soon as possible : moYalize, 
metaphysicize, pun, say good things, promise 
me some aid in the magazine, and shake hands 
with me as cordially by letter as when we parted 
in the Strand. I look over your letters, and find 
but little alteration of sentiment from the begin- 
ning of '92 to the end of '94. What a strange 
mass of matter is in mine during those periods ! 
I mean to write my own life, and a most useful 
book it will be. You shall write the Paraleipo- 
mena; but do not condole too much over my 
mistaken principles, for such pity will create a 
mutiny in my sepulchred bones, and I shall break 
prison to argue with you, even from the grave. 
God love you ! I think soon to be in London, 
if I can -get a situation there : sometimes the 
prospect smiles upon me. I want but fifty pounds 
a 3 r ear certain, and can trust myself for enough 

beyond that Fare you well, my dear 

Grosvenor ! Have you been to court ? quid 
Romae facias ? O thou republican aristocrat ! 
thou man most worthy of republicanism ! what 
hast thou to do with a laced coat, and a chapeau, 
and a bag wig, and a sword ? 

" Ah spirit pure 
That error's mist had left thy purged eye ! 

" Peace be with you, and with all mankind, 
*« the earnest hope of your 

"R. S." 

My father having ceased to reside at Oxford, 
and having no longer his aunt's house as a home, 
was compelled now to find some means of sup- 
porting himself; and Mr. Coleridge being in the 
same predicament, they determined upon giving 
each a course of public lectures. Mr. Coleridge 
selected political and moral subjects ; my father, 
history, according to the following prospectus : 

" Robert Southey, of Baliol College, Oxford, 
proposes to read a course of Historical Lectures, 
in the following order : 

" 1st. Introductory; on the Origin and Prog- 
ress of Society. 

" 2d. Legislation of Solon and Lycurgus. 

" 3d. State of Greece from the Persian War 
to the Dissolution of the Achaian League. 

"4th. Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Ro- 
man Empire. 

" 5th. Progress of Christianity. 

" 6th. Manners and Irruptions of the North- 
ern Nations. Growth of the European States. 
Feudal Svstem. 



" 7th. State of the Eastern Empire, to the 
Capture of Constantinople by the Turks ; includ- 
ing the Rise and Progress of the Mohammedan 
Religion, and the Crusades. 

" 8th. History of Europe, to the Abdication 
of the Empire by Charles the Fifth. 

" 9th. History of Europe, to the Establishment 
of the Independence of Holland. 

" 10th. State of Europe, and more particular- 
ly of England, from the Accession of Charles the 
First to the Revolution in 1688. 

" 11th. Progress of the Northern States. His- 
tory of Europe to the American War. 

" 12th. The American War. 

"Tickets for the whole course, 10s. 6d., to 
be had of Mr. Cottle, bookseller, High Street." 

Of these lectures I can find no trace among 
my father's papers. Mr. Cottle states that they 
were numerously attended, and " their compo- 
sition greatly admired." My father thus alludes 
to them at the time in a letter to his brother 
Thomas : "I am giving a course of Historical 
Lectures at Bristol, teaching what is right by 
showing what is wrong ; my company, of course, 
is sought by all who love good Republicans and 
odd characters. Coleridge and I are daily en- 
gaged John Scott has got me a place 

of a guinea and a half per week, for writing in 
some new work called The Citizen, of what kind 
I know not, save that it accords with my princi- 
ples. Of this I daily expect to hear more. 

" If Coleridge and I can get d£l50 a year be- 
tween us, we purpose marrying and retiring into 
the country, as our literary business can be car- 
ried on there, and practicing agriculture till we 
can raise money for America — still the grand 
object in view. 

" So I have cut my cable, and am drifting on 
the ocean of life ; the wind is fair, and the port 
of happiness, I hope, in view. It is possible that 
I may be called upon to publish my Historical 
Lectures ; this I shall be unwilling to do, as they 
are only splendid declamation."* 

The delivery of these lectures occupied sev- 
eral months ; but the employment they furnished 
did not prevent occasional fits of despondency, 
although his naturally elastic mind soon shook 
them off. He seems to have purposed paying a 
visit to his friends at Brixton at this time, but it 
was not accomplished. To this he refers in the 
following curious letter : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"May 27, 1795- 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" You and Wynn could not more enjoy the 
idea of seeing me than I anticipated being with 
you ; as for coming now, or fixing any particular 
time, it may not be. My mind, Bedford, is very 
languid ; I dare not say I will go at any fixed 
period. If you knew the fearful anxiety with 
which I sometimes hide myself to avoid an in- 
vitation, you would perhaps pity, perhaps despise 
me. There is a very pleasant family here, lit- 



March 21, 1795. 



jEtat. 21. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



79 



erary and accomplished, that I have almost of- 
fended by never calling on. Coleridge is there 
three or four times in the course of the week ; 
the effort to join in conversation is too painful to 
me, and the torpedo coldness of my phizmahog- 
any has no right to chill the circle. By-the-by, 
my dear Grosvenor, if you know any artist about 
to paint a group of banditti, I shall be very fit 
to sit for a young cub of ferocity ; I have put on 
ihe look at the glass so as sometimes to frighten 
nyself. .... 

" Well, but there is no difficulty in discover- 
ing the assiduities of affection ; the eye is very 
eloquent, and women are well skilled in its lan- 
guage. I asked the question. Grosvenor, you 
will love your sister Edith. I look forward 
with feelings of delight that dim my eyes to the 
day when she will expect you, as her brother, 
to visit us — brown bread, wild Welsh raspber- 
ries — heigh-ho ! this schoolboy anticipation fol- 
lows us through life, and enjoyments uniformly 
disappoint expectation. # # # # 

" Poetry softens the heart, Grosvenor. No 
man ever tagged rhyme without being the bet- 
ter for it. I write but little. The task of cor- 
recting Joan is a very great one ; but as the 
plan is fundamentally bad, it is necessary the 
poetry should be good. The Convict, for which 
you asked, is not worth reading ; I think of 
some time rewriting it. If I could be with you 
another eight weeks, I believe I should write 
another epic poem, so essential is it to be hap- 
pily situated. 

" I shall copy out what I have done of Ma- 
doc, and send you ere long ; you will find more 
simplicity in it than in any of my pieces, and, 
of course, it is the best. I shall study three 
works to write it — the Bible, Homer, and Os- 
sian 

" Some few weeks ago I was introduced to 
Mr. and Mrs. Perkins : they were on a visit, 
and I saw them frequently ; he pleased me very 
much, for his mind was active and judicious, 
and benevolence was written in every feature 
of his face. I never saw a woman superior to 
her in mind, nor two people with a more ra- 
tional affection for each other. On their quit- 
ting this place, they urged me to visit them at 
Bradford. A few days ago I was with my 
mother at Bath, and resolved to walk over to 
tea : it is but six miles distant, and the walk 
extremely beautiful. I got to Bradford, and in- 
quiring for Mr. Perkins, was directed two miles 
in the country, to Freshford. My way lay by 
the side of the river ; the hills around were well 
wooded, the evening calm and pleasant ; it was 
quite May weather ; and as I was alone, and be- 
holding only what was beautiful, and looking on 
to a pleasant interview, I had relapsed into my 
old mood of feeling benevolently and keenly for 
all things. A man was sitting on the grass ty- 
ing up his bundle, and of him I asked if I was 
right for Freshford ; he told me he was going 
there. ' Does Mr. Perkins live there ?' ' Yes ; 
he buried his wife last Tuesday.' I was thun- 



derstruck. ' Good God ! I saw her but a few 
weeks ago.' ' Ay, sir, ten days ago she was 
as well as you are ; but she is in Freshford 
church-yard now !' 

" Grosvenor, I can not describe to you what 
I felt ; the man thought I had lost a relation. 
It was with great difficulty I could resolve on 
proceeding to see him ; however, I thought it a 
kind of duty, and went. Guess my delight on 
finding another Mr. Perkins, to whom I had 
been directed by mistake ! 

" You do not know what I suffered under the 
impression of her death, at the relief I felt at 
discovering the mistake. Strange selfishness ! 
this man, too, had lost a wife, a young wife but 
lately married, whom perhaps he loved ; and I 
— I rejoiced at his loss, because it was not my 
friend ! yet, without this selfishness, man would 
be an animal below the orang outang. It is 
mortifying to analyze our noblest affections, and 
find them all bottomed on selfishness. I hear 
of thousands killed in battle — I read of the 
young, the virtuous, dying, and think of them 
no more — when, if my very dog died, I should 
weep for him ; if I lost you, I should feel a last- 
ing affliction 5 if Edith were to die, I should fol- 
low her. 

"lam dragged into a party of pleasure to- 
morrow* for two days. An hour's hanging 
would be luxury to me compared with these de- 
testable schemes. Party of pleasure ! Johnson 
never wrote a better tale than that of the Ethi- 
opian king. Here is the fire at home, and a 
great chair, and yet I must be moving off for 
pleasure. Grosvenor, I will steal Cadman'sf 
long pipe, chew opium, and learn to be happy 
with the least possible trouble. 

" Coleridge's remembrances to you. He is 
applying the medicine of argument to my mis- 
anthropical system of indifference. It will not 
do ; a strange dreariness of mind has seized me. 
I am indifferent to society, yet I feel my private 
attachments growing more and more powerful, 
and weep like a child when I think of an absent 
friend. God bless you." 

A few weeks later he writes again in much 
affliction at the death of his friend Seward. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Bristol, June 15, 1795. 

" Bedford — he is dead ; my dear Edmund 
Seward ! after six weeks' suffering. 

" These, Grosvenor, are the losses that grad- 
ually wean us from life. May that man want 
consolation in his last hour who would rob the 
survivor of the belief that he shall again behold 
his friend ! You know not, Grosvenor, how I 
loved poor Edmund : he taught me all that I 
have of good. When I went with him into 
Worcestershire, I was astonished at the general 
joy his return occasioned — the very dogs ran 



* Ad account of this party of pleasure is given in Cot- 
tle's Reminiscences of Coleridge. Apparently the reality- 
was not more agreeable than the anticipation. 

t The name of a mutual acquaintance. 



80 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 21. 



, and, if I feel thus 
sisters feel ? what his 



out to him. In that room where I have so often 
seen him, he now lies in his coffin ! 

"It is like a dream, the idea that he is dead 
— that his heart is cold — that he, whom but 
yesterday morning I thought and talked of as 
alive — as the friend I knew and loved — is dead ! 
When these things come home to the heart, they 
palsy it. I am sick at heart 
acutely, what must his 
poor old mother, whose life was wrapped up in 
Edmund ? I have seen her look at him till the 
tears ran down her cheek. 

" There is a strange vacancy in my heart. 
The sun shines as usual, but there is a blank in 
existence to me. I have lost a friend, and such 
a one ! God bless you, my dear, dear Grosve- 
nor ! Write to me immediately. I will try, 
by assiduous employment, to get rid of very 
melancholy thoughts. I am continually dwell- 
ing on the days when we were together : there 
was a time when the sun never rose that I did 
not see Seward. It is very wrong to feel thus — 
it is unmanly. God bless you ! 

' ; Robert Souxhet. 

" P.S. — I wrote to Edmund on receiving your 
last : my letter arrived the hour of his death, 
four o'clock on Wednesday last. Perhaps he 
remembered me at that hour. 

" Grosvenor, I am a child ; and all are chil- 
dren who fix their happiness on such a reptile 
as man : this great, this self-ennobled being 
called man, the next change of weather may 
blast him. 

" There is another world where all these 
things will be amended. 

" God help the man who survives all his 
friends." 

The passionate grief to which this letter gave 
utterance did not pass lightly away. In the 
" Hymn to the Penates," first printed in 1796, 
he alludes touchingly to his dear friend departed ; 
and the following very beautiful poem, which 
will be read with increased interest in connec- 
tion with the subject which gave rise to it, was 
written four years later. 

" THE DEAD FRIEND. 

1. 

" Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, 

Descend to contempmia 

The form that once was dear ! 

The spirit is not there 

Which kindled that dead eye, 

Which throbb'd in that cold heart, ' 

Which in that motionless hand 

Hath met thy friendly grasp. 

The spirit is not there ! 

It is but lifeless, perishable flesh 

That molders in the grave ; 

Earth, air, and water's ministering particles 

Now to the elements 

Resolved, their uses done. 

Not to the grave/not to the grave, my soul, 

Follow thy friend beloved, 

The spirit is not there ! 

2. 

" Often together have we talk'd of death ; 

How sweet it were to see 

All doubtful things made clear ; 

How sweet it were with powers 

Such as the Cherubim, 

To view the depth of heaven ! 



O Edmund ! thou hast first 
Begun the travel of eternity ! 

I look upon the stars, 

And think that thou art there, 

Unfetter'd as the thought that follows thee. 

3. 

" And we have often said how sweet it were, 

With unseen ministry of angel power, 

To watch the friends we loved. 

Edmund ! we did not err ! 

Sure I have felt thy presence ! Thou hast given 

A birth to holy thought, 

Hast kept me from the world unstain'd and pur^. 

Edmund ! we did not err ! 

Our best affections here, 

They are not like the toys of infancy ; 

The soul outgrows them not ; 

We do not cast them off; 

Oh, if it could be so, 

It were indeed a dreadful thing to die ! 



"Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, 

Follow thy friend beloved ! 

But in the lonely hour, 

But in the evening walk, 

Think that he companies thy solitude ; 

Think that he holds with thee 

Mysterious intercourse ; 

And though remembrance wake a tear, 

There will be joy in grief. 

" Wesibury, 1799." 

In the midst of these griefs and perplexities, 
a bright spot showed itself in the laying of what 
I may call the foundation stone of my father's 
literary reputation. 

His poem of Joan of Arc, as we have seen, 
had been written in the summer of 1793, and he 
had for some time ardently desired to publish it, 
but, for want of means, was unable to do so. 
Toward the close of the following year it had 
been announced for publication by subscription ; 
but subscribers came slowly forward, and it 
seemed very doubtful whether a sufficient num- 
ber could be obtained. Shortly afterward, his 
acquaintance with Mr. Cottle commenced. For 
the result I will quote his own words, as com- 
memorating, in a very interesting manner, when 
he had almost arrived at the close of his literary 
career, that which may be called its commence- 
ment, and which was so important an epoch in 
his troubled early life. 

" One evening I read to him part of the poem, 
without any thought of making a proposal con- 
cerning it, or expectation of receiving one. He, 
however, offered me fifty guineas for the copy- 
right, and fifty copies for my subscribers, which 
was more than the list amounted to ; and the 
offer was accepted as promptly as it was made. 
It can rarely happen that a young author should 
meet with a bookseller as inexperienced and as 
ardent as himself, and it would be still more ex- 
traordinary if such mutual indiscretion did not 
bring with it cause for regret to both. But this 
transaction was the commencement of an inti- 
macy which has continued without the slightest 
shade of displeasure at any time on either side 
to the present day. At that time few books 
were printed in the country, and it was seldom, 
indeed, that a quarto volume issued from a pro- 
vincial press. A font of new type was ordered 
for what was intended to be the handsomest 
book that Bristol had ever yet sent forth ; and, 
when the paper arrived, and the printer was 



^Etat. 22. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



81 



ready to commence his operations, nothing had 
been done toward preparing the poem for the 
press, except that a few verbal alterations had 
been made. : - 

"I was not, however, without misgivings; 
and, when the first proof-sheet was brought me, 
the more glaring faults of the composition stared 
me in the face. But the sight of a well-printed 
page, which was to be set off with all the ad- 
vantages that fine wove paper and hot pressing 
eould impart, put me in spirits, and I went to 
work with good will. About half the first book 
was left in its original state ; the rest of the poem 
was recast and recomposed while the printing 
went on. This occupied six months."* 

In this work of correction my father was now 
occupied, having laid aside "Madoc," w T hich 
had been commenced in the autumn of the pre- 
vious year, for that purpose. Meantime the 
scheme of Pantisocracy was entirely abandoned, 
and the arrival from Lisbon of Mr. Hill changed 
the current of his thoughts. " My uncle is in 
England," he writes to Mr. Bedford : "lam in 

daily expectation of seeing him again 

Grosvenor, when next I see you it will not be 
for a visit : I shall fix my residence near you to 
study the law ! ! ! My uncle urges me to enter 
the Church ; but the gate is perjury, and I am 
little disposed to pay so heavy a fine at the turn- 
pike of orthodoxy On seeing my uncle, 

I shall communicate to him my intentions con- 
cerning the law. If he disapproves of them, I 
have to live where I can, and how I can, for fif- 
teen months. I shall then be enabled to enter 
and marry. If he approves, why then, Grosve- 
nor, my first business w T ill be to write to you, 
and request you to procure me lodgings some- 
where at Stockwell, or Newington, or any where 
as far from London, and as near your road, as 
possible. I can not take a house till my finances 
will suffer me to furnish it; and for this I de- 
pend upon my Madoc, to which, after Christmas, 
I shall apply w T ith assiduity, always remember- 
ing John Doe and Richard Roe. And now will 
you permit me, in a volume o* poems which go 
to the press to-morrow, to insert your ' Witch 
of Endor,' either with your name or initials, and 
to be corrector plenipotent? This is an office 
Coleridge and I mutually assume, and we both 
of us have sense enough, and taste enough, to 
be glad of mutual correction. His poems and 
mine will appear together ; two volumes ele- 
gant as to type and hot-pressed paper, and for 
his, meo periculo, they will be of more various ex- 
cellence 1 * than any one volume this country has 
ever yet seen. I will rest all my pretensions to 
poetical taste on the truth of this assertion."! 

It does not appear that this idea of publishing 



* Preface to Joan of Arc, Collected Edition of the 
Poems, 1837. 

t In one of Mr. Coleridge's letters to my father (Sept. 
18, 1794), after some verbal criticism on several of his son- 
nets combined with much praise, he thus prefaces the 
quotation of one of his own : " I am almost ashamed to 
write the following, it is so inferior. Ashamed! no, 
Southey ; God knows my heart. I am delighted to feel 
you superior to me in genius as in virtue." Here was an 
honorable rivalry of praise ! { August 22, 1795. 

F 



conjointly with Mr. Coleridge was carried into 
effect, probably owing to a temporary estrange- 
ment, which now took place between himself 
and my father, in consequence of the latter be- 
ing the first to abandon the Pantisocratic scheme. 
This had greatly disturbed and excited Mr. Cole- 
ridge, who was by no means sparing in his re- 
proaches, and manifested, by the vehemence of 
his language, that he must have felt for the time 
no common disappointment. 

My father's next letter to Mr. Bedford gives 
an interesting sketch of the progress of his own 
mind. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Bath, October 1, 1795. 

" I have been living over three years and a 
half in your letters, Grosvenor, with what vari- 
ety of reflections you may imagine, from the 
date of the ' Flagellant,' through many a various 
plan ! You asked Collins, when you first saw 
him after his residence at Oxford, if I was alter- 
ed, and his c No' gave you pleasure. I have 
been asking myself the same question, and, alas ! 
in truth, must return the same answer. No, I 
am not altered. I am as warm-hearted and as 
open as ever. Experience never wasted her 
lessons on a less fit pupil ; yet, Bedford, my mind 
is considerably expanded, my opinions are better 
grounded, and frequent self-conviction of error 
has taught me a sufficient degree of skepticism 
on all subjects to prevent confidence. The fre- 
quent and careful study of Godwin was of essen- 
tial service. I rer>d, and all but worshiped. I 
have since seen his fundamental error — that he 
theorizes for another state, net for the rule of 

conduct in the present I can confute his 

principles, but all the good he has done me re- 
mains : 'tis a book I should one day like to read 
with you for our mutual improvement. When 
we have been neighbors six months, our opin- 
ions will accord — a bold prophecy, but it will be 
fulfilled. 

" My poetical taste was much meliorated by 
Bowles, and the constant company of Coleridge. 
For religion, I can confute the Athe- 
ist, and baffle him with his own weapons ; and 
can, at least, teach the Deist that the arguments 
in favor of Christianity are not to be despised ; 
metaphysics I know enough to use them as de- 
fensive armor, and to deem them otherwise dif- 
ficult trifles. 

" You have made me neglect necessary busi- 
ness. I was busy with this huge work of mine 
w T hen your letters tempted me, and gave me an 
appetite for the pen ; somehow they have made 
me low-spirited, and I find a repletion of the 
lachrymal glands. Apropos : do kill some doz- 
en men for me anatomically, any where except 
in the head or heart. Hang all wars ! I am 
as much puzzled to carry on mine at Orleans as 
our admirable minister is to devise a plan for 

the next campaign Pardonnez moi ! my 

republican royalist ! my philanthropic aristocrat. 

" I am obliged to Nares for a very handsome 
review. It is my intention to write a tragedy : 



82 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^TAT. 22. 



the subject from the Observer — the Portuguese 
accused before the Inquisition of incest and mur- 
der. Read the story. 

" Madoc is to be the pillar of my reputation. 
How many a melancholy hour have I beguiled 
by writing poetry ! * * * * * 

" Friday, October 9. 
"'I found your letter on my arrival to-day. 
My uncle writes not to me, and I begin to think 
he is so displeased at my rejecting a good settle- 
ment, for the foolish prejudice I have against 
perjuring myself, that he gives me up. Aussi 
Men ! so be it, any thing but this terrible sus- 
pense. Zounds, Grosvenor, suspense shall be 
the subject of my tragedy. Indeed, indeed, I 
have often the heartache. Can not you come 
to Bath for a week ? I have so much to say to 
you, and I will never quit Edith : every day en- 
dears her to me. I am as melancholy here at 
Bath as you can imagine, and yet I am very lit- 
tle here — not two days in the week : the rest I 
pass with Cottle, that I may be near her. Cot- 
tle offered me his house in a letter which you 
shall see when we meet, and for which he will 
ever hold a high place in your heart. I bear a 
good face, and keep all uneasiness to myself: 
indeed, the port is in view, and I must not mind 
a little sickness on the voyage. 

Bedford, I have beheld that very identical tiger. 



There's a grand hexameter for 



you 



" Bedford, I have beheld that very identical 
tiger who stopped the mail coach on the king's 
highway, not having the fear of God and the 
king before his eyes — no, nor of the guard and 
his blunderbuss. "What a pity, Grosvenor, that 
that blunderbuss should be leveled at you ! how 
it would have struck a Democrat ! Never mind, 
'tis only a flash, and you, like a fellow whose 
uttermost upper grinder is being torn out by the 
roots by a mutton-fisted barber, will grin and 
endure it. 

" Gayety suits ill with me. The above ex- 
tempore witticisms are as old as six o'clock 
Monday morning last, and noted down in my 
pocket-book for you. 

" God bkss you ! Good night. 

• " Oct. 10. 

{t I visited Hannah More, at Cowslip Green, 
on Monday last, and seldom have I lived a pleas- 
anter day. She knew my opinions, and treated 
them with a flattering deference. Her manners 
are mild, her information considerable, and her 
taste correct. There are five sisters, and each 
of them would be remarked in a mixed company. 
Of Lord Orford they spoke very handsomely, and 
gave me a better opinion of Wilberforce than I 
was accustomed to entertain. They pay for and 
direct the education of 1000 poor children; and 
for aristocracy, Hannah More is much such an 
aristocrat as a certain friend of mine. 

" God love you, my dear friend ! 

"Robert Southey." 



The long-expected and perhaps somewhat 
dreaded meeting with Mr. Hill soon took place ; 
but there was no diminution of kindness on his 
part, notwithstanding the great disappointment 
he felt at his nephew's determination not to enter 
the Church, in which it would have been in his 
power immediately and effectually to have as- 
sisted him. He now seems to have given up all 
hope of prevailing upon him to change his reso- 
lution ; and it was soon arranged that my father 
should accompany him to Lisbon for a few 
months, and then return to England, in order to 
qualify himself for entering the legal profession. 
Mr. Hill's object in this was partly to take him 
out of the arena of political discussion into which 
he had thrown himself by his lectures, and bring 
him round to more moderate views, and also to 
wean him, if possible, from what he considered 
an " imprudent attachment." In the former ob- 
ject he partly succeeded ; in attempting to gain 
the latter, he had not understood my father's 
character. He was too deeply and sincerely at- 
tached to the object of his choice to be lightly 
turned from it ; and the similarity of her worldly 
circumstances to bis own would have made him 
consider it doubly dishonorable even to postpone 
the fulfillment of his engagement. 

This matter, however, he does not appear to 
have entered into with his uncle. He consented 
to accompany him to Lisbon, and thus communi- 
cates his resolution to his constant correspondent : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Oct. 23, 1795. 

" And where, Grosvenor, do you suppose the 
fates have condemned me for the next six months ? 
to Spain and Portugal ! Indeed, my heart is very 
heavy. I would have refused, but I was weary 
of incessantly refusing all my mother's wishes, 
and it is only one mode of wearing out a period 
that must be unpleasant to me any where. 

" I now know neither w T hen I go, nor where, 
except that we cross to Coruna, and thence by 
land to Lisbon. Cottle is delighted with the idea 
of a volume of travels. My Edith persuades me 
to go, and then weeps that I am going, though 
she would not permit me to stay. It is well that 
my mind is never unemployed. I have about 900 
lines and half a preface yet to compose, and this 
I am resolved to finish by Wednesday night next. 
It is more than probable that I shall go in a fort- 
night. 

" Then the advantageous possibility of being 
captured by the French, or the still more agree- 
able chance of going to Algiers. . . . Then to 
give my inside to the fishes on the road, and 
carry my outside to the bugs on my arrival ; the 
luxury of sleeping with the mules, and if they 
should kick in the night. And to travel, Gros- 
venor, with a lonely heart ! . . . When I am re- 
turned I shall be glad that I have been. The 
knowledge of two languages is worth acquiring, 
and perhaps the climate may agree with me, and 
counteract a certain habit of skeletonization, that, 
though I do not apprehend it will hasten me to 
the worms, will, if it continues, certainly cheat 



^Etat. 22. ROBERT SOUTHEY. 

f 

thnm nf thftir snntiftr. . . . Wft will write a frnorl p,d. Mv mnth< 



83 



them of their supper. . . . We will write a good 
opera ; my expedition will teach me the costume 
of Spain. 

" By-the-by, I have made a discovery respect- 
ing the story of the ' Mysterious Mother.' Lord 
0. tells it of Tillotson : the story is printed in a 
work of Bishop Hall's. 1652 ; he heard it from 
Perkins (the clergyman whom Fuller calls an ex- 
cellent chirurgeon at jointing a broken soul : he 
would pronounce the word ' damn' with such an 
emphasis as left a doleful echo in his auditors' 
ears a good while after. Warton-like, I must go 
on with Perkins, and give you an epigram. He 
was lame of the right hand : the Latin is as blunt 
as a good-humored joke need be : 

" Dextera quantumvis fuerat tibi manca, docendi 
Pollebas mira dexteritate tamen ; 

" Though Nature thee of thy right hand bereft, 
Right well thou writest with thy hand that's left : 

and all this in a parenthesis) . Hall adds that he 
afterward discovered the story in two German 
authors, and that it really happened in Germany. 
If you have not had your transcription of the 
tragedy bound, there is a curious piece of inform- 
ation to annex to it. ... I hope to become mas- 
ter of the two languages, and to procure some 
of the choicest authors ; from their miscellanies 
and collections that I can not purchase, I shall 
transcribe the best or favorite pieces, and trans- 
late, for we have little literature of those parts, 
and these I shall request some person fond of 
poetry to point out, if I am fortunate enough to 
find one. Mais helas ! J ''en doute, as well as 
you, and fear me I shall be friendless for six 
months ! 

" Grosvenor, I am not happy. "When I get to 
bed, reflection comes with solitude, and I think 
of all the objections to the journey ; it is right, 
however, to look at the white side of the shield. 
The Algerines, if they should take me, it might 
make a very pretty subject for a chapter in my 
Memoirs ; but of this I am very sure, that my 
biographer would like it better than I should. 

" Have you seen the ' Maeviad ?' The poem 
is not equal to the former production of the same 
author, but. the spirit of panegyric is more agree- 
able than that of satire, and I love the man for 
his lines to his own friends ; there is an imitation 
of Otium Divos very eminently beautiful. Merry 
has been satirized too much and praised too 
much 

" I am in hopes that the absurd fashion of wear- 
ing powder has received its death-blow ; the scar- 
city we are threatened with (and of which we 
have as yet experienced only a very slight earn- 
est) renders it now highly criminal. I am glad 
you are without it. * * * * * 

" God bless you ! 

" Robert Southey." 

When the day was fixed for the travelers to 
depart, my father fixed that also for his wedding- 
day ; and on the 14th of November, 1795, was 
united at Radclift church, Bristol, to Edith Frick- 
er. Immediately after the ceremony they part- 



ed. My mother wore her wedding-ring hung 
round her neck, and preserved her maiden name 
until the report of the marriage had spread abroad. 
The following letters will explain these circum- 
stances, and fill up the interval until his return : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 
"Nov. 21, 1795. Nan Swithin, near St. Columbs. 

" Grosvenor, what should that necromancei 
deserve who could transpose our souls for half an 
hour, and make each the inhabitant of the other's 
tenement ? There are so many curious avenues 
in mine, and so many closets in yours, of which 
you have never sent me the key. 

" Here I am, in a huge and handsome man- 
sion, not a finer room in the county of Cornwall 
than the one in which I write ; and yet have I 
been silent, and retired into the secret cell of my 
own heart. This day week, Bedford ! There 
is a something in the bare name that is now mine 
that wakens sentiments I know not how to de- 
scribe : never did man stand at the altar with 
such strange feelings as I did. Can you, Gros- 
venor, by any effort of imagination, shadow out 
my emotion? . . . She returned the pressure of 
my hand, and we parted in silence. Zounds ! 
what have I to do with supper ! 

"Nov. 22. 

"I love writing, because to write to a dear 
friend is like escaping from prison. Grosvenor, 
my mind is confined here ; there is no point of " 
similarity between my present companions and 
myself. But, 'If I have freedom in,' &c. : you 
know the quotation.* 

" This is a foul country : the tinmen inhabit 
the most agreeable par" t of it, for they live under 
ground. Above, it is most dreary — desolate. 
My sans culotterf like Johnson's in Scotland, 
becomes a valuable piece of timber, and I a 
most dull and sullenly silent fellow ; such effects 
has place ! I wonder what Mr. Hoblyn thinks 
of me. He mentioned that he had seen my po- 
ems in the B. Critic. My uncle answered, ' It 
is more than I have.' Never had man so many 
relations so little calculated to inspire confidence. 
My character is open, even to a fault. Guess, 
Grosvenor, what a Kamtschatka climate it must 
be to freeze up the flow of my thoughts, which 
you have known more frisky that your spruce 
beer ! 

"My bones are very thinly cushioned with 
flesh, and the jolting over these rough roads has 
made them very troublesome. Bedford, they are 
at this moment uttering aristocracy, and I am 
silent. Two whole days was I imprisoned in 
stage-coaches, cold as a dog's nose, hungry, and 
such a sinking at the heart as you can little con- 
ceive. Should I be drowned on the way, or by 



* " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage ; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 
That for a hermitage. 

•' If I have freedom in my love, 
And in my soul am free, 
Angels alone, that soar above, 
Enjoy such liberty." — Lovelace's Poems. 
t His walking- stick. 



84 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 22. 



any other means take possession of that house 
where anxiety never intrudes, there Will be a 
strange page or two in your life of me. 

" My Joan of Arc must by this time be print- 
ed : the first of next month it comes out. To 
me it looks like something that has concerned 
me, but from which my mind is now completely 
disengaged. The sight of pen and ink reminds 
me of it. You will little like some parts of it. 
For me, I am now satisfied with the poem, and 
care little for its success. 

" You supped upon Godwin and oysters with 
Carlisle. Have you, then, read Godwin, and 
that with attention ? Give me your thoughts 
upon his book ; for, faulty as it is in many parts, 
there is a mass of truth in it that must make ev- 
ery man think. Godwin, as a man, is very con- 
temptible. I am afraid that most public char- 
acters will ill endure examination in their private 
lives. To venture upon so large a theater, much 
vanity is necessary, and vanity is the bane of vir- 
tue — 'tis a foul upas-tree, and no healing herb 
but withers beneath its shade : what, then, had 
I to do with publishing ? This, Grosvenor, is a 
question to which I can give myself no self-sat- 
isfying solution. For my Joan of Arc there is 
an obvious reason ; here I stand acquitted of any 
thing like vanity or presumption. Grosvenor, 
what motive created the F. ? certainly it was 
not a bad one 

" The children in the next room are talking — 
a harpsichord not far distant annoys me griev- 
ously — but then there are a large company of 
rooks, and their croak is always in unison with 
what is going on in my thorax. I have a most 
foul pain suddenly seized me there. Grosvenor, 
if a man could but make pills of philosophy for 
the mind ! but there is only one kind of pill that 
will cure mental disorders, and a man must be 
laboring under the worst before he can use that. 
.... I am waiting for the packet, and shall be 
here ten days. Direct to me at Miss Russell's, 
Falmouth : there I shall find your letters ; and 
remember, that by writing you will give some 
pleasure to one who meets with very little. 
Farewell! Yours, R. S." 

To Joseph Cottle, Esq. 

"Falmouth, 1695. 
"My dear Friend, 
"I have learned from Lovel the news from 
Bristol, public as well as private, and both of 
an interesting nature. My marriage is become 
public. You know my only motive for wishing 
it otherwise, and must know that its publicity 
can give me no concern. I have done my duty. 
Perhaps you may hardly think my motives for 
marrying at that time sufficiently strong. One, 
and that to me of great weight, I believe, was 
never mentioned to you. There might have aris- 
en feelings of an unpleasant nature at the idea 
of receiving support from one not legally a hus- 
band ; and (do not show this to Edith) should I 
perish by shipwreck or any other casualty, I have 
relations whose prejudices would then yield to 
the anguish of affection, and who would love, 



cherish, and yield all possible consolation to my 
widow. Of such an evil there is but a possibil- 
ity ; but against possibility it was my duty to 

guard Farewell ! 

" Yours sincerely, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"29th Nov., 1795. 

" Bedford, our summons arrived this morning, 
the vessel goes Tuesday, and when you receive 
this I shall be casting up my accounts with the 
fishes. 

" Grosvenor, you have my will, if the ship 
founders, or any other chance sends me to sup- 
per. All my papers are yours : part are with 
my mother, and part with Edith. Relic wor- 
ship is founded upon human feelings, and you 
will value them. There is little danger of acci- 
dents, but there can be no harm in these few 
lines. All my letters are at your disposal ; and 
if I be drowned, do not you be surprised if I pay 
you a visit ; for if permitted, and if it can be 
done without terrifying or any ways injuring 
you, I certainly will do it. 

" But I shall visit you in propria persona in 
the summer. 

" Would you had been with me on the 14th ! 
'twas a melancholy day, yet mingled with such 
feelings 1 

" You will get a letter from Madrid — write 
you to Lisbon. I expect to find letters there, 
and this expectation will form the pleasantest 
thought I shall experience in my journey. 

"I should like to find your Musaeus at Bris- 
tol on my return. If you will direct it to Miss 
Fricker (heigh-ho ! Grosvenor), at Mr. Cottle's, 
High Street, Bristol, he will convey it to her ; 
and, I believe, next to receiving any thing from 
me, something for me and from my friend will 
be the most agreeable occurrence during my ab- 
sence. I give you this direction, as it will be 
sure to reach her. Edith will be as a parlor 
boarder with the Miss Cottles (his sisters), two 
women of elegant and accomplished manners. 
The eldest lived as governess in Lord Derby's 
family a little while ; and you will have some 
opinion of them when I say that they make even 
bigotry amiable. They are very religious, and 
the eldest (who is but twenty-three) wished me 
to read good books — the advice comes from the 
heart. She thinks very highly of me, but fan- 
cies me irreligious, because I attend no place of 
worship, and indulge speculations beyond reason. 

" God bless and prosper you, and grant I may 
find you as happy on my arrival as I hope and 
expect to be. Yours sincerely, 

"Robert Southey." 

"Falmouth, Monday evening. 
"Well, Grosvenor, here I am, waiting for a 
wind. Your letter arrived a few hours before 

me Edith you will see, and know, and 

love ; but her virtues are of the domestic order, 
and you will love her in proportion as you kno\? 
her. I hate your daffydowndilly women, ay, and 
men too ; the violet is ungaudy in the appear- 



jEtat. 22. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



85 



ance, though a sweeter flower perfumes not the 
evening gale. 'Tis equally her wish to see you. 
Oh ! Grosvenor, when I think of our winter even- 
ings that will arrive, and then look at myself ar- 
rayed for a voyage in an inn parlor ! I scarcely 
know whether the tear that starts into my eye 
proceeds from anticipated pleasure or present 
melancholy. I am never comfortable at an inn ; 
boughten ospitalities are two ill-connected ideas. 
Grosvenor, I half shudder to think that a plank 
only will divide the husband of Edith from the 
unfathomed ocean ! and, did I believe its effica- 
cy, could burn a hecatomb to Neptune with as 
much devotion as ever burned or smoked in Phae- 
acia. Farewell ! 

" Robert Southey." 



CHAPTER IV. 

LETTERS TO MR. LOVEL AND MR. BEDFORD FROM 

LISBON RETURN TO ENGLAND DEATH OF 

MR. LOVEL LETTERS TO MR. BEDFORD 

LITERARY EMPLOYMENTS AND INTENTIONS. 

1796. 

The two following letters are the only ones 
written from Lisbon at this time that I shall lay 
before the reader. A series of descriptive let- 
ters, written during a subsequent and longer visit 
to that country, will appear in the next volume. 

To Robert Lovel. 

"Feb. 19, 1796. 
"I have an invincible dislike to saying the 
same things in two different letters, and yet you 
must own it is no easy matter to write half a 
dozen different ones upon the same subject. I 
am at Lisbon, and therefore all my friends ex- 
pect some account of Portugal ; but it is not 
pleasant to reiterate terms of abuse, and contin- 
ually to present to my own mind objects of filth 
and deformity. By way of improving your En- 
glish cookery, take the Portuguese receipt for 
dressing rabbits. The spit is placed either above 
the fire, below the fire, by the side of the fire, 
or in the fire (this is when they have a spit, and 
that is little better than an iron skewer, for they 
roast meat in a jug, and boil it in a frying-pan) ; 
to know if it is done, they crack the joints with 
their fingers, and then lay it aside till it cools ; 
then they seize the rabbit, tear it piecemeal with 
their fingers into rags, and fry it up with oil, 
garlic, and anise seed. I have attempted saus- 
ages made of nothing but garlic and anise seed. 
They cut off the rump of a bird always before 
they dress it, and neither prayers nor entreaties 
can save a woodcock from being' drawn and 

quartered. R (who never got up till we 

were in sight of Corunna) lay in his bed study- 
ing what would be the best dinner when we 
landed ; he at last fixed upon a leg of mutton, 
soles and oyster sauce, and toasted cheese, to 
the no small amusement of those who knew he 
could get neither, and to his no small disappoint- 
ment when he sat down to a chicken fried in oil, 



and an omelet of oil and eggs. He leaped out of 
bed in the middle of his first night in Spain, in or- 
der to catch the fleas, who made it too hot for him. 
Miss* remains in Lord Bute's stables in Mad- 
rid. She amused me on the road by devouring 
one pair of horse-hair socks, one tooth-brush, one 
comb, a pound of raisins, ditto of English beef, 
and one pair of shoes : Maber has as much reason 
to remember her. So you see Miss lived well 
upon the road. Tossed about as I have been by 
the convulsions of air, water, and earth, and en- 
during what I have from the want of the other 
element, I am in high health. My uncle and I 
never molest each other by our different princi- 
ples. I used to work Maber sometimes, but 
here there is no one whom I am so intimate 
with, or with whom I wish intimacy. Here is 
as much visiting and as little society as you can 
wish, and a Bristol alderman may have his fill 
of good eating and drinking ; yet is this metrop- 
olis supplied only from hand to mouth, and when 
the boats can not come from Alentejo, the mark- 
ets are destitute : at this time there is no fuel 
to be bought ! Barbary supplies them with corn, 
and that at so low a rate that the farmers do not 
think it worth while to bring their corn to mark- 
et, so that the harvest of last year is not yet 
touched. They can not grind the Barbary corn 
in England : it is extremely hard, and the force 
and velocity of English mills reduce the husk as 
well as the grain to powder. I learned all this 
from the vice-consul, who has written much to 
Lord Grenville on the subject, and proposed 
damping the corn previous to grinding it, so as 
to prevent the bran from pulverizing. Lord G. 
has even sent for grindstones to Lisbon, in hopes 
they might succeed better. It is melancholy to 
reflect on what a race possesses the fertile coasts 
of Barbary ! Yet are these Portuguese not a de- 
gree above them. You may form some idea how 
things are managed in this country from the his- 
tory of the present war. By treaty, the Portu- 
guese were to furnish the English with a certain 
number of ships, or a certain sum of money ; and 
the Spaniards with troops or money •, the money 
was expected, but the secretary of state, Mello, 
argued that it was more politic to lay it out 
among their own countrymen, and make soldiers 
and sailors. The old boy's measures were vig- 
orous. He sent for the general of one of the 
provinces, appointed him commander in Brazil, 
and ordered him to be ready at an hour's notice ; 
but old Mello fell ill, and the general, after re- 
maining three months at Lisbon (for during 
Mello's illness the other party managed affairs), 
found no more probability of departing than on 
the first day, and he accordingly sent for his fur- 
niture, wife, and family to Lisbon. Soon after 
they arrived the secretary recovered ; every thing 
was hurried for the expedition, and the wife, 
family, and furniture sent home again. Mello 
fell ill again ; every thing was at a stand, and 
the general once more called his family to Lis- 
bon. The old fellow recovered, sent them all 

* A favorite dog;. 



S6 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE O* jEtat. 22. 



home again, put every thing in readiness, fell ill 
again, and died. The measures of the govern- 
ment have ever since been uniformly languid ; 
and, though the stupid hounds sent ships to En- 
gland and troops to Spain, they never believed 
themselves at war with France till the French 
took their ships at the mouth of the river ! 

" The meeting of the two courts at Badajos 
is supposed to have been political, and it was 
surmised that Spain meant to draw Portugal 
into an alliance with France : they, however, 
parted on bad terms. War with Spain is not 
improbable, and, if our minister knew how to 
conduct it, would amply repay the expenses of 
the execrable contest. The Spanish settlements 
could hot resist a well-ordered expedition, and 
humanity would be benefited by the delivery of 
that country from so heavy a yoke. There is a 
very seditious Spaniard there now, preaching 
Atheism and Isocracy ; one of Godwin's school ; 
for Godwin has his pupils in Spain. 

"I can see no paper here but the London 
Chronicle, and those every other day papers are 
good for nothing. Coleridge is at Birmingham, 
I hear ; and I hear of his projected ' Watchman.' 
I send five letters by this post to Bristol, and two 
to London — a tolerable job for one who keeps no 
secretary. I shall send four by the Magician 
frigate, and four more by the next packet. This 
is pretty well, considering I read very hard, and 
spend every evening in company. ... I know 
not why I have lost all relish for theatrical amuse- 
ments, of which no one was once more fond. 
The round of company here is irksome to me, 
and a select circle of intimate friends is the sum- 
mum boyium I propose to myself. I leave this 
country in April ; and, when once I reach En- 
gland, shall cross the seas no more. the super- 
celestial delights of the road from Falmouth to 
Launceston ! Yet I do believe that Christian, 
in the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' felt little more pleas- 
ure at his journey's end than I shall in traversing 

the lovely hills and plains of Cornwall 

John Kett was of great service to me in Spain, 
and will return to England, where, as soon as I 
shall have pitched my tent, I purpose burning 
him a sacrifice to the household gods, and burn- 
ing his ashes with a suitable epitaph. Then 
shall sans culotte be hung upon the wall, and I 
will make a trophy of my traveling shoes and fur 
cap. I am now going out to dinner ; then to 
see a procession ; then to talk French ; then to 
a huge assembly, from whence there is no re- 
turning before one o'clock. midnight ! mid- 
night ! when a man does murder thee, he ought 
at least to get something by it. 

w Here are most excellent wines, which I do 
in no small degree enjoy : the best Port ; Bucel- 
las of exquisite quality ; old Hock, an old gen- 
tleman for whom I have a very great esteem ; 
Cape, and I have ' good hope' of getting some 
to-day ; and Malmsey such as makes a man envy 
Clarence. **#### 
* * ****** 

,: Farewell ! , Love to Mrs. L. 

"Robert Southey." 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 
" Feb. 24, 1796, Lisbon, from which God grant ? 
me a speedy deliverance. J 

"I am bitterly disappointed at not finding 
' The Flagellant' here, of which I sent my only 
copy to my uncle. It was my intention to have 
brought it home again with me. You see, Gros- 
venor, this relic is already become rare. Have 
you received the original Joan of Arc, written 
at Brixton, bound decently, &c. ? I left it with 
Cottle, to send with your copy : he has the tran- 
script of it himself, which he begged with most 
friendly devotion, and, I believe, values as much 
as a monk does the parings of his tutelary saint's 
great toe nail. Is not the preface a hodge-podge 
of inanity ? I had written the beginning only 
before I quitted Bristol. The latter days of my 
residence there were occupied by concerns too 
nearly interesting to allow time for a collected 
mass of composition ; and you will believe that, 
after quitting Edith on Sunday evening, I was 
little fit to write a preface on Monday morning. 
I never saw the whole of it together ; and, I be- 
lieve, after making a few hasty remarks on epic 
poems, I forgot to draw the conclusion for which 
only they were introduced. NHmporte ; the ill- 
natured critic may exercise malignity in dissect- 
ing it, and the friendly one his ingenuity in find- 
ing out some excuse. 

"What has all this to do with Lisbon? say 
you. Take a sonnet for. the ladies, imitated 
from the Spanish of Bartolomi Leonardo, in which 
I have given the author at least as many ideas 
as he has given me. 

" Nay, cleanse this filthy mixture from thy hair, 
And give the untrick'd tresses to the gale ; 
The sun, as lightly on the breeze they sail, 

Shall gild the bright brown locks : thy cheek is fair, 

Away then with this artificial hue, 
This blush eternal I lady, to thy face 
Nature has given no imitable grace. 

Why these black spots obtruding on the view 

The lily cheek, and these ear jewels too, 

That ape the barbarous Indian's vanity ! 

Thou need'st not with that necklace there invite 
The prying gaze ; we know thy neck is white. 

Go to thy dressing-room again, and be 

Artful enough to learn simplicity. 

" Could you not swear to the author if you 
had seen this in the newspaper? You must 
know, Bedford, I have a deadly aversion to any 
thing merely ornamental in female dress. Let 
the dress be as elegant (i. e. : as simple) as pos- 
sible, but hang on none of your gewgaw eye- 
traps. 

"Do write to me, and promise me a visit at 
Bristol in the summer ; for, after I have returned 
to Edith, I will never quit her again, so that we 
shall remain there till I settle doggedly to law, 
which I hope will be during the next winter. 
* * ■* 



Friday, 24th. 
" Timothy Dwight (Bedford, I defy you or 
Mr. Shandy to physiognomize that man's name 
rightly. What historian is it who, in speaking 
of Alexander's Feast, says they listened to one 
Timothy, a musician?) Timothy Dwight, an 
American, published, in 1785, an heroic poem 
on the conquest of Canaan. I had heard of it, 
and long wished to read it, in vain ; but now the 



iETAT. 22. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



87 



American minister (a good-natured man, whose 
poetry is worse than any thing except his crit- 
icism) has lent me the book. There certainty 
is some merit in the poem ; but, when Colonel 
Humphreys speaks of it, he will not allow me to 
put in a word in defense of John Milton. If I 
had written upon this subject, I should have been 
terribly tempted to take part with the Canaan- 
ites, for whom I can not help feeling a kind of 
brotherly compassion. There is a fine ocean of 
ideas floating about in my brain-pan for Madoc, 
and a high delight do 1 feel in sometimes in- 
dulging them till self-forgetfulness follows. 

" 'Tis a vile kind of philosophy, that for to- 
morrow's prospect glooms to-day ; apropos, sit 
down when you have no better employment, 
and find all the faults you can in ' The Retro- 
spect'* against I return. It wants the pruning- 

knife before it be republished When 

I correct Joan, I shall call you in — not as ple- 
nipotent amputator — you shall mark what you 
think the warts, wens, and cancers, and I will 
take care you do not cut deep enough to destroy 
the life. The fourth book is the best. Do you 
know I have never seen the whole poem togeth- 
er, and that one book was printing before an- 
other was begun ? The characters of Conrade 
and Theodore are totally distinct ; and yet, per- 
haps, equally interesting. There is too much 
fighting ; I found the battles detestable to write, 
as you will do to read ; yet there are not ten 
better lines in the whole piece than those begin- 
ning, ' Of unrecorded name died the mean man, 
yet did he leave behind,' &c.f 

" Do you remember the days when you wrote 
No. 3, at Brixton ? We dined on mutton chops 
and eggs. I have the note you wrote for Dodd t 
among your letters. I anticipate a very pleasant 
evening when you shall show the cedar box§ to 
Edith. ' Oh, pleasant days of fancy !' By-the- 
by, if ever you read aloud that part of the fifth 
book, mind that erratum in the description of the 
Famine, 

" With jealous eye, 
Hating a rival's look, the husband hides 
His miserable meal." 

After I had corrected the page and left town, 
poor Cottle, whose heart overflows with the milk 
of human kindness, read it over, and he was as 
little able to bear the picture of the husband as he 



* " The Retrospect" was published, among some poems 
by my father and Mr. Lovel, in the autumn of 1794. 

t " Of unrecorded name 

The soldier died ; aud yet he left behind 
One who then never said her daily prayera 
Of him forgetful ; who to every tale 
Of the distant war lending an eager ear, 
Grew pale and trembled. At her cottage door 
The wretched one shall sit, and with fixed eye 
Gaze on the path where on his parting steps 
Her last look hung. Nor ever shall she know 
Her husband dead, but cherishing a hope, 
Whose falsehood inwardly she knows too well, 
Feel life itself with that false hope decay ; 
And wake at night with miserable dreams 
Of his return, and weeping o'er her babe, 
Too surely think that soon that fatherless child 
Must of its mother also be bereft." 

Joan of Arc, 7th Book. 

t One of the Westminster masters. 

§ The depository of the contributions to " The Flagel- 
lant." 



would have been to hide a morsel from the hun- 
gry ; and, suo periculo, he altered it to ' Each 
man conceals,' 1 and spoiled the climax. I was 
very much vexed, and yet I loved Cottle the 
better for it. 

" No, Grosvenor, you and I shall not talk pol- 
itics. I am weary of them, and little love pol- 
iticians ; for me, I shall think of domestic life, 
and confine my wishes within the little circle of 
friendship. The rays become more intense in 
proportion as they are drawn to a point. Heigh- 
ho ! I should be very happy were I now in En- 
gland. With Edith by the fireside, I would list- 
en to the pelting rain with pleasure ; now it is 
melancholy music, yet fitly harmonizing with my 
hanging mood. 

" Farewell ! write long letters. 

"R. S. 

" P.S. — In many parts of Spain they have fe- 
male shavers : the proper name of one should 
be Barbara." 

My father's visit to Lisbon did not exceed the 
anticipated time — six months ; and his next let- 
ter to his friend is written in the first moments 
of joy on his return. 

" Portsmouth, May 15, 1796. 

" Thanks be to God, I am in England ! 

"Bedford, you may conceive the luxury of 
that ejaculation, if you know the miseries of a 
sea voyage ; even the stoic who loves nothing, 
and the merchant whose trade-tainted heart loves 
nothing but wealth, would echo it. Judge you 
with what delight Robert Southey leaped on ter- 
ra firma. 

" To-night I go to Southampton ; to-morrow 
will past pains become pleasant. 

" Now, Grosvenor, is happiness a sojourner 
on earth, or must man be cat-o'-ninetailed by 
care until he shields himself in a shroud ? My 
future destiny will not decide the problem, for I 
find a thousand pleasures and a thousand pains 
of which nine tenths of the world know nothing. 
. . . Come to Bristol ; be with me there as long 
as you can. I almost add, advise me there ; 
but your advice will come too late. 

" I am sorry you could ask if you did wrong 
in showing Wynn my letter. I have not a thought 
secret from him. . . . My passage was very 
good, and I must be the best-tempered fellow 
in Great Britain, for the devil a drop of gall 
is there left in my bile bag. I intend a hymn 
to the Dii Penates. Write to me directly, and 
direct to Cottle. I have, as yet, no where to 
choose my place of rest. I shall soon have 
enough to place me above want, and till that 
arrives, shall support myself in ease and com- 
fort, like a silk-worm, by spinning my own 
brains. If poor Necessity were without hands 
as well as legs, badly would she be off. 

" Lord Somerville is dead — no matter to me, 
I believe, for the estates were chiefly copyhold, 
and Cannon Southey minded wine and women 
too much to think of renewing for the sake of 
his heirs Farewell. 

" We landed last night at eleven o'clock. Left 



ss 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 22. 



Lisbon on Thursday, the 5th, and were becalm- 
ed south of the rock till breakfast time on Satur- 
day, so that our passage was remarkably good." 

My father's visit to Lisbon seems chiefly to 
have been useful to him by giving him an ac- 
quaintance with the Spanish and Portuguese 
languages, and by laying the foundation of that 
love for the literature of those countries, which 
continued through life, and which he afterward 
turned to good account. These advantages, 
however, could not be perceived at the time ; 
and as he returned to England with the same 
determination not to take orders, the same polit- 
ical bias, and the same romantic feelings as he 
left it, Mr. Jjlill felt naturally some disappoint- 
ment at t'he result. 

His comments on his nephew's character at 
this time are interesting : " He is a very good 
scholar," he writes to a friend, " of great read- 
ing, of an astonishing memory. When he speaks 
he does it with fluency, with a great choice of 
words. He is perfectly correct in his behavior, 
of the most exemplary morals, and the best of 
hearts. Were his character different, or his abil- 
ities not so extraordinary, I should be the less 
concerned about him ; but to see a young man 
of such talents as he possesses, by the misappli- 
cation of them, lost to himself and to his family, 
is what hurts me very sensibly. In short, he 
has every thing you would wish a young man to 
have, excepting common sense or prudence." 

Of this latter quality my father possessed more 
than his uncle here gives him credit for. In all 
his early difficulties (as well as through life), 
he never contracted a single debt he was unable 
promptly to discharge, or allowed himself a sin- 
gle personal comfort beyond his means, which, 
never abundant, had been, and were for many 
years, greatly straitened ; and from them, nar- 
row as they were, he had already begun to give 
that assistance to other members of his family 
which he continued to do until his latest years. 
It is probable, however, that Mr. Hill here chief- 
ly alludes to his readiness to avow his peculiar 
views in politics and religion. 

Immediately on his return, my father and 
mother fixed themselves in lodgings in Bristol, 
where they remained during the ensuing summer 
and autumn. My father's chief employment at 
this time was in preparing a volume of " Letters 
from Spain and Portugal" for the press, and also 
in writting occasionally for the Monthly Maga- 
zine. His own letters will describe the course 
of his occupations, opinions, and prospects during 
this period. The first of them alludes to the 
death of his brother-in-law, as well as brother- 
poet, Mr. Lovel, who had been cut off, in the 
early prime of youth, during my father's absence 
abroad. He had been taken ill with a fever 
while at Salisbury, and traveling home in hot 
weather, before he was sufficiently recovered, re- 
lapsed immediately, and died, leaving his widow 
and one child without any provision. She (who, 
during my father's life, found a home with him, 
and who now, at an advanced age, is a member 



of my household) is the sole survivor of those 
whose eager hopes once centered in Pantisocra- 
cy : one of the last of that generation so fast pass- 
ing away from us ! 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" May 27, 1796. 
******* 

" Poor Lovel ! I am in hopes of raising some- 
thing for his widow by publishing his best pieces, 

if only enough to buy her a harpsichord 

The poems will make a five-shilling volume, 
which I preface, and to which I shall prefix an 
epistle to Mary Lovel. Will you procure me 
some subscribers ? . . . . Many a melancholy 
reflection obtrudes. What I am doing for him, 
you, Bedford, may one day perform for me. 
How short my part in life may be, He only 
knows who assigned it ; I must be only anxious 
to discharge it well. 

" How does time mellow down our opinions ! 
Little of that ardent enthusiasm which so lately 
fevered my whole character remains. I have 
contracted my sphere of action within the little 
circle of my own friends, and even my wishes 
seldom stray beyond it. A little candle will give 
light enough to a moderate-sized room ; place it 
in a church, it will only ' teach light to counter- 
feit a gloom ;' and in the street, the first wind 
extinguishes it. Do you understand this, or 
shall I send you to Quarles's Emblems ? 

" I am hardly yet in order ; and, while that 
last word was writing, arrived the parcel con- 
taining what, through all my English wander- 
ings, have accompanied me — your letters. Ay, 
Grosvenor, our correspondence is valuable, for 
it is the history of the human heart during its 
most interesting stages. I have now bespoke a 
letter-case, where they shall repose in company 
with another series, now, blessed be God, com- 
plete — my letters to Edith. Bedford, who will 
be worthy to possess them when we are gone ? 
£ Odi profanum vulgus ?' must I make a funeral 
pile by my death-bed ? 

" Would that I were so settled as not to look 
on to another removal. I want a little room to 
arrange my books in, and some Lares of my own. 
Shall we not be near one another ? Ay, Bed- 
ford, as intimate as John Doe and Richard Roe, 
with whose memoirs I shall be so intimately ac- 
quainted ; and there are two other cronies — John 
a Nokes and Jack a Styles, always, like Gyas 
and Cloanthus, and the two? kings of Brentford, 
hand in hand. Oh, I will be a huge lawyer. 
* * * * Come soon. My ' dear- 

est friend' expects you with almost as much 
pleasure and impatience as 

" Robert Soutiiey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" June 12, 1796. 

******* 

" I have declared war against metaphysics, 
and would push my arguments, as William Pitt 
would his successes, even to .the extermination of 
the enemy. ' Blessed be the hour I 'scaped the 
wrangling crew.' 



jEtat. 22. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



89 



u I think it may be proved that all the ma- 
terial and necessarian controversies are 'much 
ado about nothing ;' that they end exactly where 
they began ; and that all the moral advantages 
said to result from them by the illuminated are 
fairly and more easily deducible from religion, 

or even from common sense. * * * 

* * * ***** 

What of jCarlisle's wings ? I believe my flying 
scheme — that of breaking in condors and riding 
them — is the best ; or if a few rocs could be nat- 
uralized — though it might be a hard matter to 
break them. Seriously, I am very far from con- 
vinced that flying is impossible, and have an ad- 
mirable tale of a Spanish bird for one of my let- 
ters, which will just suit Carlisle Yes, 

your friends shall be mine, but it is we (in the 
dual number) who must be intimate. If Momus 
had made a window in my breast, I should by 
this time have had sense enough to add a win- 
dow-shutter. London is not the only place for 
me : I have an unspeakable loathing for that huge 
city. ' God made the country, and man made 
the town.' Now, as God made me likewise, I 
love the country. Here I am in the skirts of 
Bristol ; in ten minutes in a beautiful country ; 
and in half an hour among rocks and woods, 
with no other company than the owls and jack- 
daws, with whom I fraternize in solitude ; but 
London ! it is true that you and Wynn will sup- 
ply the place of the owls and jackdaws, but 
Brixton is not the country : the poplars of Pow- 
nall Terrace can not supply the want of a wild 
wood • and, with all my imagination, I can not 
mistake a mile stone for a rock; but these are 
among the ra ovk e0' Tjfitv. It is within doors, 
and not without, that happiness dw T ells, like a 
vestal watching the fire of the Penates. * * 
" I have told you what I am about. Writing 
letters to the world is not, however, quite so 
agreeable as writing to you, and I do not love 
shaping a good thing into a good sentence. . . . 
Then for a volume of poems, and then for the 
Abridgment of the Laws, or the Lawyer's 
Pocket Companion, in fifty-two volumes folio ! 
Is it not a pity, Grosvenor, that I should not ex- 
ecute my intention of writing more verses than 
Lope de Vega, more tragedies than Dryden, and 
more epic poems than Blackmore ? The more 
I write, the more I have to write. I have a 
Helicon kind of dropsy upon me, and crescit in- 
dulgens sibi. The quantity of verses I wrote at 
Brixton is astonishing ; my mind was never more 
employed : I killed wasps, and was very happy. 
And so I will again, Grosvenor, though employ- 
ed on other themes ; and, if ever man was hap- 
py because he resolved to be so, I will. * * 
Of Lightfoot it is long since I have heard any 
thing. ******* 

" ' When blew the loud blast in the air, 
So shrill, so full of woe, 
Unable such a voice to bear, 
Down fell Jericho.' 

" Lightfoot, on the authority of some rum old 
book, used to assert the existence of a tune that 
would shake a wall down, by insinuating its 



sounds into the wall, and vibrating so strongly 
as to shake it down. Now, Grosvenor, to those 
lines in the fourth book of Joan that allude to 
Orlando's magic horn, was I going to make a 
note, which, by the help of you and Lightfoot, 
would have been a very quaint one, and by the 
help of Dr. Geddes, not altogether unlearned, 
not to mention great erudition in quotations from 
Boiardo, Ariosto, Archbishop Turpin, and Spen- 
ser. 

" Farewell, Grosvenor ! Have you read Count 
Rumford's Essays ? I am ashamed to say that 
I have not yet. Have you read Fawcett's Art 
of War ? With all the faults of Young, it pos- 
sesses more beauties, and is, in many parts, in 
my opinion, excellent. 

" R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

« June 26, 1796. 

" Take the whole of the Spanish poem ; it is 
by George of Montemayor, addressed by Sireno 
to a lock of Diana's hair, whom, returning after 
twelve months' absence, he finds married to an- 
other. 

" ' Ah me, thou relic of that faithless fair ! 

Sad changes have I suffered since that day, 
When in this valley from her long loose hair 

I bore thee — relic of my love — away. 
Well did I then believe Diana's truth, 

For soon true love each jealous care represses, 
And fondly thought that never other youth 

Should wanton with the maiden's unbound tresses. 

" ' There, on the cold clear Ezla's breezy side, 

My hand amid her ringlets wont to rove, 
She proffered now the lock, and now denied, 

With all the baby playfulness of love. 
There the false maid, with many an artful tear, 

Made me each rising thought of doubt discover, 
And vowed, and wept, till hope had ceased to fear, 

Ah me I beguiling like a child her lover. 

" • Witness thou, how that fondest, falsest fair, 

Has sighed and wept on Ezla's sheltered shore, 
And vowed eternal truth, and made me swear 

My heart no jealousy should harbor more. 
Ah ! tell me, could I but believe those eyes, 

Those lovely eyes with tears my cheek bedewing, 
When the mute eloquence of tears and sighs 

I felt and trusted, and embraced my rum ? 

" ' So false, and yet so fair ! so fair a mien 

Vailing so false a mind, who ever knew ? 
So true, and yet so wretched I who has seen 

A man like me, so wretched and so true 1 
Fly from me on the wind ! for you have seen 

How kind she was, how loved by her you knew me. 
Fly, fly ! vain witness what I once have been, 

Nor dare, all wretched as I am, to view me ! 

" ' One evening, on the river's pleasant strand, 

The maid, too well beloved ! sat with me, 
And with her finger traced upon the sand, 

Death for Diana, not inconstancy. 
And love beheld us from his secret stand, 

And marked his triumph, laughing to behold me ; 
To see me trust a writing traced in sand, 

To see me credit what a woman told me.'* 

" If you can add any thing to the terseness 
of the conclusion or the simplicity of the whole, 
do it. The piece itself is very beautiful. 

" My letters occupy more of my time and 
less of my mind than I could wish. Conceive 



* Since copying this beautiful translation, I have found 
that my father had inserted it in his " Letters from Spain 
and Portugal." I think, notwithstanding, the reader will 
not be displeased to see it here. 



90 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



MtAT. 22 



Garagantua eating wood strawberries one at a 
time, or green peas, or the old dish — pap with 
a fork, and you will have some idea how my 
mind feels in dwelling on desultory topics. Joan 
of Arc was a whole — it was something to think 
of every moment of solitude, and to dream of at 
night ; my heart was in the poem ; I threw my 
own feelings into it in my own language, ay, 
and out of one part of it and another, you may 
find my own character. Seriously, Grosvenor, 
to go on with Madoc is almost necessary to my 
happiness : I had rather leave off eating than 
poetizing ; but these things must be. I will 
feed upon law and digest it, or it shall choke 
me. Did you ever pop upon a seditious ode in 
the ludicrous style, addressed to the cannibals ? 
It was in the Courier and Telegraph ; a stray 
sheep marked Caius Gracchus, to which you 
may place another signature. 

" Grosvenor, I do not touch on aught inter- 
esting to-night. I am conversing with you now 
in that easy, calm, good-humored state of mind, 
which is, perhaps, the summum bonum ; the less 
we think of the world the better My feel- 
ings were once like an ungovernable horse ; 
now I have tamed Bucephalus ; he retains his 
spirit and his strength, but they are made use- 
ful, and he shall not break my neck This 

is, indeed, a change ; but the liquor that ceases 
to ferment does not immediately become flat ; 
the beer then becomes fine, and continues so till 
it is dead. 

" To-morrow Wynn comes ; shall T find him 
altered ? Would that I were among you. If 
unremitting assiduity can procure me independ- 
ence, that prize shall be mine. -'Christian went 
a long way to fling off his burden in the Pil- 
grim's Progress I doubt only my lungs ; 

I find my breath affected when I read aloud, but 
exercise may strengthen them. 

" When do you come ? It was wisely done 
of the old conjuror, who kept six princesses 
transformed into cats, to tie each of them fast, 
and put a mouse close to her nose without her 
being able to catch it ; for the nearer we are to 
a good, the more do we necessarily desire it : 
the attraction becomes more powerful as we ap- 
proach the magnet 

" Do not despise Godwin too much He 

will do good by defending Atheism in print, be- 
cause, when the arguments are known, they 
may be easily and satisfactorily answered. Tell 
Carlisle to ask him this question : If man were 
made by the casual meeting of atoms, how could 
he have supported himself without superior as- 
sistance ? The use of the mucles is only at- 
tained by practice — how could he have fed 
himself? how know from what cause hunger 
proceeded ? how know by what means to rem- 
edy the pain ? The question appears to me de- 
cisive Merry (of whose genius, erroneous 

as it was, I always thought highly) has pub- 
lished the ' Pains of Memory ;' a subject once 
given me, and from which some lines in Joan 
of Arc are extracted. Farewell ! 

"R. S." 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" July 17, 1796. 
******** 

" Besides my letters, I write for the Monthly 
Magazine. This is a new job : you may easily 
trace me there, if it be worth your while. They 
give five guineas a sheet, but their sheets are 
sixteen closely-printed pages. I manufacture 
up my old rubbish for them, with a little about 
Spanish literature. I shall be glad to get rid 
of all this. 

" So you abuse Anna St. Ives, and commend 
the Pucelle of the detestable Voltaire. Now, 
Grosvenor, it was not I who said 'I have not 
read that book.' I said — God be thanked that 
I did say it, and plague take the boobies who 
mutilated it in my absence — I said, ' I have 
never been guilty of reading the Pucelle of Vol- 
taire.' Report speaks it worthy of its author 
— a man whose wit and genius could only be 
equaled by his depravity. I will tell you what a 
man, not particularly nice in his moral opinions, 
said to me upon the subject of that book : ' I 
should think the worse of any man who, having 
read one canto of it, could proceed to a second.' 
. . . . Now, my opinion of Anna St. Ives is dia- 
metrically opposed to yours. I think it a book 
of consummate wisdom, and I shall join my 
forces to Mrs. Knowles, to whom I desire you 
would make my fraternal respects. 

" Sunday. 

" How has this letter been neglected ! No 
more delays, however. I am continually writ- 
ing or reading : the double cacoethes grows 
upon me every day ; and the physic of John 
Nokes, by which I must get cured, is sadly 
nauseous. Wimporte. I wish I were in Lon- 
don, for if industry can do any thing for any 
body, it shall for me. My plan is to study from 
five in the morning till eight, from nine to twelve, 
and from one to four. The evening is my own. 
Now, Grosvenor, do you think I would do this if 
I had a pig-sty of my own in the country ? 

" So goes the world ! There is not a man 
in it who is not discontented. However, if no 
man had more reason for discontent than you 
and I have, it would be already a very good 
world ; for, after all, I believe the worst we 
complain of is, that we do not find mankind as 
good as we could wish Many of our men- 
tal evils — and God knows they are the worst — 
we make ourselves. 

" If a young man had his senses about him 
when he sets out in life, he should seriously de- 
liberate whether he had rather never be miser- 
able or sometimes be happy. I like the up and 
down road best ; but I have learned never to 
despise any man's opinion because it is differ- 
ent from my own. Surely, Grosvenor, our rest- ' 
lessness in this world seems to indicate that we 
are intended for a better. We have all of us a 
longing after happiness ; and surely the Creator 
will gratify all the natural desires that he has 
implanted in us. If you die before me, will you 
visit me ? I am half a believer in apparitions, 



Etat. 22. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



91 



and would purchase conviction at the expense 
of a tolerable fright. 

" George Burnett's uncle was for three months 
terribly afflicted by the nightmare ; so much so, 
that, by being constantly disturbed, his health 
was considerably impaired. One night he de- 
termined to lie awake and watch for HER. 
" ' Oh Bedford, Bedford, 
If ever thou didst a good story love !' 

One night, he says, he determined to lie awake 
and watch for HER. At the usual hour he heard 
HER coining up the stairs ; he got up in the bed 
in a cold sweat ; he heard HER come into the 
room ; he heard HER open the curtain, and then 
— he leaped out of bed and caught HER by the 
hair before SHE — for SHE it was— could fall 
upon his breast. Then did this most incompara- 
ble hero bellow to John for a candle. They 
fought ; she pulled and he pulled, and bellowed 
till John came with a light ; and then — she van- 
ished immediately, and he remained with a hand- 
ful of HER hair. 

" Now, Bedford, would you not have had that 
made into a locket ? The tale, methinks, is no 
bad companion for your father's dream. The 
exploit of Mr. Burnett is far beyond that of St. 
Withold — though, by-the-by, he met the nine 
foals into the bargain — and they made a bargain. 

" I have written you an odd letter, and an ugly 

one, upon very execrable paper. By-the-by, if 

you have a Prudentius, you may serve me by 

sending me all he says about a certain Saint Eu- 

lalia, who suffered martyrdom at Merida. I 

passed through that city, and should like to see 

his hymn upon the occasion ; and if there be any 

good in it, put it in a note. How mortifying is 

this confinement of yours ! I had planned so 

many pleasant walks, to be made so much more 

pleasant by conversation ; 

" For I have much to tell thee, much to say 
Of the odd things we saw upon our journey, 
Much of the dirt and vermin that annoyed us. 

And you should have seen my letters before they 
went to press, and annotated them, and heard the 
plot of my tragedy ; but now ! I have a mortal 
aversion to all these disjunctive particles : but, 
and if, and yet, always herald some bad news. 
... I shall be settled in London, I hope, before 
Christmas. I do not remember a happier ten 
weeks than I passed at Brixton, nor, indeed, a 
better employed period. God grant me ten such 
weeks of leisure once more in my life, and I will 
finish Madoc. God bless you. R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"July 31, 1796. 
" Oh that you could bring Bristol to the sea ! 
for as for bringing the sea to Bristol, that could 
not be done, as Trim says, 'unless it pleased 
God ;' and, as Toby says, how the devil should 
it? I must not ask you to come to me, and I 
can not come to you. . . . For your club, I grant 
you a few hours once a fortnight will not make 
me worse ; but will they make me better ? and 
if they will not, why should I quit the fireside ? 
You will be in a state of requisition perpetually 



with me ; and it seems you have bespoke a place 
in my heart for Carlisle, but I will not let in too 
many there, because I do not much like being 
obliged to turn them out. 

"Lenora is partly borrowed from an old En- 
glish ballad : 

" Is there any room at your head, William ? 
Is there any room at your feet ? 
Is there any room at your side, William, 
Wherein I may creep ? 

" There's no room at my head, Margerett, 
There's no room at my feet ; 
There's no room at my side, Margerett, 
My coffin is made so meet I 

But the other ballad of Burger, in the Monthly 
Magazine, is most excellent. I know no com- 
mendation equal to its merit ; read it again, Gros- 
venor, and read it aloud. The man who wrote 
that should have been ashamed of Lenora. Who 
is this Taylor ? I suspected they were by Sayers. 

" Have you read Cabal and Love ? In spite 
of a translation for which the translator deserves 
hanging, the fifth act is dreadfully affecting. I 
want to write my tragedies of the Banditti : 

" Of Sebastian, 

" Of Inez de Castro, 

"Of the Revenge of Pedro. 

" My epic poem, in twenty books, of Mauoc. 

" My novel, in three volumes, of Edmund 
Oliver. 

" My romance of ancient history of Alcas. 

" My Norwegian tale of Harfagne. 

" My Oriental poem of The Destruction of the 
Dom Daniel. 
And, in case I adopt Rousseau's system, 

" My Pains of Imagination. 

There, Grosvenor, all these I want to write ! 
" OroTToroi ! 

" A comical Cornish curate, who saw me once 
or twice, has written me a quaint letter, and sent 
me a specimen of his Paradise Found ! ! ! ! 

" Wynn wishes me to live near Lincoln's Inn, 
because, in a year's time, it will be necessary for 
me to be with a special pleader ; but I wish to 
live on the other side of Westminster Bridge, be- 
cause it will be much more necessary to be within 
an evening's walk of Brixton. To all serious 
studies I bid adieu when I enter upon my Lon- 
don lodgings. The law will neither amuse me, 
nor ameliorate me, nor instruct me ; but, the mo- 
ment it gives me a comfortable independence — 
and I have but few wants — then farewell to Lon- 
don. I will get me some little house near the 
sea, and near a country town, for the sake of the 
post and the bookseller ; and you shall pass as 
much of the summer with me as you can, and I 
will see you in the winter — that is, if you do not 
come and live by me ; and then we will keep 
mastiffs like Carlisle, and make the prettiest the- 
ories, and invent the best systems for mankind ; 
ay, and become great philanthropists, when we 
associate only among ourselves and the fraternity 
of dogs, cats, and cabbages ; for as for poultry, 
I do not like eating what I have fed, and as for 
pigs, they are too like the multitude. There, in 
the cultivation of poetry and potatoes I will be 
innooently employed; not but I mean to aspire 



92 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



.ZEtat. 23. 



to higher things ; ay, Grosvenor, I will make ci- 
der and mead, and try more experiments upon 
wine than a London vintner ; and perhaps, Gros- 
venor, the first Christmas day you pass with me 
after I am so settled, we may make a Christmas 

fire of all my law books. Amen, so be it 

" I hope to get out my Letters by Michaelmas 
day, and the Poems will be ready in six weeks 
after that time. That done, farewell to Bristol, 
my native place, my home for two-and-twenty 
years, where from many causes I have endured 
much misery, but where I have been very hap- 

py 

" No man ever retained a more perfect knowl- 
edge of the history of his own mind than I have 
done. I can trace the development of my char- 
acter from infancy ; for developed it has been, 
not changed. I look forward to the writing of 
this history as the most pleasing and most useful 
employment I shall ever undertake. This re- 
moval is not, however, like quitting home. I am 
never domesticated in lodgings ; the hearth is 
unhallowed, and the Penates do not abide there. 
Now, Grosvenor, to let you into a secret : though 
I can not afford to buy a house, or hire one, I 
have lately built a very pretty castle, which is, 
being interpreted, if I can get my play of the 
* Banditti' brought on the stage, and if it succeed 
— hang all those little conjunctions — well, these 
' ifs' granted — I shall get money enough to fur- 
nish me a house. . . . God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Bristol, August 29, 1796, by the fireside. 

" .... Do not hurt the polypi for the sake of 
trying experiments ; mangle the dead as much as 
you please, but let not Carlisle dissect dogs or frogs 
alive. Of all experimental surgeons, Spallanzani 
is the only fair one I ever heard of. He kept a 
kite, and gave him all his food in little bags tied 
to a long string, which he used to pull up again 
to see the process of digestion. Now this was 
using the kite very ill, but he served himself in 
the same manner. 

" You will, perhaps, hear of me in Sussex, cer- 
tainly if you go to Rye, which is only ten miles 
distant from Hastings. I wish you may see the 

Lambs I was a great favorite there once, 

more so than I shall ever be any where again, 
for the same reason that people like a kitten bet- 
ter than a cat, and a kid better than the venera- 
ble old goat. ... I have been very happy at Rye, 
Grosvenor, and love to remember it. You know 
the history tof the seventeen anonymous letters 
that Tom and I sent down the day before we went 
ourselves.* There is a wind-mill on the bank 
above the house : with the glass, I used to tell 
the hour by Rye clock from the door ; which 
clock, by-the-by, was taken among the spoils of 
the Spanish Armada. 

" I hope you may go there. I wrote a good 
many bad verses in Sussex, but they taught me 
to write better, and you know not how agreeable 
it is to me to meet with one of my old lines, or 



* I can find no account of this excursion. It was prob- 
ably during one of his Westminster holidays. 



old ideas, in Joan of Arc. ... If we were together 
now, we would write excellent letters from Por- 
tugal. I have begun a hymn to the Penates, 
which will, perhaps, be the best of all my lesser 
pieces 5 it is to conclude the volume of poems. 
. ... It is a great advantage to have a London 
bookseller : they can put off an edition of a book, 
however stupid ; and, without great exertions in 
its favor, no book, however excellent, will sell. 
The sale of Joan of Arc in London has been very 
slow indeed. Six weeks ago Cadell had only sold 
three copies 

" Would I were with you ! for, though I hate to 
be on the sea, I yet wish to pitch my tent on the 
shore. I do not know any thing more delight- 
ful than to he on the beach in the sun, and watch 
the rising waves, while a thousand vague ideas 
pass over the mind, like the summer clouds over 
the water ; then, it is a noble situation to Shan- 
deize. Why is it salt? why does it ebb and 
flow? what sort of fellows are the mermen? 
&c, &c. : these are a thousand of the prettiest 
questions in the world to ask, on which you may 
guess away ad secula seculorum $ and here am I 
tormented by Mr. Rosser's dilatory devils, and 
looking on with no small impatience to the time 
when I shall renounce the devil and all his works. 

" I am about to leave off writing just when I 
have learned what to write and how to write. 
. . . I mean to attempt to get a tragedy on the 
stage, for the mere purpose of furnishing a house, 
which a successful play would do for me. I 
know I can write one ; beyond this, all is mere 
conjecture ; it is, however, worth trying, for I 
find lodgings very disagreeable. ; Lodge, how- 
ever, I must in London, and you will be good 
enough to look out for me, I hope ere long, two 
rooms on the Brixton side the water. 

" I have a thousand things to say to you. 
Long absence seems to have produced no effect 
on us, and I still feel that perfect openness in 
writing to you that I shall never feel to any oth- 
er human being. Grosvenor, when we sit down 
in Shandy Hall, what pretty speculations shall 
we make ! You shall be Toby, and amuse your- 
self by marching to Paris ; I will make systems, 
and Horace shall be Doctor Slop. 

"I have projected a useful volume, which 
would not occupy a month — specimens of the 
early English poets, with a critical account of 
all their works — only to include the less known 
authors and specimens never before selected. 
My essays would be historical and biographical 
as well as critical. I can get this printed with- 
out risking any thing myself. . . 



Yours sincerely, 



R. S.' 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Bristol, Oct, 1796. 
" I know not even the day of the month, but 
October is somewhat advanced, and this is Fri- 
day evening. Why did I not write sooner ? Ex- 
cuses are bad things. I have much to employ 
me, though I can always make a little leisure. 
If you were married, Grosvenor, you would know 
the luxury of sitting indolently by the fireside j 



jEtat.23. 



ROBERT aOUTHEY. 



93 



at present you only half know it. There is a 
state of complete mental torpor, very delightful, 
when the mind admits no sensation but that of 
mere existence ; such a sensation I suppose plants 
to possess, made more vivid by the dews and 
gentle rains. To indulge in fanciful systems is 
a harmless solitary amusement, and I expect 
many a pleasant hour will be thus wore away, 
Grosvenor, when we meet. The devil never 
meddles with me in my unemployed moments ; 
my day dreams are of a pleasanter nature. I 
should be the happiest man in the world if I 
possessed enough to live with comfort in the 
country ; but in this world, we must sacrifice 
the best part of our lives to acquire that wealth 
which generally arrives when the time of enjoy- 
ing it is past. 

******** 

"I ardently wish for children; yet, if God 
shall bless me with any, I shall be unhappy to 
see them poisoned by the air of London. 

" ' Sir — I do thank God for it — I do hate 
Most heartily that city.' 

So said John Donne ; 'tis a favorite quotation of 
mine. My spirits always sink when I approach 
it. Green fields are my delight. I am not only 
better in health, but even in heart, in the coun- 
try. A fine day exhilarates my heart; if it 
rains, I behold the grass assume a richer ver- 
dure as it drinks the moisture : every thing that 
I behold is very good, except man ; and in Lon- 
don I see nothing but man and his works. A 
country clergyman, with a tolerable income, is 
surely in a very enviable situation. Surely we 
have a thousand things to transfuse into each 
other, which the lazy language of the pen can 
not express with sufficient rapidity. Your ill- 
ness was very unfortunate. I could wish once 
to show you the pleasant spots where I have so 
often wandered, and the cavern where I have 
written so many verses. You should have known 
Cottle, too, for a worthier heart you never knew. 
" You love the sea. Whenever I pitch my 
tent, it shall be by it. When will that be ? Is 
it not a villainous thing that poetry will not sup- 
port a man, when the jargon of the law enriches 

so many ? I had rather write an epic 

poem than read a brief. 

" Have you read St. Pierre ? If not, read that 
most delightful work, and you will love the au- 
thor as much as I do. 

"I am as sleepy an animal as ever. The 
rain beats hard, the fire burns bright, 'tis but 
eight o'clock, and I have already begun yawn- 
ing. Good-night, Grosvenor, lest I set you to 
sleep. My father always went to bed at nine 
o'clock. I have inherited his punctuality and 
his drowsiness. God bless you. 

" Robert Sotjthey. 
" I am the lark that sings early, and early re- 
tires. What is that bird that sleeps in the morn- 
ing and is awake at night, Grosvenor ? Do you 
remember poor Aaron?"* 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 



* Aaron was a tame owl, kept by either my father or 
Mr. Bedford, I forget which, at Westminster. 



" Nov. 21, 1796. 

" When do I come to London ? A plain 
question. I can not tell, is as plain an answer. 
My book will be out before Christmas, and I 
shall then have no further business in Bristol ; 
yet, Bedford, this is not saying when I shall 
leave it. The best answer is, as soon as I can, 
and the sooner the better. I want to be there. 
I want to feel myself settled, and God knows 
when that will be, for the settlement of a lodg- 
ing is but a comfortless one. To complete com- 
fort, a house to one's self is necessary 

However, I expect to be as comfortable as it is 
possible to be in that cursed city, ' that huge 
and hateful sepulcher of men.' I detest cities, 
and had rather live in the fens of Lincolnshire 
or on Salisbury Plain than in the best situation 
London could furnish. The neighborhood of 
you and Wynn can alone render it tolerable. I 
fear the air will wither me up, like one of the 
miserable myrtles at a town parlor window. 
.... Oh, for ' the house in the woods and the 
great dog !' 

" I already feel intimate with Carlisle ; but I 
am a very snail in company, Grosvenor, and pop 
into my shell whenever I am approached, or roll 
myself up like a hedgehog in my rough outside. 
It is strange, but I never approach London with- 
out feeling my heart sink within me ; an uncon- 
querable heaviness oppresses me in its atmos- 
phere, and all its associated ideas are painful. 
With a little house in the country, and a bare 
independence, how much more useful should I 
be, and how much more happy ! It is not talk- 
ing nonsense, when I say that the London air is 
as bad for the mind as for the body, for the mind 
is a chameleon that receives its colors from sur- 
rounding objects. In the country, every thing 
is good, every thing in nature is beautiful. The 
benevolence of Deity is every where presented 
to the eye, and the heart participates in the tran- 
quillity of the scene. In the town my soul is 
continually disgusted by the vices, follies, and 
consequent miseries of mankind. 

" My future studies, too. Now, I never read 
a book without learning something, and never 
write a line of poetry without cultivating some 
feeling of benevolence and honesty ; but the law 
is a horrid jargon — a quibbling collection of vo- 
luminous nonsense ; but this I must wade through 
— ay, and I will wade through — and when I shall 
have got enough to live in the country, you and 
I will make my first Christmas fire of all my 
new books. Oh, Grosvenor, what a blessed bon- 
fire ! The devil uses the statutes at large for 
fuel when he gives an attorney his house warm- 
ing. 

" I shall have some good poems to send you 
shortly. Your two birth-day odes are printed ; 
your name looks well in capitals, and I have 
pleased myself by the motto prefixed to them : 
it is from Akenside. Shall I leave you to guess 
it ? I hate guessing myself. 

" ' Oh, my faithful friend ! 
Oh early chosen ! ever found the same, 



94 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. -23. 



And trusted, and beloved ; once more the verse, 
Lond-destined, always obvious to thine ear, 
Attend indulgent.' 

" My Triumph of Woman is manufactured into 
a tolerable poem. My Hymn to the Penates will 
be the best of my minor pieces. The B. B. Ec- 
logues may possibly become popular. 

" Read St. Pierre, Grosvenor; and, if you ever 
turn pagan, you will certainly worship him for a 

demi-god I want to get a tragedy out, to 

furnish a house with its profits. Is this a prac- 
ticable scheme, allowing the merit of the drama? 
or would a good novel succeed better ? Heigh- 
ho ! ways and means ! . . . . 

" Yours sincerely, R. S." 



CHAPTER V. 

GOES TO LONDON TO STUDY THE LAW LETTERS 

FROM THENCE TAKES LODGINGS AT BURTON 

IN HAMPSHIRE LETTERS TO MR. MAY AND 

MR. BEDFORD GOES TO BATH LINES BY 

CHARLES LAMB RETURNS TO LONDON LET- 
TER TO MR. WYNN VISIT TO NORFOLK LET- 
TERS FROM THENCE TAKES A HOUSE AT WEST- 
BURY, NEAR BRISTOL EXCURSION INTO HERE- 
FORDSHIRE. 1797. 

My father continued to reside in Bristol until 
the close of the year 1796, chiefly employed, as 
we have seen, in working up the contents of his 
foreign note-books into " Letters from Spain and 
Portugal," which were published in one volume 
early in the following year. This task complet- 
ed, he determined to take up his residence in 
London, and fairly to commence the study of the 
law, which he was now enabled to do through 
the true friendship of Mr. C. W. W. Wynn, from 
whom he received for some years from this time 
an annuity of <£l60 — the prompt fulfillment of 
a promise made during their years of college in- 
timacy. This was indeed one of those acts of 
rare friendship — twice honorable — "to him that 
gives and him that takes it ;" bestowed with 
pleasure, received without any painful feelings, 
and often reverted to as the staff and stay of 
those years when otherwise he must have felt to % 
the full all the manifold evils of being, as he him- 
self expressed it, "cut adrift upon the ocean of 
life." 

How reluctantly he had looked forward to his 
legal studies, his past letters have shown ; nor 
did the prospect appear more pleasing when the 
anticipation was about to be changed to the re- 
ality. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Jan. 1,1797. 
" So, Bedford, begins the year that will term- 
inate our correspondence. I mean to spend one 
summer in North Wales, studying the country for 
Madoc, and do not intend writing to you then, 
because you shall be with me. And for all the 
rest of the days I look on to clearly, the view is 
bounded by tne smoke of London. Methinks, 



like Camoens, I could dub it Babylon, and write 
lamentations for the ' Sion' of my birth-place, 
having, like him, no reason to regret the past, 
except that it is not the present : it is the coun- 
try I want. A field thistle is to me worth all 
the flowers of Covent Garden. 

" However, Bedford, happiness is a flower that 
will blossom any where ; and I expect to be hap- 
py, even in London. You know who is to watch 
at my gate ; and if he will let in any of your club, 
well and good. 

" Time and experience seem to have assimi- 
lated us : we think equally ill of mankind, and, 
from the complexion of your last letters, I be- 
lieve you think as badly as I do of their rulers. 
I fancy you are mounted above the freezing point 
of aristocracy, to the temperate degree where I 
have fallen. . . . Methinks, Grosvenor, the last 
two years have made me the elder ; but you 
know I never allow the aristocracy of years. 

" I have this day finished my Letters, and now 
my time is my own — my ' race is run ;' and per- 
haps the next book of mine which makes its ap- 
pearance will be my ' posthumous works !'.... 
I must be on the Surrey side of the water ; this 
will suit me and please you. I am familiar with 
the names of your club — shall I ever be so with 
themselves? Naturally of a reserved disposi- 
tion, there was a considerable period of my life 
in which high spirits, quick feelings, and princi- 
ples enthusiastically imbibed, made me talka- 
tive; experience has taught me wisdom, and I 
am again as silent, as self-centering as in early 
youth. 

" After the nine hours' law study, I shall have 
a precious fragment of the day at my own dis- 
posal. Now, Grosvenor, I must be a miser of 
time, for I am just as sleepy a fellow as you re- 
member me at Brixton. You see I am not col- 
lected enough to write ; this plaguy cough in- 
terrupts me, and shakes all the ideas in my brain 
out of their places. 

" Jan. 7. 

" A long interval, Grosvenor, and it has not 
been employed agreeably. I have been taken 
ill at Bristol. ... I was afraid of a fever . . . .a 
giddiness of head, which accompanied the seiz- 
ure, rendered me utterly unfit for any thing. I 
was well nursed, and am well. . . . When I get 
to London I have some comfortable plans ; but 
much depends on the likeability of your new 
friends. You say you have engaged some of 
them to meet me : now, if you taught them to 
expect any thing in me, they must owe their dis- 
appointment to you. Remember that I am as 
reserved to others as I am open to you. You 
have seen a hedgehog roll himself up when no- 
ticed, even so do I shelter myself in my own 
thoughts. . . . 

" I have sketched out a tragedy on the martyr- 
dom of Joan of Arc, which is capable of making 
a good closet drama. My ideas of tragedy dif- 
fer from those generally followed. There is sel- 
dom nature enough in the dialogue ; even Shaks- 
peare gets upon the stilts sometimes ; the dram- 
atist ought rather to display a knowledge of the 






jEtat. 23. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



95 



workings of the human heart than his own imag- 
ination ; high-strained metaphor can rarely be 
introduced with propriety — similes never. Do 
you think I shall strip tragedy of all its orna- 
ments? this, time must discover. Yet look on 
the dramatic parts of Joan of Arc ; they are the 
best ; the dialogue is impassioned, but it is nat- 
ural. John Doe and Richard Roe must, howev- 
er, form the chief personages in the last act of 
my life. Grosvenor, will it be a tragedy or a 
comedy ? However, I will not now think of the 
catastrophe, but rather look on to the pleasant 
scenes when we shall meet. Fare you well. . . . 
"Yours affectionately, R. S." 

In the course of the next month (February) 
my father went up to town for the purpose of 
fixing himself in some convenient situation for 
his legal studies. " Now, my dear Edith," he 
writes from there, "am I of Gray's Inn, where 
I this day paid twelve pounds fifteen shillings 
for admission.*. . . Edith, you must come to me. 
I am not merely uncomfortable, I am unhappy 
without you. I rise in the morning without ex- 
pecting pleasure from the day, and I lie down at 
night without one wish for the morning. This 
town presents to me only a wilderness. ... I 

am just x-eturned from ; they can receive 

us for ^£40 a year: two rooms, they are not 
large, but they are handsomely furnished, and 
there is a good book-case, and every thing looks 
clean. . . . Direct to me at Mr. Peacock's, No. 
20 Prospect Place, Newington Butts, near Lon- 
don ; but, my dear Edith, there is ' no prospect' 
in this vile neighborhood." .... And again, a 
few days later, he writes in that playful and af- 
fectionate strain in which all his letters to my 
mother are couched : " Grosvenor has just been 
talking of you. He was correcting an error in 
Musseus. I had laid down my pen, and begun 
one of my melodious whistles, upon which he 
cried for mercy for God's sake, and asked if you 
liked my whistling ; adding that he would spirit 
you up to rebellion if ever I did any thing you 
did not like. I said you had often threatened to 
tell Grosvenor Bedford. Well, Edith, on the 
fifth day I shall see you once more ; and you do 
not know with what comfort I think at night that 
one day more is gone. I do not misemploy the 
leisure I make here. Such books as, from their 
value, ought not to be lent from the library, I 
am now consulting, and appropriating such of 
their contents as may be useful to my red book. 

" . . . . Richards, I understand, was much 
pleased with me on Sunday. I was, as always 
in the company of strangers, thoughtful, reserved, 
and almost silent. God never intended that I 
should make myself agreeable to any body. I 
am glad he likes me. however ; he can and will 
assist me in this ugly world. "t 

'The following letters will show the course of 
his London life during the few months he resided 
there at this time. 



* This letter is without date, but the receipt for these 
entrance fees, which I have before me, fixes the time, 
February 7, 1797. t Feb. 16, 1797. 



To Joseph Cottle. 

" London, Feb., 1797. 
" My dear Friend, 

" I am now entered on a new way of life, 
which will lead me to independence. You know 
that I neither lightly undertake any scheme, nor 
lightly abandon what I have undertaken. I am 
happy because I have no wants, and because the 
independence I labor to obtain, and of attaining 
which my expectations can hardly be disappoint- 
ed, will leave me nothing to wish. I am in- 
debted to you, Cottle, for the comforts of my 
latter time. In my present situation I feel a 
pleasure in saying thus much. 

"As to my literary pursuits, after some con- 
sideration I have resolved to postpone every other 
till I have concluded Madoc. This must be the 
greatest of all my works. The structure is com 
plete in my mind ; and my mind is likewise 
stored with appropriate images. Should I de- 
lay it, these images may become fainter, and 
perhaps age does not improve the poet. 

" Thank God ! Edith comes on Monday next. 
I say thank God! for I have never, since my 
return, been absent from her so long before, and 
sincerely hope and intend never to be so again. 
On Tuesday we shall be settled ; on Wednesday 
my legal studies begin in the morning, and 1 
shall begin with Madoc in the evening. Of this 
it is needless to caution you to say nothing, as I 
must have the character of a lawyer ; and, though 
I can and will unite the two pursuits, no one 
would credit the possibility of the union. In two 
years the poem shall be finished, and the many 
years it must lie by will afford ample time for 
correction. Mary* has been in the Oracle ; also 
some of my sonnets in the Telegraph, with out- 
rageous commendation. I have declined being 
a member of a Literary Club which meets week- 
ly, and of which I have been elected a member. 
Surely a man does not do his duty who leaves 
his wife to evenings of solitude, and I feel duty 
and happiness to be inseparable. I am happier 
at home than any other society can possibly make 

me God bless you ! 

" Yours sincerely, 

"Robert Sotjthey." 

To Joseph Cottle. 

" London, March 13, 1797. 
* * * * * * 

" Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that, 
of all the lions or literati that I have seen here, 
there is not one whose countenance has not some 
unpleasant trait. Mary Imlay'sf is the best, in- 
finitely the best : the only fault in it is an ex- 
pression somewhat similar to what the prints of 
Home Tooke display — an expression indicating 
superiority ; not haughtiness, not sarcasm in 
Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her 
eyes are light brown, and, though the lid of one 
of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are 
the most meaning I ever saw. * * * * 

" When I was with George Dyer one morning 



* His ballad of Mary, the Maid of the Inn. 
t The daughter of Mary Wollstonecroft. 



96 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 23. 



last week, Mary Hayes and Miss Christal enter- 
ed, and the ceremony of introduction followed. 
Mary Hayes writes in the ' Monthly Magazine' 
under the signature of M. H., and sometimes 
writes nonsense there about Helvetius. She has 
lately published a novel — 'Emma Courtenay;' 
a book much praised and much abused. I have 
not seen it myself, but the severe censures passed 
on it by persons of narrow mind have made me 
curious, and convinced me that it is at least an 
•jncommon book. Mary Hayes is an agreeable 
woman, and a Godwinite. Now, if you will read 
Godwin's book with attention, we will consider 
between us in what light to consider that secta- 
rian title. As for Godwin himself, he has large, 
noble eyes, and a nose — oh, most abominable 
nose ! Language is not vituperatious enough 
to describe the effect of its downward elonga- 
tion.* He loves London, literary society, and 
talks nonsense about the collision of mind ; and 
Mary Hayes echoes him. But Miss Christal — 
have you seen her poems ? — a fine, artless, sens- 
ible girl ! Now, Cottle, that word sensible must 
not be construed here in its dictionary accepta- 
tion. Ask a Frenchman what it means, and he 
will understand it, though, perhaps, he can by 
no circumlocution explain its French meaning. 
Her heart is alive, she loves poetry, she loves 
retirement, she loves the country : her verses are 
very incorrect, and the literary circles say she 
has no genius ; but she has genius, Joseph Cot- 
tle, or there is no truth in physiognomy. Gil- 
bert Wakefield came in while I was disputing 
with Mary Hayes upon the moral effects of towns. 
He has a most critic-like voice, as if he had 
snarled himself hoarse. You see I like the 
women better than the men. Indeed, they are 
better animals in general, perhaps because more 
is left to nature in their education. Nature is 
very good, but God knows there is very little of 
it left. 

"I wish you were within a morning's walk, 
but I am always persecuted by time and space. 
Robert Southey and Law and Poetry make up 
an odd kind of triunion. We jog en easily to- 
gether, and I advance with sufficient rapidity in 
Blackstone and Madoc. I hope to finish my poem 
and to begin my practice in about two years. 
God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Thomas Southey. 

"March 31, 1797. 

" I have stolen time to write to you, though 

uncertain whether you may still be at Plymouth ; 

but, if the letter should have to follow you, well 

and good; if lost, it matters little. I have a 



* Godwin's nose came in for no small share of condem- 
nation. In another letter he says, "We dine with Mary 
Wolls tone croft (now Godwin) to-morrow. Oh, he has a 
foul nose, and I never see it without longing to cut it off. 

By-the-by, Dr. told me that I had exactly Lavater's 

nose ; to my no small satisfaction, for I did not know what 
to make of that protuberance or promontory of mine. I 
could not compliment him. He has a very red, drinking 
face; and little, good-humored eyes, like cunning and 
short-sightedness united." — To Joseph Cottle, May, 1797. 



bookseller's job on my hands : it is to translate 
a volume from the French — about a month's 
work ;* and the pay will be not less than five- 
and-twenty guineas, an employment more profit- 
able than pleasant ; but I should like plenty such. 
Three or four such jobs would furnish me a 

house Your description of the Spanish 

coast about St. Sebastian has very highly de- 
lighted me. I intend to versify it, put the lines 
in Madoc, and give your account below in the 
note. To me, who had never seen any other 
but the tame shores of this island, the giant rocks 
of Galicia appeared stupendously sublime. They 
even derived a grandeur from their barrenness : 
it gives them a majestic simplicity that fills the 
undistracted mind. I have in contemplation 
another work upon my journey — a series of po- 
ems, the subjects occasioned by the scenes 1 
passed, and the meditations which those scenes 
excited. Do you perceive the range this plan 
includes ? History, imagination, philosophy, all 
would be pressed into my service. ... A noble 
design ! and it has met with some encourage- 
ment. But time is scarce ; and I must be a 
lawyer — a sort of animal that might be made of 
worse materials than those with which nature 
tempered my clay. 

***** * * 

Should I publish the series of poems I mentioned, 
it is my intention to annex prints from the sketch- 
es my uncle took upon our road. I sometimes 
regret that, after leaving the College Green, I 
have never had encouragement to go on with 
drawing. The evening when Shad and I were 
so employed was then the pleasantest part of the 
day, and I began at last to know something 
about it. I would gladly get those drawings ; 
but my aunt never lets any thing go ; and the 
greater part of my books, and all those drawings, 
and my coins, with a number of things of little 
intrinsic value, but which I should highly prize, 
are all locked up in the Green. 

" The poor old theater is going to ruin, for 
which I have worked so many hours, and which 
so deeply interested me once. Such are the rev- 
olutions of private life, and such strange altera- 
tions do a few years produce ! 

" My aunt told Peggy t it was pretty well in 
me to write a book about Portugal who had not 
been there six months ; for her part, she had 
been there twelve months, and yet she could 
not write a book about it — so apt are we to 
measure knowledge by time. I employed my 
time there in constant attention, seeing every 
thing and asking questions, and never went 
to bed without writing down the information I 
had acquired during the day. I am now toler- 
ably versed in Spanish and Portuguese poetry, 
and am writing a series of essays upon the sub- 



* The work was tolerably hard. " I am running a race 
with the printers again," he writes to Mr. Cottle, April 5, 
"translating a work from the French (Necker on the Rev- 
olution, vol. ii. — Dr. Aiken and his son translate the first 
vol.). My time is now wholly engrossed by the race, for 
I run at the rate of sixteen pages a day, as hard going as 
sixteen miles for a hack horse." 

t His cousin, Margaret Hill. 



jEtat. 23. 



ilOBERT SOUTHEY. 



97 



ject in the ' Monthly Magazine' — a work which, 
probably, you do not see. 

" Farewell ! I hope you may soon come to 
Portsmouth, that we may see you. 
" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

"April 28, 1797. 
■' My dear Thomas, 

" I have been regretting that you were not 
at Portsmouth in the great insurrection,* that I 
might have had a full, true, and particular ac- 
count of that extraordinary business — a business 

at which every body is astonished As I 

have no business in London (except, indeed, to 
dine at Gray's Inn once at the latter end of 
June) till November, we intend spending the 
summer and autumn somewhere by the sea; 
where is not yet determined, but most probably 

somewhere in Hampshire London is a 

place for which I entertain a most hearty hatred, 
and Edith likes it as little as myself; and as for 
the sea, I like it very much when on shore. 

" I had a letter from Lisbon yesterday. My 
uncle's family has been very unfortunate : his 
poor old woman is dead, and so is his dog Lin- 
da. His mare, which was lame, he had given 
away to be turned into the woods ; she has not 
been seen lately, and he thinks the wolves have 
eaten her : it was an account that made me 
melancholy. I had been long enough an inhab- 
itant of his house to become attached to every 
thing connected with it ; and poor old Ursula 
was an excellent woman : he will never find 
her equal, and I shall never think of Lisbon 
again without some feelings of regret 

" My acquaintance here are more than are 
convenient, and I meet with invitations unpleas- 
ant to refuse, and still more unpleasant to ac- 
cept. This is another motive to me to wish for 
a country residence as long as possible. I find 
the distance in this foul city very inconvenient ; 
'tis a morning's walk to call upon a distant 
friend, and I return from it thorougly fatigued. 
We are going to dine on Wednesday next with 
Mary Wollstonecroft — of all the literary charac- 
ters, the one I most admire. My curiosity is 
fully satisfied, and the greater part of these peo- 
ple, after that is satisfied, leave no other remain- 
ing. This is not the case with her. She is a 
first-rate woman, sensible of her own worth, but 
without arrogance or affectation. 

"I have two reasons for preferring a resi- 
dence near the sea: I love to pickle myself in 
that grand brine tub ; and I wish to catch its 
morning, evening, and mid-day appearance for 
poetry, with the effect of every change of weath- 
er. Fancy will do much ; but the poet ought 
to be an accurate observer of nature ; and I 
shall watch the clouds, and the rising and set- 
ting sun, and the sea-birds with no inattentive 
eye. I have remedied one of my deficiencies, 
too, since a boy, and learned to swim enough to 
like the exercise. This I began at Oxford,, and 
practiced a good deal in the summer of 1795. 



* The mutiny of the fleet at Spithead. 
G 



My last dip was in the Atlantic Ocean, at the 
foot of the Arrabida Mountain — a glorious spot. 

I have no idea of sublimity exceeding it 

Have you ever met with Mary Wollstonecroft' s 
letters from Sweden and Norway? She has 
made me in love wixh a cold climate, and frost 
and snow, with a northern moonlight. Now I 
am turned lawyer, I shall have no more books 
to send you, except, indeed, second editions, 
when they are called for, and then my alterations 
will be enough, perhaps, to give one interested 
in the author some pleasure in the comparison. 
God bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey.'* 

As the spring advanced, my father began to 
pine more and more for country air, and. con- 
ceiving that his legal studies could be as well 
pursued by the sea-side as in the smoke of Lon- 
don, went down into Hampshire to look for some 
place to tattle in for the summer months. South- 
ampton was their first halting-place, and from 
thence he writes to Mr. Bedford complaining of 
their ill success. 

H In every village of the Susquehanna In- 
dians* there is a vacant dwelling called the Stran- 
gers' House. When a traveler arrives there at 
one of these villages, he stops and halloos ; two 
of the elders of the tribe immediately go out to 
meet him ; they lead him to this house, and then 
go round to tell the inhabitants that a stranger 
is arrived, fatigued and hungry. 

" They do not order these things quite so 
well in England. We arrived at Southampton 
at six last evening. ' Lodgings' were hung out 
at almost every house, but some would not let 
less than eleven rooms, some seven, and so on, 
and we walked a very long and uncomfortable 
hour before we could buy hospitality, and that 
at a very dear rate. I mean to walk to-morrow 
through Lyndhurst and Lymington to Christ 
Church — that is, if Edith be better, for she is 
now very unwell. I hope and believe it is only 
the temporary effect of fatigue ; but, Grosvenor, 
a single man does not know what anxiety is. 

" Edith is not well enough to walk out. I 
therefore have seen only enough of this place to 

dislike it I want a quiet, lonely place, in 

sight of something green. Surely in a walk of 
thirty miles this may be found ; but if I find the 
whole coast infected by visitors, I will go to 
Bristol, where I shall have the printer on the 
one side, Charles Danvers on the other, Cottle 



' Here, with Cadwallon and a chosen band, 
I left the ships. Lincoya guided us 
A toilsome way among the heights ; at dusk 
We reach'd the village skirts ; he bade us halt, 
And raised his voice ; the elders of the land 
Came forth, and led us to an ample hut, 
Which in the center of their dwellings stood, 
The Strangers' House. They eyed us wondering, 
Yet not for wonder ceased they to observe 
Their hospitable rites ; from hut to hut 
The tidings ran that strangers were arrived, 
Fatigued, and hungry, and athirst ; anon, 
Each from his means supplying us, came food 
And beverage such as cheer Che weary man." 

Madoc, Book V. 



98 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 23- 



in front, the woods and rocks of Avon behind, 
and be in the center of all good things. 

" Our journey was hot and dusty, but through 
a lovely country. At one time the coach was 
full, and all but me asleep. Something fell off 
the roof, and I had the unutterable pleasure of 
waking all of them by bellowing out for the 
coachman to stop. .... Would we were settled, 
ay, and for life, in some little sequestered val- 
ley ! I would be content never to climb over 
the hills that sheltered me, and never to hear 
music or taste beverage but from the stream 
that ran beside my door. Let me have the sea, 
too, and now and then some pieces of a wreck 
to supply me with fire-wood and remind me of 
commerce. This New Forest is very lovely ; I 
should like to have a house in it, and dispeople 
the rest, like William the Conqueror. Of all 
land objects a forest is the finest. Gisborne has 
written a feeble poem on the subject. The feel- 
ings that fill me when I lie under one tree, and 
contemplate another in all the majesty of years, 
are neither to be defined nor expressed, and 
their indefinable and inexpressible feelings are 
those of the highest delight. They pass over 
the mind like the clouds of the summer evening 
— too fine and too fleeting for memory to detain. 

" And now, Grosvenor, would I wager six- 
pence that you are regretting my absence, be- 
cause you feel inclined to come to tea with us. 
I could upbraid you ;* but this is one of the fol- 
lies of man. and I have my share of it, though, 
thank God ! but a small share. What we can 
do at any time is most likely not to be done at 
all. We are more willing to make an effort. 
Is this because we feel uneasy at the prospect 
of labor and something to be done ? and we are 
stimulated to industry by a love of indolence. I 
am a self-observer, and, indeed, this appears to 
me the secret spring.f God bless you. 

"R. SotJTHEY." 

Having succeeded in finding lodgings at Bur- 
ton, near Christ Church, my father and mother 
settled themselves there for the summer months, 
which passed very happily. Here his mother 
joined them from Bath, and his brother Thomas, 
then a midshipman on board the Phoebe frigate, 
who, having lately been taken by the French, 
had just been released from a short imprison- 
ment at Brest. They had also at this time a 
young friend domesticated with them. Mr. 
Charles Lloyd, son of a banker at Birmingham, 
who had been living for some time with Mr. 
Coleridge at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, 
and who subsequently became known as an au- 
thor, and coming to reside in Westmoreland, was 
classed among the lake poets. Here also Mr. 
Cottle visited them, and here my father first be- 
came acquainted with Mr. Rickman (late one 
of the clerks of the House of Commons), who 



* The two friends seem to have had less intercourse 
whon both were in London than they had anticipated. I 
find a not uncommon reason hinted at. Mr. Bedford had 
been unsuccessful in some attachment ; and the sight of 
domestic happiness, just at that time, brought back pain- 
ful thoughts. t May 25, 1797. 



will hereafter appear as one of his most constant 
correspondents and most valued friends. 

The surrounding country seems to have af- 
forded him great pleasure, keenly alive as he 
ever was to all natural beauties, and just at this 
time doubly inclined to enjoy them, coming from 
the "no prospect" of Prospect Place, Ne wing- 
ton Butts. The sea he delighted in ; the New 
Forest was near at hand, and "a congregation 
of rivers, the clearest you ever saw." The only 
drawbacks were his detested legal studies, and 
the idea of returning to London. 

A few of his letters will fill up the present 
year. The first of these is addressed to Mr. 
May, whom he had met during his visit to Lisbon, 
and with whom he had already formed a friend- 
ship, as close as it was destined to be lasting. 
Mr. May, it seems, had promised to lend him 
the Pucelle of Chapelain. 

To John May, Esq. 

" Burton, June 26, 1797. 
******* 

l( Neither the best friends nor the bitterest 
enemies of Chapelain could have felt more curi- 
osity than I do to see his poem. Good it can 
not be ; for, though the habit of writing satire, 
as, indeed, the indulgence of any kind of wit, in- 
sensibly influences the moral oharacter, and dis- 
poses it to sacrifice any thing to a good point, 
yet Boileau must have had some reason for the 
extreme contempt in which he held this unfor- 
tunate production. I am inclined to think it bet- 
ter, however, than it has always been represent- 
ed. Chapelain stood high in poetical reputation 
when he published this, the work on which he 
meant to build his fame. He is said to have 
written good odes ; certainly, then, his epic la- 
bors can not be wholly void of merit; and for 
its characteristic fault, extreme harshness, it is 
very probable that a man of genius, writing in 
so unmanly a language, should become harsh. by 
attempting to be strong. The French never 
can have a good epic poem till they have repub- 
licanized their language. It appears to me a 
thing impossible in their meter ; and for the prose 
of Fen61on, Florian, and Betaube, I find it pe- 
culiarly unpleasant. I have sometimes read, the 
works of Florian aloud : his stories are very in- 
teresting and well conducted ; but in reading 
them I have felt obliged to simplify as I read, and 
omit most of the similes and apostrophes ; they 
disgusted me, and I felt ashamed to pronounce 
them. Ossian is the only book bearable in this 
style : there is a melancholy obscurity in the 
history of Ossian, and of almost all his heroes, 
that must please. Ninety-nine readers in a hund- 
red can not understand Ossian, and therefore they 
like the book. I read it always with renewed 
pleasure. 

" Have you read Madame Roland's Appel a 
l'impartiale Posterite ? It is one of those books 
that make me love individuals, and yet dread, 
detest, and despise mankind in a mass. There 
was a time when I believed in the persuadibili- 
ty of man, and had the mania of man-mending. 



vE TAT. 23. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



93 



Experience has taught me better. After a cer- 
tain age the organs of voice can not accommo- 
date themselves to the utterance of a foreign 
pronunciation ; so it is with the mind : it grows 
stiff and unyielding, like our sinews, as we grow 
older. The ablest physician can do little in the 
great lazar-house of society : it is a pest-house 
that infects all within its atmosphere. He acts 
the wisest part who retires from the contagion ; 
nor is that part either a selfish or a cowardly 
one : it is ascending the ark, like Noah, to pre- 
serve a remnant which may become the whole: 
As to what is the cause of the incalculable 
wretchedness of society, and what is the panacea, 
I have long felt certified in my own mind. The 
rich are strangely ignorant of the miseries to 
which the lower and largest part of mankind 

are abandoned The savage and civilized 

states are alike unnatural, alike unworthy of the 
origin and end of man. Hence the prevalence 
of skepticism and Atheism, which, from being 
the effect, becomes the cause of vice 

" I have lived much among the friends of 
Priestley, and learned from them many peculiar 
opinions of that man, who speaks all he thinks. 
No man has studied Christianity more, or be- 
lieves it more sincerely ; he thinks it not improb- 
able that another revelation may be granted us, 
for the obstinacy and wickedness of mankind call 
» for no less a remedy. The necessity of another 
revelation I do «ot see myself. What we have, 
read with the right use of our own reasoning 
faculties, appears to me sufficient ; but in a Mil- 
lenarian this opinion is not ridiculous, and the 
many yet unfulfilled prophecies give it an ap- 
pearance of probability 

" The slave trade has much disheartened me. 
That their traffic is supported by the consump- 
tion of sugar is demonstrable : I have demonstra- 
ted it to above fifty persons with temporary suc- 
cess, and not three of those persons have perse- 
vered in rejecting it. This is perfectly astonish- 
ing to me ; and what can be expected from those 
who will not remedy so horrible an iniquity by 
so easy an exertion ? The future presents a 
dreary prospect ; but all will end in good, and I 
can contemplate it calmly without suffering it to 
cloud the present. I may not live to do good 
to mankind personally, but I will at least leave 
something behind me to strengthen those feelings 
and excite those reflections in others from whence 
virtue must spring. In writing poetry with this 
end, I hope I am not uselessly employing my 

leisure hours. God bless you 

" Affectionately yours, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Burton, July 11, 1797. 
" T thank you for Chapelain : I read his poem 
fc'ith the hope of finding something good, and 
would gladly have reversed the sentence of con- 
demnation, which I must, in common honesty, 
confirm. It is very bad indeed, and can please 
onlv by its absurdity. . X . . 

" I thank you. al«o. for your good opinion of 



me : I would fain be thought well of by the ' ten 
righteous men,' and communicate frequently with 

you as one of them I suffer no gloomy 

presages to disturb the tranquil happiness with 
I which God has blessed me now, and which I 
( know how to value, because I have felt what it 
is to want every thing except the pride of a well- 
satisfied conscience. 

" The sister and niece of Chatterton are now 
wholly destitute. On this occasion I appear as 
editor of all his works for their relief; this is 
a heinous sin against the world's opinion for a 
young lawyer, but it would have been a real 
crime to have refused it. We have a black 
scene to lay before the public : these poor women 
have been left in want, while a set of scoundrels 
have been reaping hundreds from the writings 
of Chatterton. I hope now to make the catas- 
trophe to the history of the poor boy of Bristol : 
you shall see the proposals as soon as they are 
printed. Cottle has been with me a few days, 
and we have arranged every thing relative to 
this business : he is the publisher, and means to 
get the paper at prime cost, and not receive the 
usual profit from what he sells. The accounts 
will be published, and we hope and expect to 
place Mrs. Newton in comfort during the last 
years of her life. 

" Cottle brought with him the new edition of 
Coleridge's poems : they are dedicated to his 
brother George in one of the most beautiful 

poems I ever read It contains all the 

poems of Lloyd and Lamb, and I know no vol- 
ume that can be compared to it. You know 
not how infinitely my happiness is increased by 
residing in the country. I have not a wish be- 
yond the quietness I enjoy ; every thing is tran- 
quil and beautiful ; but sometimes I look forward 
with regret to the time when I must return to a 
city which I so heartily dislike. . . . God bless 
you ! Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

"July 15, 1799. 
" My dear Friend, 
" I sincerely thank you for your letter 

j I am inclined to think, when my uncle blamed 
me for not doing my utmost to relieve my family, 

I he must have alluded to my repeated refusal of 
entering orders ; a step which undoubtedly would 
almost instantly have relieved them, and which 
occasioned me great anguish and many conflicts 
of mind. To this I have been urged by him 
and by my mother ; but you know what my re- 
ligious opinions are, and I need not ask whether 
I did rightly and honestly in refusing. Till 
Christmas last, I supported myself wholly by 

the profits of my writings Thus you may 

see that the only means I have ever possessed 
of assisting my mother was by entering the 
Church. God knows I would exchange every 
intellectual gift which he has blessed me with 
for implicit faith to have been able to do this. 
.... I care not for the opinion of the world, 
but I would willingly be thought justly of by a 



IOC 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



IEtat. 24. 



fey.- individuals. I labor at a study which I very 
much dislike to render myself independent, and 
I work for the bookseller whenever I can get 
employment, that I may have to spare for others. 
.... I now do all I can ; perhaps I may some 
day be enabled to do all I wish ; however, there 
is One who will accept the will for the deed. 
God bless you ! Robert Southey." 

The next letter refers to a proposal of Mr. 
Bedford's, that, when my father and mother 
came again to reside in London, they should oc- 
cupy the same house with him. 

"August 2, 1797. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I like the plan you propose, and see no ob- 
jection to it at present ; but you know how 
feasible those things appear which we wish. 
One circumstance only may happen to prevent 
it. I have some hopes that my mother will 
come and live with me. This I very earnestly 
wish, and shall use every means to induce her, 
but it does not appear so probable as I could 
desire. This I shall know in a short time ; and 
if then you have not changed you\' intentions, 
you know how gladly I should domesticate un- 
der the same roof with you 

" I think you would derive more good from 
Epictetus than from studying yourself. There 
is a very proud independence in the Stoic phi- 
losophy which has always much pleased me. 
You would find certain sentences in the Enchi- 
ridion which would occur to the mind when such 
maxims were wanted, and operate as motives ; 
besides, when you are examining yourself, you 
ought to have a certain standard whereby to 
measure yourself ; and, however far an old Stoic 
may be from perfection, he is almost a god when 
compared to the present race, who libel that na- 
ture which appeared with such exceeding luster 
at Athens, at Lace daemon, and in Rome. I 
could send you to a better system than that of 
the bondsman Epictetus, where you would find 
a better model on which to form your conduct. 
But the mind should have arrived at a certain 
stage to profit properly by that book which few 
have attained : it should be cool and confirmed. 



God bless 



you 



" Robert Southey. 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Bath, Sept. 22, 1797. 
" Me voici then at Bath ! And why had you 
not your birth-day poem ? In plain, downright, 
sincere sincerity, I totally forgot it, till on the 
morning of the 11th of September, when I found 
myself on Poole Heath, walking through deso- 
lation,* with that gloomy capability which my 
nativity-caster marks as among the prominent 
features of my character. We left Burton yes- 
terday morning. The place was very quiet, 
and I was very comfortable, nor know I when 
to expect again so pleasant a summer. We live 
in odd times, Grosvenor : and even in the best 



See ante, p. 23. 



periods of this bad society, the straightest path 
is most cursedly crooked. 

"I shall be with you ia November. Send 
me my Coke, I pray you. I want law food, 
and, though not over hungry, yet must I eat and 

execrate like Pistol Something odd came 

into my head a few hours since. I was feeling 
that the love of letter writing had greatly gone 
from me, and inquiring why : my mind is no 
longer agitated by hopes and fears, no longer 
doubtful, no longer possessed with such ardent 
enthusiasm : it is quiet, and repels all feelings 
that would disturb that state. When I write I 
have nothing to communicate, for you know all 
my opinions and feelings ; and no incidents can 
occur to one settled as I am. . . . 

" Yours sincerely, 

"R. S." 

" Bath, Nov. 19, 1797. 

" Grosvenor, I have found out a better fence 
for our Utopia than Carlisle's plantation of vi- 
pers and rattlesnakes : it is — to surround it with 
a vacuum ; for you know, Grosvenor, this would 
so puzzle the philosophers on the other side, and 
we might see them making experiments on the 
atmosphere, to the great annoyance of dogs, 
whom they would scientifically torture. Be- 
sides, if we had any refractory inmate, we might 
push him into the void. 

" .... I hate the journey ; and yet, going to 
London, I may say with Quarles, 

" ' My journey's better than my journey's end.' 

A little home, Grosvenor, near the sea, or in any 
quiet country where there is water to bathe in, 
and what should I wish for in this life ? and how 
could I be so honorably or so happily employed 
as in writing ? 

" If Bonaparte should come before I look like 
Sir John Corny ns ! Oh, that fine chuckle-head 
was made for the law ! I am too old to have 
my skull molded. 

" . . . . Why not trust the settled quietness to 
which my mind has arrived ? It is wisdom to 
avoid all violent emotions. . I would not anni- 
hilate my feelings, but I would have them un- 
der a most Spartan despotism. Grosvenor, In- 
veni portum, spes et fortuna valete. 
" « Tu quoque, si vis 

Lumine claro 

Cernere rectum, 

Gaudia pelle, 

Pelle timorem, 

Spemque fugato, 

Nee dolor adsit.' 

I have laid up the advice of Boethius in my 
heart, and prescribe it to you ; so fare you well. 
" Robert Southey." 

The beautiful and affecting lines found in the 
next letter would have found a fitting place in 
Mr. Justice Talfourd's " Final Memorials" of 
Charles Lamb, where all the circumstances of 
this domestic tragedy are detailed. I may here 
add that they would have been sent to him had 
they come into my hands prior to the publica- 
tion of those most interesting volumes. 



jEtat. 24. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



101 



To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

"Bath, Nov. 20, 1797. 

u My dear Wynn, 
" . . . . You will be surprised, perhaps, at 
hearing that Cowper's poem does not at all 
please me : you must have taken it up in some 
moment when your mind was predisposed to be 
pleased, and the first impression has remained ; 
indeed, I think it not above mediocrity. I can 
not trace the author of the ' Task' in one line. 
I know that our tastes differ much in poetry, 
and yet I think you must like these lines by 
Charles Lamb. I believe you know his history, 
and the dreadful death of his mother. 

" « Thou shouldst have longer lived, and to the grave 
Have peacefully gone down in full old age ; 
Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs. 
We might have sat, as we have often done, 
By our fireside, and talked whole nights away, 
Old time, old friends, and old events recalling, 
With many a circumstance of trivial note, 
To memory dear, and of importance grown. 
How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear ! 

" ' A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee : 
And yet, in all our little bickerings, 
Domestic jars, there was I know not what 
Of tender feeling that were ill exchanged 
For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles 
Familiar whom the heart calls strangers still. 

u ' A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man, 
Who lives the last of all his family ! 
He looks around him, and his eye discerns 
The face of the stranger ; and his heart is sick. 
Man of the world, what canst thou do for him ? 
■ Wealth is a burden which he could not bear ; 
Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act ; 
And generous wines no cordial to his soul. 
For wounds like his, Christ is the only cure. 
Go, preach thou to him of a world to come, 
Where friends shall meet and know each other's face ; 
Say less than this, and say it to the winds.' 

"I am aware of the danger of studying sim- 
plicity of language; but you will find in my 
blank verse a fullness of phrase when the sub- 
ject requires it ; these lines may instance : 

" ' It was a goodly sight 
To see the embattled pomp, as with the step 
Of stateliness the barbed steeds came on ; 
To see the pennons rolling their long waves 
Before the gale ; and banners broad and bright 
Tossing their blazonry; and high-plumed chiefs, 
Vidames, and seneschals, and castellans, 
Gay with their bucklers' gorgeous heraldry, 
And silken surcoats on the buoyant wind 
Billowing.' 



God bless you 



" Yours affectionately, 

" R. Southey." 



A few days after the date of this letter, my 
lather and mother again took up their abode in 
London ; but the plan of occupying lodgings 
conjointly with Mr. Bedford was not accom- 
plished, chiefly on account of Charles Lloyd be- 
ing still with them. From thence he writes to 
his brother Thomas. 

To Thomas Southey. 

"London, Dec. 24, 1797. 
" My dear Tom, 
" . . . . »I have also another motive for wish- 
ing to live out of the town, to avoid the swarms 
of acquaintances who buzz about me and sadly 



waste my time — an article I can but little af- 
ford to throw away. I have my law, which will 
soon occupy me from ten in the morning till 
eight in an office, excepting the dinner-time. 
My Joan of Arc 1 * takes up more time than you 
would suppose, for I have had a mine of riches 
laid open to me in a library belonging to the 
Dissenters, and have been disturbing the spiders ; 
add to this that I write now for the ' Critical 
Review,' and you will see that I can not afford 

to keep levee days I keep a large copy 

of my poems for you. They have sold uncom- 
monly well ; 1000 were printed, and I hear 750 
are already gone. The Joan of Arc is scandal- 
ously delayed at Bristol. I have had only five 
proofs in all, and this delay, as the book is want- 
ed, is a serious loss. A print of the Maid will 
be prefixed, solely for the sake of giving Robert 
Hancock some employment, and making his 
name known as an engraver. I have got a prom- 
ise of having him introduced to Alderman Boy- 
dell, the great publisher of engravings ; he is 
still at Bath, and I am in hopes I shall be the 
means of essentially serving him. 

" You will be surprised to hear that I have 
been planning a charitable institution, which 
will., in all probability, be established. It was 
planned with John May and Carlisle, and the 
outline is simply this : Many poor victims per- 
ish, after they have been healed at the hospitals, 
by returning to unwholesome air, scanty and bad 
food, cold, and filth. We mean to employ them 
in a large garden, for many persons may be use- 
fully employed in some manner there. When 
in good order, the produce of the garden will 
support the institution ; in the long winter even- 
ings the people will be employed in making 
nets, baskets, or matting, and the women in 
making sheeting — all things that will be wanted 
at home, and for the overplus a ready sale will 
be had among the supporters of the Convales- 
cent Asylum. My name will not appear in the 
business : I leave the credit, to lords and esquires. 
I will send you our printed plan as soon as it is 
ready. Six hours' labor is all that will be re- 
quired from the strongest persons : for' extra 
work they will be paid ; then they may leave 
the Asylum with some little money, and with 
some useful knowledge. 

" We are much pleased with this scheme, as 
it will make every body useful whorl it bene- 
fits : a man with one leg may make holes for 
cabbages with his wooden leg, and a fellow with 
one arm follow and put in the plants 

" Would you were here to-morrow ! we would 
keep holiday ; but 'tis very long since Christmas 
has been a festival with us. God bless you. 
" Yours affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

My father remained in London only a very 
short time, when, finding it extremely prejudi- 
cial both to his own health and my mother's, he 



* He was at present engaged in revising Joan of Arc for 
a second edition, in which all that part which had been 
written by Mr. Coleridge was omitted. 



102 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



ZEtat. 24. 



determined to seek some other place of resi- 
dence, and went down to Bristol with that inten- 
tion. Soon afterward he writes to his friend, 
Mr. Wynn, in somewhat depressed spirits. 

To Q. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Bath, Wednesday, April 4, 1798. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" I should have thought you would have liked 
the Merida Inscription. It was designed for my 
Letters, but, on consideration, the point appears 
more applicable to our own country, and as one 
martyr is as good as another, Senora Eulalia 
must give place to old Latimer and Ridley. Its 
appearance in the Oracle makes me let out what 
I intended not to have told you till Christmas. I 
then thought to have taken you into a house of 
my own, and shown you the chairs and tables 
into which I had transmuted bad verses. Imme- 
diately before I left town I agreed to furnish the 
Morning Post with occasional verses without a 
signature.* My end in view was to settle in a 
house as soon as possible, which this, with the 
Review, would enable me at Christmas to do. I 
told no person whatever but Edith. I signed the 
Inscription because I meant to insert it in my 
letters. Of all the rest Lord William is the only 
piece that bears the mark of the beast. I did not 
tell you, because you would not like it now, and 
it would have amused you at Christmas : Lord 
William's is certainly a good story, and will, 
when corrected, make the best of my ballads. I 
am glad you like it. There is one other, which, 
if you have not seen, I will send you : it is ludi- 
crous, in the Alonzo meter, called the ' Ring'f — 
a true story, and, like the ' Humorous Lieuten- 
ant,'! it is not good for much, and yet one or two 
stanzas may amuse you. 

" I write this from Bath, where I was sum- 
moned in consequence of my mother's state of 
health. She is very ill, and I hope to remove her 
to Lisbon speedily. The climate would, I am 
certain, restore her, though I fear nothing else can. 

" You call me lazy for not writing ; is it not 
the same with you ? Do you feel the same in- 
clination for filling a folio sheet now, as when, in 
'90 and '91, we wrote to each other so fully and 
so frequently ? The inclination is gone from me. 
I have nothing to communicate — no new feelings 
— no new opinions. We move no longer in the 
same circus, and no longer see things in the same 
point of view. I never now write a long letter 
to those who think with me : it is useless to ex- 
press what they also feel ; and as for reasoning 
with those who differ from me, I have never seen 
any good result from argument. I write not in 
the best of spirits ; my mother's state of health 
depresses me — the more so, as I have to make her 
cheerful. Edith is likewise very unwell ; indeed, 
so declining as to make me somewhat apprehen- 



* For this he was to receive a guinea a week. A similar 
offer was made about this time by the editor of the Morn- 
ing Chronicle to Burns, and refused. 

t This ballad is called " King Charlemagne" in the later 
editions of his poems. 

J This was probably one of his early poems, which was 
never republished. 



sive for the future. A few months will determ- 
ine all these uncertainties, and perhaps change 
my views in life — or rather destroy them. This 
is the first time that I have expressed the feel- 
ings that often will rise. Take no notice of them 
when you write. 

" God bless you. If nothing intervene, I shall 
see you in May. I wish, indeed, that month were 
over. Few men have ever more subdued their 
feelings than myself, and yet I have more left 
than are consistent with happiness. 

" Once more, God bless you. 

"Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Bristol, May 5, 1798. 
" My dear Wynn, 
" . . . . You have seen my brother in the Ga- 
zette, I suppose — mentioned honorably, and in 
the wounded list. His wounds are slight, but 
his escape has been wonderful. The boatswain 
came to know if they should board the enemy 
forward, and was told, by all means. Tom took 
a pike and ran forward. He found them in great 
confusion, and, as he thought, only wanting a 
leader ; he asked if they would follow him, and 
one poor fellow answered ' Ay.' On this Tom 
got into the French ship, followed, as he thought, 
by the rest, but, in fact, only by this man. Just 
as he had made good his footing, he received two 
thrusts with a pike in his right thigh, and fell. 
They made a third thrust as he fell, which glanced 
from his shoulder blade, and took a small piece 
of flesh out of his back. He fell between the two 
ships, and this saved his life, for he caught a rope 
and regained the deck of the Mars.* * * 
I do not know whether it would be prudent in 
Tom to accompany Lord Proby to Lisbon, as 
Lord Bridport has sent him word that he would 
not forget him when he has served his time, and 
offered him a berth on board his own ship. He 
will use his own judgment, and probably, I think, 
follow the fortunes of Butterfield, the first lieu- 
tenant. When I saw him so noticed by Butter- 
field, I felt, as he says of himself during the en- 
gagement, ' something that I never felt before.' 
I felt more proud of my brother when he received 
ten pounds prize-money, and sent his mother half; 
and yet it gave me something like exultation that 
he would now be respected by his acquaintance, 
though not for his best virtues. He is an excel- 
lent young man, and, moreover, a good seaman. 
God bless him, and you also. 

" Yours affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

Among my father's college friends, and as 
forming one of the enthusiastic party who were 
to have formed a " model republic" on the banks 
of the Susquehanna, has been mentioned George 
Burnett, who, of all the number, suffered most 
permanently from having taken up those visionary 
views. He had intended to enter the Church of 



* This was in the engagement between the Mars and 
L'Hercule. 



#/r.YT. 24, 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



103 



England, and, had he not heen tempted to quit 
the beaten track, would probably have become 
a steady, conscientious, and useful clergyman. 
Carried away by the influence chiefly of my fa- 
ther and Mr. Coleridge, he imbibed first their 
political and then their religious opinions; and 
thus, being led to abandon the intention with 
which he had entered Oxford, he became so com- 
pletely unsettled as to render his short life a se- 
ries of unsuccessful attempts in many professions. 
Much of this was, indeed, owing to the vacillat- 
ing character of his mind ; but it was not the less, 
through life, a subject of regret to my father, not 
unmixed with self-reproach. 

At the present time he was minister to a Uni- 
tarian congregation at Yarmouth, whither my 
father now went for a short visit, having the 
additional motive of seeing his brother Henry, 
whom, some time previously, he had placed with 
Burnett as a private pupil. Through Burnett's 
means he was now introduced to William Tay- 
lor, of Norwich, with whose writings he was al- 
ready acquainted, and toward whom he found 
himself immediately and strongly drawn by the 
similarity of their tastes and pursuits. This 
meeting led to a correspondence (chiefly upon 
literary subjects), which has been already given 
to the public, and to a friendship. which would 
have been a very close one, had there not, un- 
happily, been a total want of sympathy between 
the parties on the most important of all subjects 
— William Taylor's religious opinions being of 
the most extravagant and rationalistic kind. This 
difference my father felt much in later life, as his 
own religious feelings deepened and strengthen- 
ed, although he always entertained toward him 
the sincerest regard, and a great respect for his 
many good qualities. 

The other incidents of this visit may be gather- 
ed from the following letters, the latter of which, 
if there is nothing particularly striking in the vers- 
ification, yet affords too pleasing a picture of his 
mind to be omitted. 

To Mrs. Southey. 

"May 29, 1798. 
. . . . " I am writing from Ormsby, the dwell- 
ing-place of Mr. Manning, distant six miles from 
Yarmouth. We came here yesterday to dinner, 
and leave it to-morrow evening. I have begun 
some blank verse to you and laid it aside > be- 
cause, if I do not tell you something about this 

place now, I shall not do it at all This 

part of England looks as if Nature had wearied 
herself with adorning the rest with hill and dale, 
and squatted down here to rest herself. You 
must even suppose a very Dutch-looking Nature 
to have made it of such pancake flatness. An 
unpromising country, and yet, Edith, I could be 
very happy with such a home as this. I am 
looking through the window over green fields, 
as far as I can see — no great distance ; the 
hedges are all grubbed up in sight of the house, 
which produces a very good effect. A few fine 
acacias, white-thorns, and other trees are scat- 
tered about ; a walk goes all round, with a beau- 



tiful hedge of lilachs, laburnums, the Guelder 
rose, Barbary shrubs, &c, &c. Edith, you 
would not wish a sweeter scene, and, being here, 
I wish for nothing but you ; half an hour's walk 
would reach the sea-shore. 

" I had almost forgot one with whom I am 
more intimate than any other part of the fam- 
ily, Rover — a noble dog, something of the span- 
iel, but huge as a mastiff, and his black and 
brindled hair curling close, almos* like a lady's 
wig. A very sympathizing dog, I assure you, 
for he will not only shake hands, but, if I press 
his paw, return the pressure. Moreover, there 
is excellent Nottingham ale, sent annually by 
Mr. Manning's son-in-law from Nottingham ; 
what my uncle would call 'fine stuff,' such as 
Robin Hood and his outlaws used to drink un- 
der the greenwood tree. Robin Hood's bev- 
erage ! how could I choose but like it ? It is 
sweet and strong — very strong : a little made 
me feel this. . . . The cows in this country have 
no horns ; this, I think, a great improvement in 
the breed of horned cattle, and this land is found 
more productive. Another peculiarity about 
Yarmouth is the number of arches formed by 
the jaw-bones of a whale : they trade much with 
Greenland there. The old walls and old gates 
of the town are yet standing ; the town is cer- 
tainly a pleasing one. I left it, however, with 
pleasure, to enjoy the society of Ormsby, and I 
shall leave Ormsby with pleasure for the society 
of Norwich. In short, every movement is agree- 
able, because it brings me homeward. 

" Thursday. 

" We went yesterday in the morning to the 
ruins of Caister Castle, once the seat of Fas- 
tolffe, where, after wasting a great part of his 
fortune in the French wars, and being defeated 
at Patay, and disgraced in consequence of his 
flight, he retired to quarrel with his neighbors. 
The ruin is by no means fine, compared with 
several I have seen, but all these things produce 
a pleasant effect upon the mind ; and, besides, 
it is well, when I am writing about the man, to 
have some knowledge of every thing knowable 
respecting him. In the evening we returned 
with William Taylor to Norwich. On the way 
we left the chaise, and crossed a moor on foot, 
in hopes of hearing the bittern cry. It was not 
till we were just quitting the moor that one of 
these birds thought proper to gratify us ; then 
he began, and presently we saw one, so that I 

re-entered the chaise highly satisfied God 

bless you. Your affectionate 

"Robert Southey." 

To Mrs. Southey. 

"June 4, 179a 
" Edith, it ever was thy husband's wish, 
Since he hath known in what is happiness, 
To find some little home, some low retreat, 
Where the vain uproar of the worthless world 
Might never reach his ear ; and where, if chance 
The tidings of its horrible strifes arrived, 
They would endear retirement, as the blast 
Of winter makes the sheltered traveler 
Draw closer to the hearth-side, every nerve 
Awake to the warm comfort. Quietness 
Should be his inmate there ; and he would live 



104 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



/Etat. 24. 



To thee, and to himself, and to our God. 

To dwell in that foul city — to endure 

The common, hollow, cold, lip intercourse 

Of life ; to walk abroad and. never see 

Green field, or running brook, or setting sun ! 

Will it not wither up my faculties, 

Like some poor myrtle that in the town air 

Pines on the parlor window 1 

" Every where 
Nature is lovely : on the mountain height, 
Or where the imbosomed mountain glen displays 
Secure sublimity, or where around 
The undulated surface gently slopes 
With mingled hill and valley : every where 
Nature is lovely ; even in scenes like these, 
Where not a hillock breaks the unvaried plain, 
The eye may find new charms that seeks delight. 

" At eve I walk abroad ; the setting sun 
Hath softened with a calm and mellow hue 
The cool fresh air ; below, a bright expanse, 
The waters of the Broad* lie luminous. 
I gaze around ; the unbounded plain presents 
Ocean immensity, whose circling line 
The bending heaven shuts in. So even here 
Methinks I could be well content to fix 
My sojourn ; grow familiar with these scenes 
Till time and memory make them dear to me, 
And wish no other home. 

" There have been hours 
When I have longed to mount the winged bark, 
And seek those better climes, where orange groves 
Breathe on the evening gale voluptuous joy. 
And, Edith ! though I heard from thee alone 
The pleasant accents of my native tongue, 
And saw no wonted countenance but thine, 
■ I could be happy in the stranger's land, 
* Possessing all in thee. O best beloved ! 
Companion, friend, and yet a dearer name ! 
I trod those better climes a heartless thing, 
Cintra's cool rocks, and where Arrabida 
Lifts from the ocean its sublimer heights, 
Thine image wandered with me, and one wish 
Disturbed the deep delight. 

" Even now that wish, 
Making short absence painful, still recurs. 
The voice of friendship, that familiar voice, 
From which in other scenes I daily heard 
First greeting, poorly satisfies the heart. 
And wanting thee, though in best intercourse, 
Such as in after years remembrance oft 
Will love to dwell upon ; yet when the sun 
Goes down, I see his setting beams with joy, 
And count again the allotted days, and think 
The hour will soon arrive when I shall meet 
The eager greeting of affection's eye, 
And hear the welcome of the voice I love. 

^ *7r *3P "tP * -J? 

" What have I to tell you ? Can you be in- 
terested in the intercourse I have with people 
whose very names are new to you ? On Sunday 
I went to dine with Sir Lambert Blackwell. . . . 
He has a very pretty house, and the finest pic- 
ture I ever saw : it is St. Cecilia at the moment 
when the heads of her parents are brought in to 
terrify her into an abandonment of Christianity. 
I never saw a countenance so full of hope, and 
resignation, and purity, and holy grief: it is by 
Carlo Dolce. I have seen many fine pictures, 
but never one so perfect, so sublime, so interest- 
ing, irresistibly interesting, as this. . . . God bless 
you. Your Robert Southey." 

Upon my father's return from this visit to Nor- 
folk, he rejoined my mother at Bristol, and very 
shortly afterward he took a small house at West- 
bury, a beautiful village about two miles distant 
from thence. Here they resided for twelve 
months. " This," he says, in one of the pref- 
aces to the collected edition of his poems, " was 



So they call the wide spread of a river in the fens. 



one of the happiest portions of my life.* I have 
never, before or since, produced so much poetry 
in the same space of time. The smaller pieces 
were communicated by letter to Charles Lamb, 
and had the advantage of his animadversions. I 
was then, also, in habits of the most frequent 
and familiar intercourse with Davy, then in the 
flower and freshness of his youth. We were 
within an easy walk of each other, over some 
of the most beautiful ground in that beautiful 
part of England. When I went to the Pneu- 
matic Institution, he had to tell me of some new 
experiment or discovery, and of the views which 
it opened for him ; and when he came to West- 
bury, there was a fresh portion of ' Madoc' for 
his hearing. Davy encouraged me with his 
hearty approbation during its progress ; and the 
bag of nitrous oxyd with which he generally re- 
galed me upon my visit to him was not required 
for raising my spirits to the degree of settled fair, 
and keeping them at that elevation." 

In addition to " Madoc," my father was at this 
time preparing for the press a second volume of 
his minor poems, and a second edition of his 
"Letters from Spain and Portugal;" and he 
was also engaged in editing the first volume of 
the "Annual Anthology," which was published 
in Bristol in the course of the following year. 
Other literary employments are mentioned in his 
letters, but Blackstone, and Coke upon Littleton, 
seem to have been almost wholly thrown aside 5 
the study of the law was daily becoming more 
and more distasteful to him, and he was begin- 
ning to find, that, however he might command 
his attention, and bring the full force of his un- 
derstanding to bear upon the subject, the mem- 
ory was not to be controlled by the will ; and 
that the time and trouble so employed, not being 
upon a " labor of love," was purely " labor lost." 

His mother was now residing with him, and 
also the " Cousin Margaret" mentioned in the 
Autobiography. 

To Thomas Southey. 
"Martin Hall, Westbury, June 27, 1798. 
" My dear Tom, 

"Here we are, and you see have christened 
the house properly, I assure you, as the martins 
have colonized all round it, and doubly lucky must 
the house be on which they so build and bemire. 
We hesitated between the appropriate names of 
Rat Hall, Mouse Mansion, Vermin Villa, Cock- 
roach Castle, Cobweb Cottage, and Spider 
Lodge ; but, as we routed out the spiders, brush- 
ed away the cobwebs, stopped the rat holes, and 
found no cockroaches, we bethought us of the 
animals without, and dubbed it Martin Hall. 

V I am sorry, Tom, you could not have seen 



To me the past presents 

No object for regret ; 

To me the present gives 

All cause for full content. 

The future? It is now the cheerful noon, 

And on the sunny, smiling fields I gaze 

With eyes alive to joy ; 

When the dark night descends, 

I willingly shall close my weary lids 

In sure and certain hope to wake again." 

Minor Poems, Westbury, 1798. 



jEtat. 24. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



105 



as settled ; you would like the old house ; and 
the view from the drawing-room and garden is 
delightful : we have turned to most notably. 
But once the house was an inn, or ale-house, so 
we have had application to sell beer, and buy a 
stock of tobacco-pipes. Much has been done, 
and much is yet to do. The rooms are large, 
the garden well stocked ; we cut our own cab- 
bages, live upon currant puddings, and shall soon 
be comfortably settled. 

" I wish you had been here, you might have 
been up to your eyes in dirt and rubbish. * * 
We have bespoke a cat — a great carroty cat." 

To H. H. Southey. 

"Martin Hall, July 14, 1798. 
" My dear Harry, 
" I thank you for your ode of Anacreon : the 
Greek meter in which you have translated it is 
certainly the best that could be chosen, but per- 
haps the most difficult, as the accent should flow 
so easily that a bad reader may not be able to 
spoil them. This is the case with your fourth 
and fifth lines : an old woman can't read them 
out of the proper cadence. # # # ^ 
I think this meter much improved to an English 
ear by sometimes ending a line with a long syl- 
lable instead of a trochee. This you will see 
regularly done in the following translation from 
the Spanish of Villegas. The original meter is 
that of BeXu Xeyetv Arpeidac, and the verses flow 
as harmoniously as those of Anacreon. 

" ' The maidens thus address me : 
How is it, Don Esteban, 
That you of love sing always, 
And never sing of war ? 

" ' I answer thus the question, 
Ye bachelor* young damsels : 
It is that men are ugly, 
It is that you are fair. 

" ' For what would it avail me 
To sing to drums and trumpets, 
While marching sorely onward, 
Encumbered by my shield ? 

" ' Think you the tree of glory 
Delights the common soldier ; 
That tree so full of blossoms 
That never bears a fruit ? 

" ' Let him who gains in battles 
His glorious wounds, enjoy them ; 
Let him praise war who knows not 
The happiness of peace. 

•' ' I will not sing of soldiers, 
I will not sing of combats, 
But only of the damsels — 
My combats are with them.' 

•3v -7F ^r -)r ^r -7r -Jf 

* * " We are now tolerably settled at 
Martin Hall. I have labored much in making 
it comfortable, and comfortable it now is. Our 
sitting-room is large, with three windows and 
two recesses — once windows, but now converted 
into book-cases, with green baize hanging half 
way down the books, as in the College Green. 
The room is papered with cartridge paper, bor- 
dered with yellow Vandykes edged with black. 
I have a good many books, but not all I want, 



* This is literal. The original is muchachas bachillcras 
bachelor girls. 

H 



as many of my most valuable ones are lying in 
London. I shall be very glad to get settled in 
a house at London, where I may collect all my 
chattels together, and move on contentedly for 
some dozen years in my profession. You will 
find little difficulty either in Anacreon or in Ho- 
mer ; the language will soon become familiar to 
you, and you will, I hope, apply yourself to it 
with assiduity. I remember William Taylor 
promising to give you some instruction in Ger- 
man when you were well enough acquainted 
with the ancient languages to begin the modern 
ones. I need not tell you how valuable such in- 
struction would be, or how gladly I should avail 
myself of such an opportunity were it in my 
power. It is of very great advantage to a young 
man to be a good linguist : he is more respected, 
and may be more useful ; his sources of pleasure 
are increased 5 and, what in the present state of 
the world is to be considered, in case of neces- 
sity, he has additional means of supporting him- 
self. The languages, Harry — which I learned 
almost as an amusement — have considerably con- 
tributed and do contribute to my support. 

" You will send me your other translations 
from Anacreon, and, in return, I will always 
send you some piece which you had not before 
seen. I wish you would sometimes, on a fine 
evening, walk out, and write as exact a descrip- 
tion of the sunset, and the appearance of every 
thing around, as you can. You would find it a 
pleasant employment, and I can assure you it 
would be a very useful one. I should like you 
to send me some of these sketches ; not of sun- 
set only, but of any natural scene. If you have 
Ossian at hand, you may see what I mean in the 
description of night by five Scotch bards. Your 
neighborhood to the sea gives you opportunities of 
seeing the finest effects of sunrise — fine weather, 
or storms ; or you may contrast it with inland 
views and forest scenery, of which I believe you 
will see much in Nottinghamshire. 

"Let me hear from you soon, and often, and 
regularly. God bless you ! 

" Your affectionate brother, 

"Robert Southey." 

A few weeks spent in Herefordshire, and a 
pedestrian excursion into Wales, accompanied 
by his friend Mr. Danvers, were the chief varia- 
tions in my father's life during this summer. In 
these journeys he found temporary relief from a 
state of ill health, which was beginning gradually 
to creep over him, partly induced, probably, by 
his ordinary sedentary habits, and intense mental 
application, and that anxiety about his "ways 
and means" which necessarily followed him 
through life, and of which he had already a full 
share, from the various relations who were wholly 
or chiefly dependent on him. The two following 
letters were written during these excursions. 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Hereford, August 15, 1798. 
" My dear Wynn, 
" You will, I think, be somewhat amused at 



108 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF iETAT. 24, 



this copy of a note from a West-country farmer's 

daughter : it is genuine, I assure you : 

"'Dear Miss, 
" ' The energy of the Races prompts me to assure you 
that my i - equest is forbidden ; the idea of which I had 
awkwardly nourished, notwithstanding my propensity to 
reserve. Mr. T. will be there ; let me with confidence as- 
sure you that him and brothers will be very happy to 
meet you and brothers. Us girls can not go for reasons ; 
the attention of the cows claims our assistance in the even- 
ing. Unalterably yours.' 

Is it not admirable ? 

" 1 have seen myself Bedforized,* and it has 
been a subject of much amusement. Holcroft's 
likeness is admirably preserved. I know not 
what poor Lamb has done to be croaking there. 
What I think the worst part of the anti- Jacobin 
abuse is the lumping together men of such op- 
posite principles : this was stupid. We should 
have all been welcoming the Director, not the 
Theophilanthrope. The conductors of the An/j- 
Jacobin will have much to answer for in *hus 
inflaming the animosities of this country. They 
are laboring to produce the deadly hatred of Irish 
faction — perhaps to produce the same end. Such 
an address as you mention might probably be of 
great use ; that I could assist you in it is less 
certain. I do not feel myself at all calculated 
for any thing that requires methodical reasoning ; 
and though you and I should agree in the main 
object of the pamphlet, our opinions are at root 
different. The old systems of government I 
think must fall ; but in this country, the imme- 
diate danger is on the other hand — from an un- 
constitutional and unlimited power. Burleigh 
saw how a Parliament might be employed against 
the people, and Montesquieu prophesied the fall 
of English liberty when the Legislature should 
become corrupt. You will not agree with me 
in thinking his prophecy fulfilled. 

" Violent men there undoubtedly are among 
the Democrats, as they are always called, but is 
there any one among them whom the ministeri- 
alists will allow to be moderate ? The Anti- 
Jacobin certainly speaks the sentiments of gov- 
ernment. 

" Hey wood's Hierarchie is a most lamentable 
poem, but the notes are very amusing. I fancy 
it is in most old libraries. I do not see any 
thing that promises well for ballads. There are 
some fine Arabic traditions that would make no- 
ble poems. I was about to write one upon the 
Garden of Irem ; the city and garden still exist 
in the deserts invisibly, and one man only has 
seen them. This is the tradition, and I had 
made it the ground- work of what I thought a 
very fine story ; but it seemed too great for a 
poem of 300 or 400 lines. 

" I do not much like Don Carlos : it is by far 
the worst of Schiller's plays. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" R. Southey." 

To Thomas Southey. 

"Hereford, Aug. 29, 1798. 
" My dear Tom, 
" Your letter was very agreeable, for we be- 



This Is explained in the next letter. 



gan to doubt whether or no you were in the land 
of the living. We have been a fortnight in this 
part of the world, part of the time at Dilwyn, 
the original seat of the Tylers ; and Shobdon 
was one of the places we visited. Our absence 
from home will not exceed a month, and though 
the time has passed pleasantly, I shall not be 
sorry to sit quietly down once more at Martin 

Hall I have heard high commendation of 

you, somewhat in a roundabout way, from a 
Taunton lady, who writes to a friend of hers, 
' The gallant Southey for me.' Now, Tom, who 
the devil this Taunton damsel is, I could not find 
out, for the name was dropped by the way, so 
you must guess if you can. 

" My Letters* are in the press, and my vol- 
ume will soon — it will include the ' Vision.' I 
have begun my English Eclogues, and written 
two which I rather like. My Calendar also is 
greatly advanced since you left us : it now ex- 
tends to some 1400 lines, and much of the re- 
mainder is planned out. I have learned to rise 
early when at home, and written two new books 
of ' Madoc' wholly, before any one else in the 
house was up. 

" Do you know that I have been caricatured 
in the Anti-Jacobin Magazine, together with 
Lloyd, Lamb, the Duke of Bedford, Fox, &c, 
&c. The fellow has not, however, libeled my 
likeness, because he did not know it; so he 
clapped an ass's head on my shoulders. 

" I have done a great deal in the planning 
way since I have been in Herefordshire. You 
would, I think, be pleased with the skeleton of a 
long poem upon the destruction of the Dom Dan- 
iel, of which the outline is almost completed j 
when it will get further, I know not. I have 
much on my hands : my Calendar will probably 
fill three volumes, and the more the work gets 
on, the better does it please me. 

" Edith has learned to ride ; she thinks of en- 
tering among the light horsewomen, and I hope 
to get her the rank of a corporella. 

" Did you hear of the glorious take in about Bo- 
naparte at Bristol ? Oh, Tom, I saw the news- 
paper boy pass by Martin Hall with a paper 
cap, inscribed Bonaparte taken ! and the bells 
rung Sunday, and all day Monday. Tuesday I 
was at Cottle's when the mail was expected. 
The volunteers were ready to strike up, and two 
men kneeling on the church and post-office with 
the flags ready to let fly. N.B. — It rained very 
hard. The four streets full of people, all assem- 
bled to see the triumphal entry of the mail-coach, 
as it was to be crowned with laurels : you never 
saw so total a blank as when all proved to be 



" I shall now dp better one year than the lait ; 
so, Tom, let us hope all things, for we have 
weathered worse times than we shall ever know 
again, I trust. God bless you. R. S." 

To Mrs. Southey. 
"Bwlch, Brecknockshire, Oct. 14, 1798. 
" Without a map, my dear Edith will know 



Letters from Spain and Portugal, 2d edit. 



zEtat. 25. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



107 



nothing of the place I date from, and if she have 
a map to refer to, very probably she may miss 

the name What have we seen ? Woods, 

mountains, and mountain glens and streams. In 
those words are comprehended all imaginable 
beauty. Sometimes we have been winding up 
the dingle side, and every minute catching the 
stream below through the wood that half hid it, 
always hearing its roar ; then over mountains, 
where nothing was to be seen but hill and sky, 
their sides rent by the winter streams ; some- 
times a little tract of cultivation appeared up 
some coomb-place, so lonely, so beautiful : they 
looked as though no tax-gatherer ever visited 
them. I have longed to dwell in these solitary 
houses in a mountain vale, sheltered by the hills 
and the trees that grow finely round the houses ; 
the vale rich by the soil swept down the hills ; 
a stream before the door, rolling over large 
stones — pure water, so musical, too ! and a child 
might cross it ; yet at wet seasons it must thun- 
der down a torrent. In such scenes there is a 
simplcness of sublimity fit to feed imagination. 
. . . Yesterday, at two, we reached Brecon, a 
distance of eighteen miles. A little but clean 
ale-house afforded us eight pennyworth of bread, 
cheese, and ale, and we departed for Crickhowel, 
a stage of thirteen more. A woman whom we 
met, and of whom we asked the distance, meas- 
ured it by the ' great inn' at Bwlch, on the way, 
and wo determined to halt there. Before wo 
got there heavy rain overtook us, and we were 
wet the lower half when we reached the great 
inn at Bwlch, which is not quite so good as the 
memorable ale-house at Tintern. However, we 
have very good beds here ; the cream was good, 
and the tea excellent. 

" So we have ate, drank, dried ourselves, and 
grown comfortable ; also we have had the pleas- 
ure of the landlord's company, who, being some- 
what communicative and somewhat tipsy, gave 
us the history of himself and family. ... I much 
like the appearance of the Welsh women : they 
have all a character in their countenances, an in- 
telligence which is very pleasant. Their round, 
shrewd, national physiognomy is certainly better 
than that of the English peasantry, and we have 
uniformly met with civility. There is none of 
the insolence and brutality which characterize 
our colliers and milk-women. 

" At Merthyr we witnessed the very interest- 
ing custom of strewing the graves. They are 
fenced round with little white stones, and the 
earth in the coffin shape planted with herbs and 
flowers, and strewn with flowers. Two women 
were thus decorating a grave — the one a mid- 
dle-aged woman, and much affected. This af- 
fected me a good deal ; the custom is so congenial 
to one's heart; it prolongs the memory of the 

dead, and links the affections to them 

This part of Brecknockshire is most beautiful : 
the Usk rolling through a rich and cultivated 
vale, and mountains rising on every side. We 
feel no fatigue, and I get more comfortable every 
day now our faces are turned homeward. 

" God bless yon, my dear Edith. Fare- 



well. Now for the Black Mountain and St. Da- 
vid's." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Westbury, Dec. 14, 1798. 
" My dear Friend, 
" We are enduring something like a Kamt- 
schatkan winter here. I am obliged to take my 
daily walk, and, though I go wrapped up in my 
great-coat, almost like a dancing bear in hirsute 
appearance, still the wind pierces me. Wo are 
very deficient in having no winter dress for such 
weather as this. I am busy upon the Grecian 
history, or, rather, it is the employment of all 
my leisure. The escape of my Pythoness* was 
in the early ages, and they, I believe, will suit 
me best. I must have the Pythian games cele- 
brated ; for the story, I have only invention to 
trust to. The costume of Greece will be new 
to the English drama, owing to the defects of 
our theaters; but I had rather get to some 
country and some people less known. Among 
the many thoughts that have passed over my 
mind upon this subject, I have had the idea of 
grounding stories upon the oppression exercised 
at different periods of time upon particular class- 
es of people ; the Helots, for instance, the Albi- 
genses, or the Jews. The idea of a tragedy 
upon one of the early martyrs has for some years 
been among my crude plans ; but it would not 
suit the stage, because it would not suit the 
times. There is something more noble in such 
a character than I can conceive in any other : 
firm to the defiance of death in avowing the 
truth, and patient under all oppression, without 
enthusiasm, supported by the calm conviction 
that this is his duty. Among the Helots, some- 
thing may be made of the infernal Crypteia ; but 
I am afraid to meddle with a Spartan ; there is 
neither feeling, thinking, nor speaking like one 
who has been educated according to the laws of 
Lycurgus : knowledge of human nature is not 
knowledge of Lacedemonian nature. The state 
of slavery among our own countrymen at an 
early period is better ; the grievances of ward- 
ship, and the situation of a fief or villain. Dram- 
atists and novelists have ransacked early history, 
and we have as many crusaders on the stage and 
in the circulating library as ever sailed to Pales- 
tine ; but they only pay attention to the chronol- 
ogy, and not to the manners or mind of the pe- 
riod. ***** * 
" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Sotjthey." 

With one brief extract referring to his health, 
I will conclude this chapter. It is from a let- 
ter to William Taylor, of Norwich, who had now 
become one of his regular correspondents, and 
to whom he was in the habit of submitting many 
of his minor pieces for criticism as he wrote them. 

" I was very glad to see your hand-writing 
again. I have been much indisposed, and my 
recovery, I fear, will be slow. My heart is af- 

* My father had been urged by several friends to try his 
hand at dramatic composition ; and this refers to one of 
the subjects on which he had purpose to write a play. 



108 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



IEtat. 25. 



fected, and this at first alarmed me, because I 
could not understand it ; however, I am scien- 
tifically satisfied it is only a nervous affection. 
Sedentary habits have injured my health; the 
prescription of exercise prevents me from pro- 
ceeding with the work that interests me, and 
only allows time for the task labor, which is 
neither pleasant to look at nor to remember. 
My leisure is quite destroyed : had it not been 
for this, I should, ere this, have sent you the re- 
mainder of my Eclogues.* 



CHAPTER VI. 

RESIDENCE AT WESTBURY DRAMATIC PLANS 

ILL HEALTH GOES TO LONDON TO KEEP THE 

TERM AT GRAY'S INN MADOC COMPLETED 

EXCURSION INTO DEVONSHIRE LETTERS FROM 

THENCE GOES AGAIN TO RESIDE AT BTTBTON 

SEVEBE ILLNESS BETUBNS TO BBISTOL 

THALABA PROJECT OF ESTABLISHING BEGUIN- 

AGES POEM IN HEXAMETERS, ON MOHAMMED, 

COMMENCED CONTINUED ILL HEALTH MAKES 

ARRANGEMENTS FOR GOING TO LISBON. 1799, 

1800. 

The commencement of the year 1799 found 
my father still at Westbury, and still employed 
at some one or other of his many literary avoca- 
tions. I have not thought it needful to notice 
particularly the reception which his writings had 
hitherto met with from the public, because it was 
not of that peculiarly marked character which ma- 
terially influences an author's career. He had, 
however, been gradually "working his way up 
the hill," and the booksellers were ready enough 
to find him abundant periodical employment, 
which, though it "frittered away his time," and 
was but indifferently remunerated, he still found 
more profitable than any other way in which he 
could employ his pen. I can not but regret that 
no list of his many contributions to magazines 
and reviews, and other periodicals, during his 
early life, can be found. Although the articles 
themselves might not be worth preservation, still, 
could the number of them be added to the rest 
of his works, especially taking into account his 
very numerous writings in the Annual and Quar- 
terly Reviews, he would unquestionably be found 
to have been one of the most voluminous writers 
of any age or of any country. The following let- 
ters will give some idea of his untiring industry : 

To Thomas Southey, 

"Jan. 5, 1799. 
" My dear Tom, 
" Ever since you left us have I been hurried 
from one job to another. You know I expected 
a parcel of books when you went away. They 
came, and I had immediately to kill off one de- 
tachment ; that was but just done, when down 
came a bundle of French books, to be returned 
with all possible speed. This was not only un- 



Westbury, Dec. 27, 1758. 



expected work, but double work, because all ex- 
tracts were to be translated. Well, that I did, 
and by that time the end of the month came 
round, and I am now busy upon English books 
again. What with this and my weekly communi- 
cations with Stuart,* and my plaguy regimen of 
exercise, I have actually no time for any volun- 
tary employment. In a few days I hope to 
breathe a little in leisure. 

"I am sorry it is low water with you, and 
that we can not set you afloat. We are heavily 
laden, and can, with hard work, barely keep 
above water. I have been obliged to borrow; 
by-and-by we shall do better; but we are just 
now at the worst, and these vile taxes will take 
twenty pounds from me, at the least. 

"We had an odd circumstance happened to 
us on Wednesday. Just as we were beginning 
breakfast, a well-dressed woman, in a silk gown 
and muff", entered the room. ' I am come to take 
a little breakfast,' said she. Down she laid her 
muff, took a chair, and sat down by the fire. We 
thought she was mad ; but she looked so stupid, 
that we soon found that was not the case. Sure 
enough, breakfast she did. I was obliged once 
to go down and laugh. My mother and Edith 
behaved very well, but Margery could not come 
into the room. When the good lady had done, 
she rose, and asked what she had to pay. ' Noth- 
ing, ma'am,' said my mother. 'Nothing ! why, 
how is this ?' ' I don't know how it is,' said my 
mother, and smiled ; ' but so it is.' ' What, don't 
you keep a public ?' ' No, indeed, ma'am ;' so we 
had half a hundred apologies, and the servant had 
a shilling. We had a good morning's laugh for 
ourselves, and a good story for our friends, and 
she had a very good breakfast. I wish you had 
been here. 

" Harry is going to a Mr. Maurice, a gentle- 
man who takes only a few pupils, at Norman- 
ston, near Lowestoff", Suffolk. You may, perhaps, 
know Lowestoff, as the more easterly point of the 
island. It is a very fortunate situation for him. 

" The frost has stopped the pump and the press. 
My letters are just done, but not yet published. 
Our bread has been so hard frozen, that no one 
in the house except myself could cut it, and it 
made my arm ache for the whole day. 

" I do not know where Lloyd is ; it is a long 
time since I have heard from him. Indeed, my 
own employments make me a vile correspondent. 

" The Old Woman of Berkeley cuts a very re- 
spectable figure on horseback; and Beelzebub 
is so admirably done, that one would suppose he 

had sat for the picture. t I know not how 

you exist this weather. My great-coat is a love- 
ly garment, my mother says ; and, but for it, I 
should, I believe, be found on Durdham Down in 
the shape of a great icicle. At home the wind 
comes in so cuttingly in the evenings, that I have 
taken to wear my Welsh wig, to the great im- 
provement of my personal charms ! Edith says 
I may say that. 



* Editor of the Morning Post 

t This engraving was copied from the Nuremberg 
Chronicle. 



Mtat. 25. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



109 



I shall make a ballad upon the story of your I his. The king's confessor intercedes for Pache 



shipmate the marine,* who kept the fifth com- 
mandment so well. By the help of the devil, it 
will do ; and there can be no harm in introducing 
him to the devil a little before his time. God 
bless you. Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey. 
f A happy new year." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Jan. 9, 1799. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" As for the verses upon Mr. Pitt, I never 
wrote any. Possibly Lewis may have seen a 
poem by Coleridge, which I have heard of, but 
have never seen — a dialogue between Blood, 
Fire, and Famine, or some such interlocutors.! 
Strangers are perpetually confounding us. 

"My Eclogues, varying in subject, are yet 
too monotonous, in being all rather upon melan- 
choly subjects. 

" I have some play plots maturing in my head, 
but none ripe. My wish is to make something 
better than love the main-spring ; and I have 
one or two sketches, but all the plots seem rath- 
er calculated to produce one or two great scenes 
rather than a general effect. My mind has been 
turned too much to the epic, which admits a 
longer action, and passes over the uninteresting 
parts. 

" The escape of the Pythoness with a young 
Thessalian seems to afford most spectacle. If 
you have Diodorus Siculus at hand, and will re- 
fer to lib. 16, p. 428, you may find all the story, 
for I know no more than the fact. 

"Pedro the Just pleases me best. This is 
my outline : You know one of Inez's murderers 
escaped — Pacheco. This man has, by light- 
ning or in battle, lost his sight, and labors under 
the agony of remorse. The priest, to whom he 
has confessed, enjoins him to say certain prayers 
where he committed the murder. Thus disfig- 
ured, he ran little danger of discovery ; what he 
did run enhanced their merits. A high reward 
has been offered for Pacheco, and the confessor 
sends somebody to inform against him and re- 
ceive it. 



co, but his execution is fixed for the day when 
Inez is to be crowned. At the decisive mo- 
ment, Leonora brings the children of Inez to in- 
tercede, and is successful. She refuses to marry 
the noble, and expresses her intention of enter- 
ing a nunnery after her mother's death. 

" This is a half plot — you see, capable of 
powerful scenes, but defective in general inter- 
est, I fear. 

" I have thought of a domestic story, founded 
on the persecution under Queen Mary. To this 
my objection is, that I can not. well conclude it 
without either burning my hero, or making the 
queen die very a propos — which is cutting the 
knot, and not letting the catastrophe necessarily 
arise from previous circumstances. However, 
the story pleases me, .because I have a fine 
Catholic woman and her confessor in it. 

" For feudal times, something may be made, 
perhaps, of a fief with a wicked lord, or of the 
wardship oppressions ; but what will young Col- 
man's play be ? It may forestall me. 

" Then I have thought of Sparta, of the Cryp- 
teia, and a Helot hero ; but this would be inter- 
preted into sedition. Of Florida, and the cus- 
tomary sacrifice of the first-born male : in this 
case, to have a European father, and an escape. 
Sebastian comes into my thoughts ; and Beatrix 
of Milan, accused by Orombello on the rack, and 
executed. A Welsh or English story would be 
better ; but, fix where I will, I will be well ac- 
quainted with country, manners, &c. God bless 
you. You have these views as they float before 
me, and will be as little satisfied with any as 
myself. Help me if you can. 

" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"January 21, 1799. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 
" You ask me why the devil rides on horse- 
back.* The Prince of Darkness is a gentle- 
man, and that w T ould be reason enough ; but, 
moreover, the history doth aver that he came on 
horseback for the old woman, and rode before 



" Leonora, his daughter, comes to Coimbra to her, and that the color of the horse was black. 



demand justice. Her mother's little property 
has been seized by a neighboring noble, who 
trusts to the hatred Pedro bears the family, and 
their depressed state, for impunity. This, too, 
may partly proceed from Leonora having re- 
fused to be his mistress. A good scene may be 
made when she sees the king, and he thinks she 
is going to entreat for her father ; but Pedro was 
inflexibly just, and he summons the nobleman. 

" Pacheco is thrown into prison. The noble- 
man, irritated at the king, is still attached to 
Leonora. He is not a bad man, though a vio- 
.ent one. He offers to force the prison, deliver 
Pacheco, and retire into Castille, if she will be 



Should I falsify the history, and make Apollyon 
a pedestrian ? Besides, Grosvenor, Apollyon is 
cloven-footed ; and I humbly conceive that a bi- 
ped — and I never understood his dark majesty 
to be otherwise — that a biped, I say, would walk 
clumsily upon cloven feet. Neither hath Apol- 
lyon wings, according to the best representa- 
tions ; and, indeed, how should he ? For, were 
they of feathers, like the angels, they would be 
burned in the everlasting fire ; and were they of 
leather, like a bat's, they would be shriveled. I 
conclude, therefore, that wings he hath not. Yet 
do we find, from sundry reputable authors and 



* This man persuaded his father to murder his mother, 
and then turned king's evidence, and brought his father to 
the gallows. 

t 'Fire, Famine, Slaughter," was the title of this poem. ! propriety of the portraiture 



* The allusion here is to the illustration of my father's 
"pithy and profitable" ballad of the "Old Woman of 
Berkeley," which is referred to in the last letter but one. 
It seems that Mr. Bedford, whose humor on such sub- 
jects tallied exactly with his own, had questioned the 



110 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 25. 



divers histories, that he transported himself 
from place to place with exceeding rapidity. 
Now, as he can not walk fast or fly, he must 
have some conveyance. Stage-coaches to the 
infernal regions there are none, though the road 
be much frequented. Balloons would burst at 
setting out, the air would be so rarefied with 
the heat ; but horses he may have of a particu- 
lar breed. 

" I am learned in Daemonology, and could say 
more ; but this sufficeth. I should advise you 
not to copy the ballad, because the volume will 
soon be finished. I expect to bring it with me 
on Ash- Wednesday to town 

"I am better, but they tell me that constant 
exercise is indispensable, and that at my age, and 
with my constitution, I must either throw off the 
complaint now, or it will stick to me forever. 
Edith's health requires care : our medical friend 
dreads the effect of London upon both. When 
my time is out in our present house (at Midsum- 
mer), we must go to the sea a while. I thought 
I was like a Scotch fir, and could grow any 
where ; but I am sadly altered, and my nerves 
are in a vile state. I am almost ashamed of my 
own feelings ; but they depend not upon volition. 
These things throw a fog over the prospect of 
life. I can not see my way : it is time to be in 
an office, but the confinement would be ruinous. 
You know not the alteration I feel. I could once 
have slept with the seven'sleepers without a mir- 
acle ; now the least sound wakes me, and with 
alarm. However, I am better. . . . God bless 
you. 

" Yours affectionately. 

"R. Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Jan. 22, 1799. 
" My dear Friend, 
" Since my last my dramatic ideas have been 
fermenting, and have now, perhaps, settled — at 
least, among my various thoughts and outlines, 
there is one which pleases me, and with which 
Wynn seems well satisfied. I am not willing to 
labor in vain, and before I begin I would con- 
sult well with him and you, the only friends who 
know my intention. The time chosen is the lat- 
ter part of Queen Mary's reign ; the characters 
— Sir Walter, a young convert to the Reforma- 
tion; Gilbert, the man who has converted him; 
Stephen, the cousin of Sir Walter, and his heir 
in default of issue, a bigoted Catholic ; Mary, the 
betrothed of Walter, an amiable Catholic ; and 
her Confessor, a pious, excellent man. Gilbert 
is burned, and Walter, by his own enthusiasm, 
and the bigotry and interested hopes of his cousin, 
condemned, but saved by the queen's death. The 
story thus divides itself: 1 . To the discovery of 
Walter's principles to Mary and the Confessor. 
2. The danger he runs by his attentions to the 
accused Gilbert. 3. Gilbert's death. 4. Wal- 
ter's arrest. 5. The death of the queen. In 
Mary and her Confessor I design Catholics of the 
most enlarged minds, sincere but tolerating, and 
earnest to save Walter, even to hastening his 



marriage, that the union with a woman of such 
known sentiments might divert suspicion. Gil- 
bert is a sincere but bigoted man, one of the old 
Reformers, ready to suffer death for his opinions, 
or to inflict it. Stephen, so violent in his hate 
of heresy as half to be ignorant of his own inter- 
ested motives in seeking Walter's death. But 
it is from delineating the progress of Walter's 
mind that I expect success. At first he is rest- 
less and unhappy, dreading the sacrifices which 
his principles require ; the danger of his friend 
and his death excite an increasing enthusiasm ; 
the kindness of the priest, and Mary's love, over- 
come him ; he consents to temporize, and is ar- 
rested; then he settles into the suffering and 
steady courage of a Christian. To this I feel 
equal, and long to be about it. I expect a good 
effect from the evening hymn to be sung by Mary, 
and from the death of Gilbert. From the great 
window, Mary and the Confessor see the pro- 
cession to the stake, and hear the Te Deum ; 
they turn aw T ay when the fire is kindled, and 
kneel together to pray for his soul ; the light of 
the fire appears through the window, and Wal- 
ter is described as performing the last office of 
kindness to his martyred friend. You will per- 
ceive that such a story can excite only good feel- 
ings ; its main tendency will be to occasion char- 
ity toward each other's opinions. The story has 
the advantage of novelty. The only martyrdom- 
plays I know are mixed with much nonsense : 
the best is Corneille's ' Polyeucte :' in English we 
have two bad ones from Massinger and Dryden. 
When I see you I will tell you more ; the little 
thoughts for minute parts, which are almost too 
minute to relate formally in a letter. 

" I come to town the week after next again : 
the thought of the journey is more tolerable, as 
I expect relief from the exercise, for very great 
exercise is necessary. I do not, and will not, 
neglect my health, though it requires a very in- 
convenient attention. My medical guide tells 
me that, with my habits, the disorder must be 
flung off now, or it will adhere to me through 
life. God bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

My father's health still continued in a very 
unsatisfactory state, although he was less alarm- 
ed about it himself than he had been a short time 
previously. In reply to some anxious inquiries 
from his friend William Taylor, who, with a sin- 
gular misapprehension of his character, tells him 
that he has a " mimosa sensibility, an imagina- 
tion excessively accustomed to summon up trains 
of melancholy ideas, and marshal funeral proces- 
sions ; a mind too fond by half, for its own com- 
fort, of sighs and sadness, of pathetic emotion 
and heart-rending woe ;" he says : " Burnett has 
mistaken my complaint, and you have mistaken 
my disposition. I was apprehensive of some 
local complaint of the heart, but there is no dan- 
ger of its growing too hard, and the affection is 
merely nervous. The only consequence which 
there is any reason'to dread is, that it may totally 






jEtat. 25. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



Ill 



unfit me for the confinement of London and a 
lawyer's office. I shall make the attempt some- 
what heartlessly, and discouraged by the prog- 
nostics of my medical advisers, ,If my health 
suffer, I will abandon it at once. The world 
will be again before me, and the prospect suffi- 
ciently comfortable. I have no wants, and few 
wishes. Literary exertion is almost as neces- 
sary to me as meat and drink, and, with an un- 
divided attention, I could do much. 

"Once, indeed, I had a mimosa sensibility, 
but it has long ago been rooted out. Five years 
ago I counteracted Rousseau by dieting upon 
Godwin and Epictetus : they did me some good, 
but time has done more. I have a dislike to all 
strong emotion, and avoid whatever could excite 
it. A book like Werter gives me now unmingled 
pain. In my own writings you may observe I 
dwell rather upon what affects than what agi- 
tates."* 

Notwithstanding the little encouragement my 
father found to continuing the study of the law, 
both from the state of his health, and the pecul- 
iar inaptitude of his mind to retain its technicali- 
ties, even though, at the time of reading, it fully 
apprehended them, he still thought it right to 
continue to keep his terms at Gray's Inn, and 
early in May went up to London for that pur- 
pose. Here his friends had now become numer- 
ous, and he had to hurry from one to another 
with so little cessation, that his visits there were 
always a source of more fatigue than pleasure. 
His great delight was the old book-stalls, and his 
chief anxiety to be at home again. 

" At last, my dear Edith," he writes the day 
after his arrival, "I sit down to write to you in 

quiet and with something like comfort 

My morning has been spent pleasantly, for it has 
been spent alone in the library, the hours so 
employed pass rapidly enough, but I grow more 
and more home-sick, like a spoiled child. On 
the 29th you may expect me. Term opens on 
the 26th. After eating my third dinner, I can 
drive to the mail, and thirteen shillings will be 
well bestowed in bringing me home four-and- 
twenty hours earlier : it is not above sixpence 
an hour, Edith, and I 'would gladly purchase an 
hour at home now at a much higher price. * 
# v # # # * # # # 

My stall-hunting, the great and only source of 
my enjoyment in London, has been tolerably suc- 
cessful. I have picked up an epic poem in 
French, on the Discovery of America, which 
will help out the notes of Madoc; another on 
the American Revolution, the Alaric, and an 
Italian one, of which I do not know the subject, 
for the title does not explain it ; also I have got 
Astraea, the whole romance, a new folio, almost 
a load for a porter, and the print delightfully 
small — fine winter evenings' work ; and I have 
had self-denial enough — admire me, Edith ! — to 
abstain from these books till my return, that I 
may lose no time in ransacking the library. 
" I met Stuart one day, luckily, as it saved 



* March 12. 1799. 



me a visit. To-morrow must be given up to 
writing for him, as he has had nothing since I 
came to town. The more regularly these peri- 
odical works are done, the easier they are to do. 
I have had no time since I left home — in fact, I 
can do nothing as it should be done any where 
else. 

" * * * * Do not suppose I 
have forgotten to look out for a book for you ; 
to-day I saw a set of Florian, which pleases me, 
unless a better can be found. * * * 

Do you know that I am truly and actually learn- 
ing Dutch, to read Jacob Cats. You will, per- 
haps, be amused at a characteristic trait in that 
language : other people say, I pity ; but the 
Dutch verb is, I pity myself." 

The two following letters were also written 
during this absence from home. 

To Mrs. Southey. 

Brixton, May 9, 1799. 
" Your letter, my dear Edith, reached me not 
till late last evening, and it could hardly have 
arrived more opportunely, for it was on my re- 
turn from a visit to Mr. that I found it. 

We had dined there ; B., and C, and I, with 
fourteen people, all of whom were completely 
strange to me, and most of whom I hope and 
trust will remain so. There w r ere some block- 
heads there, one of whom chose to be exposed 
by engaging in some classical and historical dis- 
putes with me ; another gave as a toast General 
Suwarrow, the man who massacred men, wom- 
en, and children for three successive days at 
Warsaw, who slew at Ockzakow thirty thousand 
persons in cold blood, and thirty thousand at Is- 
mael. I was so astonished at hearing this de- 
mon's name as only to repeat it in the tone of 
wonder; but, before I had time to think or to 
reply, C. turned to the man who gave the toast, 
and said he would not drink General Suwarrow, 
and off we set, describing the man's actions till 
they gave up all defense, and asked for some 
substituted name ; and Carlisle changed him for 
Count Rumford. It was a hateful day ; the fel- 
lows would talk politics, of which they knew 
nothing. ###*=*# 

After being so put to the torture for five hours, 
your letter was doubly welcome. 

" G. Dyer is foraging for my Almanac, and 
promises pieces from Mrs. Opie, Mr. Mott of 
Cambridge, and Miss Christall. I then went to 
Arch's, a pleasant place for half an hour's book 
news : you know he purchased the edition of the 
Lyrical Ballads : he told me he believed he 
should lose by them, as they sold very heavily. 
.... My books sell very well. Other book news 
have I none, except, indeed, that John Thelwall 
is writing an epic poem, and Samuel Rogers is 
also writing an epic poem ; George Dyer, also, 
hath similar thoughts. * * * * 
William Taylor has written to me from Nor- 
wich, and sent me Bodmer's Noah, the book that 
I wanted to poke through and learn German by. » 
He tempts me to write upon the subject, and 



112 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 25 



take my seat with Milton and Klopstock ; and 
in my to-day's walk, so many noble thoughts for 
such a poem presented themselves, that I am 
half tempted, and have the Deluge floating in my 
brain with the Dom Daniel and the rest of my 
unborn family. 

As we went to dinner yesterday, a coachful of 
women drew up to the door at the moment we 
arrived there : it rained merrily, and Carlisle of- 
fered his umbrella; but the prim gentry were 
somewhat rudely shy of him, and me too, for his 
hair was a little ragged, and I had not silk stock- 
ings on. He made them ashamed of this at din- 
ner. Never did you see any thing so hideous as 
their dresses : they were pink muslin, with round 
little white spots, waists ever so far down, and 
buttoned from the neck down to the end of the 
waist. ###### 

* ####### 

Home Tooke's letter to the Income Commis- 
sioners has amused me very much : he had stated 
his under sixty pounds a year ; they said they 
were not satisfied ; and his reply begins by say- 
ing he has much more reason to be dissatisfied 
with the smallness of his income than they have. 
* ^ # # * # * 

''God bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

My father was now, much to his regret, com- 
pelled to quit his house at Westbury ; and Bur- 
ton, in Hampshire, being the place which, next 
to Bristol, he had found in all respects best suit- 
ed to him, he went thither to look for a house, 
and with some difficulty succeeded in procuring 
one ; but, not being able to obtain immediate 
possession, the intervening time, after a short 
interval, was passed in an excursion into Devon- 
shire. Of these movements the following let- 
ters give an account : 

To Grosvenor Bedford, Esq. 

" Bristol, June 5, 1799. 
" My dear. Grosvenor, 
" Here is de koele June — we have a March 
wind howling, and a March fire burning : it is 
diabolus did. On my journey I learned one 
piece of information, which you may profit by : 
that on Sunday nights they put the new horses 
into the mail always, because, as they carry no 
letters, an accident is of less consequence as to 
the delay it occasions. This nearly broke our 
necks, for we narrowly escaped an overturn ; so 
I travel no more on a Sunday night in the mail. 

I am the better for my journey, and inclined to 
attribute it to the greater quantity of wine I 
drank at Brixton than I had previously done ; 
therefore I have supplied the place of aether by 
the grape-juice, and supplied the place of the 
table-spoon by the cork-screw. I find printer's 
faith as bad as Punic faith. New types have 
been promised from London for some weeks, 
and are not yet arrived ; therefore I am still out 

\ 



of the press. I pray you to send me the old 
woman who was circularized, 




who saw her own back, whose head was like 
the title-page of a Jew's prayer-book, who was 
an emblem of eternity, the omikron of old wom- 
en. You will make a good ballad of this quaint 
tale : it is for subjects allied to humor or oddity 
that you possess most power. # # # 
Find such subjects, and you will find pleasure 
in writing in proportion as you feel your own 
strength. I will, at my first leisure, transcribe 
for you St. Anthony and the Devil. 

" The time of removal is so near at hand, that 
I begin to wish every thing were settled and 
over. This is a place which I leave with some 
reluctance after taking root here for twenty-five 
years, and now our society is so infinitely 
mended. 

" Davy, the Pneumatic Institution experiment- 
alist, is a first-rate man, conversable on all sub- 
jects, and learnable-from (which, by-the-by, is 
as fine a Germanly compounded word as you 
may expect to see) . I am going to breathe some 
wonder-working gas, which excites all possible 
mental and muscular energy, and induces almost 
a delirium of pleasurable sensations without any 
subsequent dejection. 

" # # # # * ■ * # 
I was fortunate enough to meet Sharpe, of whom 
you said so much, on the Sunday that I left Brix- 
ton. I was with Johnson in the King's Bench 
when he came in. I missed his name as he en- 
tered, but was quite surprised at the novelty 
and good sense of all his remarks. He talked 
on many subjects, and on all with a strength and 
justness of thought which I have seldom heard : 
the meeting pleased me much. I wish much to 
see more of Sharpe ; he seems a man whom it 
would be impossible not to profit by. He talked 
of Combe, who is in the King's Bench. You 
said that Combe wrote books which were not 
known to be his. Sharpe mentioned as his, Lord 
Lyttleton's Letters, many of Sterne's Letters, and 
iEneas Anderson's Account of China. God b^ess 
you ! Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Thomas Southey. 

"Friday, July 12, 1799. 
" My dear Tom, 
"I write to you from Danvers's, where we 
are and have been since we left Westbury. I 
have been to Biddlecombe's,* and surveyed 
Southey Palace that is to be. We shall not get 
possession till Michaelmas. The place will be 
comfortable ; the garden is large, but unstocked, 
with a fish-pond and a pigeon-house. My moth- 
er is in the College Green. Edith and I are 
going into Devonshire, first to the north coast. 



* The name of a friend residing at Christ Church, 
Hampshire. 



Mtat.26. ROBERT SOUTHEY 



11. 



Minehead, the Valley of Stones, and Ilfracombe, 
the wildest part of the country ; perhaps we may 
cross over to the south on our way to Burton. I 
wish to see Lightfoot at Kingsbridge, and there 
would be a likelihood of seeing you. 

"My miscellaneous volume, which is to be 
christened Annual Foems, comes on rapidly ; 
they are now striking off the eleventh sheet. 

" Yesterday I finished Madoc, thank God ! 
and thoroughly to my own satisfaction; but I 
have resolved on one great, laborious, and rad- 
ical alteration. It was my design to identify 
Madoc with Mango Capac, the legislator of 
Peru : in this I have totally failed, therefore 
Mango Capac is to be the hero of another poem ; 
and instead of carrying Madoc down the Mara.- 
non, I shall follow the more probable opinion, 
and land him in Florida : here, instead of the 
Peruvians, who have no striking manners for my 
poem, we get among the wild North American 
Indians. On their customs and superstitions, 
facts must be grounded, and woven into the 
work, spliced so neatly as not to betray the junc- 
tion. These alterations I delay. ... So much 
for Madoc : it is a great work done, and my 
brain is now ready to receive the Dom Daniel, 
the next labor in succession. Of the meter of 
this poem I have thought much, and my final 
resolution is to write it irregularly, without 
rhymes : for this I could give you reasons in 
plenty ; but, as you can not lend me your ear, 
we will defer it till you hear the poem. This 
work is intended for immediate publication. 

' ; My first poems are going to press for a third 
edition ; by the time they are completed, I shall 
probably have a second volume of the Annual 
Poems ready; and so I and the printers go mer- 
rily on. 

" Oh, Tom ! such a gas has Davy discovered, 
the gaseous oxyd ! Oh, Tom ! I have had some ; 
it made me laugh and tingle in every toe and fin- 
ger tip. Davy has actually invented a new pleas- 
ure, for which language has no name. Oh, Tom ! 
I am going for more this evening ; it makes one 
strong, and so happy I so gloriously happy ! and 
without any after-debility, but, instead of it, in- 
creased strength of mind and body. Oh, excel- 
lent air-bag ! Tom, I am sure the air in heaven 
must be this wonder-working gas of delight ! 
Yours, Robert Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Stowey, August, 1799. 
"My dear Friend, 

My walk to Ilfracombe led me through Lyn- 
mouth, the finest spot, except C intra and the Ar- 
rabida, that I ever saw. Two rivers join at Lyn- 
mouth. You probably know the hill streams of 
Devonshire : each of these flows down a coombe, 
rolling down over huge stones like a long water- 
fall ; immediately at their junction they enter the 
sea, and the rivers and the sea make but one 
sound of uproar. Of these coombes the one is 
richly wooded, the other runs between two high, 
bare, stony hills. From the hill between the two 



is a prospect most magnificent ; on either hand, 
the coombes and the river before the little village. 
The beautiful little village, which, I am assured 
by one who is familiar with Switzerland, resem- 
bles a Swiss village — this alone would constitute 
a view beautiful enough to repay the weariness 
of a long journey ; but, to complete it, there is 
the blue and boundless sea, for the faint and fee- 
ble line of the Welsh coast is only to be seen on 
the right hand if the day be perfectly clear. As- 
cending from Lynmouth up a road of serpentining 
perpendicularity, you reach a lane which by a 
slight descent leads to the Valley of Stones, a 
spot which, as one of the greatest wonders in- 
deed in the West of England, would attract many 
visitors if the roads were passable by carriages. 
Imagine a narrow vale between two ridges of 
hills somewhat steep ; the southern hill turfed ; 
the vale, which runs from east to west, covered 
with huge stones and fragments of stones among 
the fern that fills it ; the northern ridge com- 
pletely bare, excoriated of all turf and all soil, 
the very bones and skeleton of the earth ; rock 
reclining upon rock, stone piled upon stone, a 
huge and terrific mass. A palace of the Pread- 
amite kings, a city of the Anakin^ must have ap- 
peared so shapeless, and yet so like the ruins of 
what had been shaped after the waters of the 
flood subsided. I ascended with some toil the 
highest point ; two large stones inclining on each 
other formed a rude portal on the summit : here 
I sat down; a little level platform, about two 
yards long, lay before me, and then the eye im- 
mediately fell upon the sea, far, very far below. 
I never felt the sublimity of solitude before. . . 

" Of Beddoes you seem to entertain an erro- 
neous opinion. Beddoes is an experimentalist in 
cases where the ordinary remedies are notoriously 
and fatally inefficacious. If you will read Ms 
late book on consumption, you will see his opin- 
ion upon this subject; and the book is calculated 
to interest unscientific readers, and to be of use 
to them. The faculty dislike Beddoes, because 
he is more able, and more successful, and more 
celebrated than themselves, and because he la- 
bors to reconcile the art of healing with common 
sense, instead of all the parade of mystery with 
which it is usually enveloped. Beddoes is a can- 
did man, trusting more to facts than reasonings. 
I understand him when he talks to me, and, in 
case of illness, should rather trust myself to his 
experiments than be killed off secundem artem, 
and in the ordinary course of practice 

" God bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 

To Joseph Cottle. 

" Exeter, Sept. 22, 1799. 
" My dear Cottle, 
" You will, I hope, soon have a cargo to send 
me of your own (for the 2d vol. of the Antholo- 
gy), and some from Davy. If poor Mrs. Years- 
ley were well, I should like much to have her 
name there As yet, I have only Cole- 
ridge's pieces and my own, amounting, in the 
whole, to some eighty or one hundred pages. 



114 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



/Etat. 26\ 



" Thalaba the Destroyer is progressive. There 
is a poem called 'Gefo'r,' of which I know not 
whether my review be yet printed (in the Crit- 
ical), but in that review you will find some of the 
most exquisite poetry in the language. The 
poem is such as Gilbert,^ if he were only half 
as mad as he is, could have written. I would 
go a hundred miles to see the anonymous author. 

" My other hard work now is gutting the 
libraries here, and laying in a good stock of notes 
and materials, arranged in a way that would do 
honor to any old bachelor. Thalaba will be very 
rich in notes 

" There are some Johnobines in Exeter, with 
whom I have passed some pleasant days. It is 
the filthiest place in England : a gutter running 
down the middle of every street and lane. We 
leave it on Monday week, and I shall rejoice to 
taste fresh air and feel settled. Exeter, how- 
ever, has the very best collection of books for 
.sale of any place out of London ; and that made 
by a man who some few years back was worth 
nothing : Dyer — not Woolmer, whose catalogue 
you showed me. D}^er himself is a thinking, 
extraordinary man, of liberal and extraordinary 
talents for his circumstances. I congratulate 
you on being out of bookselling : it did not suit 
you. Would that we authors had one bookseller 
at our direction, instead of one bookseller direct- 
ing so many authors ! 

"My list of title-pages increases. I have 
lately made up my mind to undertake one great 
historical work, the History of Portugal ; but for 
this, and for many other noble plans, I want un- 
interrupted leisure time, wholly my own, and not 
frittered away by little periodical employments. 

God bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To S. T. Coleridge. 

"Exeter, Oct. 3, 1799. 

" Bonaparte was remarkably studious, and 
mathematics his particular study. He associated 
little, or not at all, with the other officers, and in 
company was reserved and silent. This is Mrs. 
Keenan's account, to whom I looked up with 
more respect, because the light of his counte- 
nance had shone upon her. Banfill tells me that 
the mathematical tutor of Bonaparte is in Exe- 
ter — an emigrant. He says that he was an ex- 
cellent mathematician — in the military branch 
chiefly — and that he was always the great man, 
always the first, always Bonaparte. . . . 

" Jackson has taste to a certain extent. . . . 
His music I take for granted ; his pictures are 
always well conceived, the creations of a man of 
genius ; but he can not execute ; his trees are 
like the rustic work in a porter's lodge, sea- 
weed landscapes, cavern drippings chiseled into 
ramifications — cold, cramp, stiff, stony. I thank 
him for his ' Four Ages.' A man with a name 
may publish such a book ; but when a book is 
merely a lounging collection of scraps, the corn- 



Author of " The Hurricane.' 



mon-place book printed, one wishes it to hold 
more than half an hour's turning over, a little 
turtle soup and a little pine-apple ; but one wants 
a huge basin of broth and plenty of filberts. . . . 
I soon talked of Bampfylde,* and Jackson rose 
in my esteem, for he talked of him till I saw the 
tears. I have copied one ode, in imitation of 
Gray's Alcaic, and nineteen sonnets. After I 
had done, Jackson required a promise that I 
would communicate no copy, as he was going to 
publish them. He read me the preface : it will 
tell you what a miraculous musician Bampfylde 
was, and that he died insane ; but it will not tell 
you Bampfylde's history. 

" His wish was to live in solitude and write a 
play. From his former lodging near Chudley, 
often would he come to town in winter before 
Jackson was up — and Jackson is an early riser 
— ungloved, open-breasted, with a pocket-full of 
music, and poems, to know how he liked them. 
His friends — plague on the word — his relations, 
I mean, thought this was a sad life for a man of 
family, so they drove him to London. ' Poor 
fellow !' said Jackson ; ' there did not live a 
purer creature ; and if they would have let him 
alone, he might have been alive now. In Lon- 
don his feelings took a wrong course, and he 
paid the price of debauchery.' 

" His sixteen printed sonnets are dedicated to 
Miss Palmer, now Lady Inchiquin, a niece of Sir 
Joshua Reynolds. Her he was madly in love 
with. Whether Sir J. opposed this match on 
account of Bampfylde's own irregularities in 
London, or of the hereditary insanity, I know 
not; but this was the commencement of his 
madness. On being refused admittance at Sir 
Joshua's, he broke the windows, and was taken 
to Newgate ! Some weeks after, Jackson, on 
knowing of what had passed, went to London, 
and inquired for Bampfylde. Lady B., his moth- 
er, said she knew little of him ; she had got him 
out of Newgate ; he was in some beggarly place. 
' Where ?' In King Street, Holborn, she be- 
lieved, but did not knoVF the number. Away 
went Jackson, and knocked at every door till he 
found the right. It was a miserable place. The 
woman of the house was one of the worst class 
of women in London. She knew B. had no 
money, and that he had been there three days 
without food. Jackson found him with the lev- 
ity of derangement — his shirt-collar black and 
ragged, his beard of two months' growth. He 
said he was come to breakfast, and turned to a 
harpsichord in the room, literally, he said, to let 
B. gorge himself without being noticed. He 
took him away, gave his mother a severe lecture, 
and left him in decent lodgings and with a decent 
allowance, earnestly begging him to write. He 
never wrote. The next news was his confine- 
ment, and Jackson never saw him more. Almost 
the last time they met, he showed him several 
poems ; among others, a ballad on the murder 



* I might have hesitated in publishing this melancholy 
account of poor Bampfylde's private history, had it not 
already been related in the Autobiography of Sir Egerton 
Brydges. 



JEtat. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



115 



of David Rizzio. ' Such a ballad !' said J. He 
came to J. to dinner, and was asked for copies. 
'I burned them,' was the reply; 'you did not 
seem to like them, and I wrote them to please 
you, so I burned them.' After twenty years' 
confinement his senses returned, but he was dy- 
ing in a consumption. He was urged by his 
apothecary to leave the house in Sloane Street, 
where he was well treated, and go into Devon- 
shire. ' Your Devonshire friends will be very 
glad to see you.' He immediately hid his face. 
' No, sir,' said he ; ' they who knew me what I 
was, shall never see me what I am.' 

"7T T? "TV TT W *A? t£ 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To S. T. Coleridge. 

" Christ Church. [No date.] 

4fc Ufc Ji- *tt> -V. -it «Mr 

•IP TT TP TT TP TT TT 

"I went to the Chapter Coffee-house Club. 
A man read an essay upon the comparative evils 
of savage and civilized society ; and he preferred 
the first, because it had not the curses of govern- 
ment and religion ! He had never read Rousseau. 
What amused me was to find him mistaken in 
every fact he adduced respecting savage man- 
tiers. I was going to attack him, but perceived 
that a visitor was expected to be silent. They 
elected me a member of one of these meetings, 
which I declined 

" A friend of Wordsworth's has been uncom- 
monly kind to me — Basil Montague. He offered 
me his assistance as a special pleader, and said, 
if he could save me 100 guineas, it would give 
him more than 100 guineas' worth of pleasure. 
I did thank him, which was no easy matter ; but. 
I have been told that I never thank any body for 
a civility, and there are very few in this world 
who can understand silence. However, I do not 
expect to use his offer : his papers which he of- 
fered me to copy will be of high service. Tell 
Wordsworth this. 

" I commit willful murder on my own intellect 
by drudging at law, but trust the guilt is partly 
expiated by the candle-light hours allotted to 
Madoc. That poem advances very slowly. I 
am convinced that the best way of writing is to 
write rapidly, and correct at leisure. Madoc 
would be a better poem if written in six months, 
than if six years were devoted to it. However, 
I am satisfied with what is done, and my outline 
for the whole is good 

11 God bless you. R. S." 

To Thomas Southey. 
Sylph Brig. 

"Burton, October 25, 1799. 
" My dear Tom, 
"For these last three weeks you have been 
'poor Tom,' and we have been lamenting the 
capture of the Sylph, and expecting a letter from 
you, dated ' Ferrol.' The newspapers said you 
had been captured and carried in there ; and I 
have written word to Lisbon, and my uncle was 
to write to Jardine, at Corunna ; and my mother 
has been frightened lest you should have been 



killed in an action previous to your capture — 
and, after all, it is a lie ! 

" Five weeks were we at Exeter. I wrote 
to you, directing Torbay, and I walked round 
Torbay. You cruised at an unlucky time. How- 
ever, if you have picked up a hundred pounds, I 
am glad we did not meet. We are in Hamp- 
shire, and shall get into our palace on Wednesday 
next. You will direct as formerly — Burton, near 
Ringwood. So much hope had I of seeing you 
when I walked down to Dartmouth, and round 
by Brixham and the bay, that I put the Annual 
Anthology and the concluding books of Madoc in 
my knapsack for you. 

" Our dwelling is now in a revolutionary state, 
and will, I hope, be comfortable. Small it is, and 
somewhat quaint, but it will be clean ; and there 
is a spare bed-room, and a fish-pond, and a gar- 
den, in which I mean to work wonders ; and then 
my book-room is such a room, that, like the Chap- 
ter House at Salisbury, it requires a column to 
support the roof. 

#Jtn jg. *&u ' 4fr 4fr Jfr 

-TV 1 -jf. ^f. "A* "Tv* ^7v* 

" But you ought to have been taken, Tom ; for 
consider how much uneasiness has been thrown 
away ; and here were we, on seeing your hand- 
writing, expecting a long and lamentable, true 
and particular, account of the loss of the Ville de 
Paris, the lapelles, the new shirts, books, and all 
the lieutenant paraphernalia ; and then comes a 
pitiful account of a cruise, and ^6100 prize-mon- 
ey, instead of all these adventures ! 

" There was my mother working away to make 
a new shirt, thinking you would come home shirt- 
less, breechesless, all oil, one great flea-bite, and 
able to talk Spanish. 

" I have no news to tell, except that we ex- 
pect Harry home for the Christmas holidays. 
Concerning my own employment, the Dom Dan- 
iel romance is rechristened, anabaptized Thalaba 
the Destroyer, and the fifth book is begun ; this 

I should like to show you God bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

My father had now, as he hoped, fairly settled 
himself for a time. He had revolutionized two 
adjoining cottages into a dwelling-house, and, at 
some inconvenience, had got his books about him, 
for already he had collected far more than were 
easily either moved or accommodated, though 
far fewer than he either wished or required. In 
this respect, indeed, the old proverb of " a roll- 
ing stone" was wholly inapplicable to him, and 
the number that accumulated made every new 
movement more troublesome and more expensive. 

But he was not yet destined to find a " rest for 
the sole of his foot." Hardly was his new home 
cleared from "the deal shavings and the brick 
and mortar," than he was laid prostrate by se- 
vere illness — " so reduced by a nervous fever as 
to be able neither to read nor write ;" and, on 
partially recovering from this attack, the uneasy 
feelings about his heart, which he had before ex- 
perienced, returned with so much force as to 
compel him at once to repair to Bristol for abler 



116 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 26. j 



advice than the retired neighborhood of Burton 
afforded. From thence he writes to Mr. Bed- 
ford and Mr. Coleridge : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Kingsdown, Bristol, Dec. 21, 1799. 

" Grosvenor, I think seriously of going abroad. 
My complaint, so I am told by the opinion of 
many medical men, is wholly a diseased sensi- 
bility (mind you, physical sensibility), disorder- 
ing the functions, now of the heart, now of the 
intestines, and gradually debilitating me. Cli- 
mate is the obvious remedy. In my present 
state, to attempt to undergo the confinement of 
legal application were actual suicide. I am anx- 
ious to be well, and to attempt the profession : 
much in it I shall never do : sometimes my prin- 
ciples stand in my way, sometimes the want of 
readiness which I felt from the first — a want 
which I always know in company, and never in 
solitude and silence. Howbeit, I will make the 
attempt ; but mark you, if by stage writing, or 
any other writing, I can acquire independence, 
I will not make the sacrifice of happiness it will 
inevitably cost me. I love the country, I love 
study — devotedly I love it ; but in legal studies 
it is only the subtlety of the mind that is exer- 
cised. However, I need not philippicize, and it 
is too late to veer about. In '96 I might have 
chosen physic, and succeeded in it. I caught at 
the first plank, and missed the great mast in my 
reach ; perhaps I may enable myself to swim by- 
and-by. Grosvenor, I have nothing of what the 
world calls ambition. I never thought it possi- 
ble that I could be a great lawyer ; I should as 
soon expect to be the man in the moon. My 
views were bounded — my hopes to an income 
of £500 a year, of which I could lay by half to 
effect my escape with. Possibly the stage may 

exceed this I am not indolent ; I loathe 

indolence ; but, indeed, reading law is laborious 
indolence — it is thrashing straw. I have read, 
and read, and read, but the devil a bit can I re- 
member. I have given all possible attention, and 
attempted to command volition. No J The eye 
read, the lips pronounced, I understood and re- 
read it ; it was very clear ; I remembered the 
page, the sentence ; but close the book, and all 
was gone ! Were I an independent man, even 
on less than I now possess, I should long since 
have made the blessed bonfire, and rejoiced that 
I was free and contented 

U I suffer a good deal from illness, and in a 
way hardly understandable by those in health. 
I start from sleep as if death had seized me. I 
am sensible of every pulsation, and compelled to 
attend to the motion of my heart till that atten- 
tion disturbs it. The pain in my side is, I think, 
lessened, nor do I at all think it was consump- 
tion ; organic affection it could not have been, 
else it had been constant ; and a heart disease 
would not have been perceived there. I must 
go abroad, and recruit under better skies. Not 
to Lisbon : I will see something new, and some- 
thing better than the Portuguese. Ask Duppa 
about Italy, about Trieste, and the way through 



Vienna, and say something to him on my part 
expressive of respect— of a wish one day to see 
more of him. 

"But of these plans you shall know more 
when they are more molded into form. In the 
mean time I must raise the supplies, and for this 
purpose there is Thalaba. My expedition will 
not be a ruinous one, and it shall be as econom- 
ical as it ought. I will at least return wiser, if 
not better. 

" But now for more immediate affairs. The 
Anthology prospers. Send me something. O 
for another parody, such as ' The Rhedycinian 
Barbers' — a ballad good as 'The Circular Old 
Woman.' * There is a poem called Gebir, writ- 
ten by God knows who, sold for a shilling : it 
has miraculous beauties ; and the Bishop of St. 
Giles's said the best poems in the Anthology 
were by Mrs. Opie and George Dyer ! and he 
writes reviews ! 

" I expect to see my brother Henry to-mor- 
row, after twenty months' absence. He is now 
sixteen, and promises much. If I go abroad, I 
shall make every effort to take him with me. 
Tom is cruising, and, I think, likely to rise in 
his profession. 

" Yours, ever the same, 

" RoBEKT SOUTHEY." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

"Bristol, Dec. 27, 1799. 

" Geese were made to grow feathers, and 
farmers' wives to pluck them. I suspect book- 
sellers and authors were made with something 
of the like first cause. With Thalaba I must 
make sure work and speedy, for abroad I must 
go. Complaints of immediate danger I have 
none, but increased and increasing nervous af- 
fections threaten much remote. I have rushes 
of feeling nightly, like fainting or death, and in- 
duced, I believe, wholly by the dread of them. 
Even by day they menace me, and an effort of 

mind is required to dispel them So I must 

go, and I will go. Now, then, the sooner the 
better. Some progress is made in the sixth 
book of Thalaba; my notes are ready for the 
whole — at least there is only the trouble of ar- 
ranging and seasoning them. If the bargain 
were made, it would be time to think of begin- 
ning to print, for the preliminaries are usually 
full of delays, and time with me is of importance. 
I must have the summer to travel in, and ought 
to be in Germany by the beginning of June. 
Treat, therefore, with Longman, or any man, 
for me. 

" The W.'sf are at Clifton : if they saw the 
probable advantages of a journey to Italy — of the 
possible reach to Constantinople, the Greek Isl- 
ands, and Egypt — in a light as strong as I do, 
they would, I think, wish to delay the new birth 
of Lessing ; but this is, on your part, a matter 
of feeling ; and when I spoke of your joining us, 



* There is no trace of this ballad to be found. Who can 
tell the history of this mysterious rotundity t See p. 112. 
f The Messrs. Wedgewood. 



^TAT. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



117 



it was with the conviction that it was a vain 
wish, but it is a very earnest one- Together 
we might do so much ; and we could leave the 
women for excursions — now into Hungary, now 
into Poland, and see the Turks. Zounds ! who 
knows but, like Sir John Maundeville, we might 
have gone where the devil's head is always above 
ground ! Go I must, but it would be a great sat- 
isfaction to have a companion 

' : But Lessing's life — and I half wish he had 
never lived — how long after the first of April 
(an ominous day) will that confine you ? Or, if 
you come here to do it, can not I raise mortar and 
carry bricks to the edifice ? . . . . For Stuart I 
must make out another quarter. I have huge 
drains, like the Pontic marshes — a leech hanging 
on every limb 

" God bless you. 

"Yours, R. Southey." 

To G. C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Bristol, Jan. 1, 1800. 
" We shall be very gla-d to see you, my dear 
Grosvenor, if you can come. There is a bed in 
the house, and I am of necessity an idle man, 
and can show you all things worth seeing, and 
get you a dose of the beatifying gas, which is a 
pleasure worth the labor of a longer journey. . . 

" I have often thought of the Chancery line. 
.... did not seem to like it : he is am- 
bitious for me, and perhaps hardly understands 
how utterly I am without that stimulus. I shall 
write to him a serious letter about it. Do not 
suppose that I feel burdened or uneasy ; all I feel 
is, that were I possessed of the same income in 
another way, I would never stir a finger to in- 
crease it in a way to which self-gratification was 
not the immediate motive, instead of self-interest. 
It is enough for all my wants, and just leaves 
motive enough not to be idle> that I may have to 
spare for my relatives. This, Grosvenor, I do 
feel ; practically I know my own wants, and can 
therefore speculate upon them securely. 

" Come to Bristol, I pray and beseech you. 
Winter as it is, I can show you some fine scenes 
and some pleasant people. You shall see Davy, 
the 3"oung chemist, the young every thing, the 
man least ostentatious, of first talent that I have 
ever known ; and you may experimentalize, if 
you like, and arrange my Anthology papers, 
and be as boyish as your heart can wish .... 
and I can give you Laver for supper. rare 
Laver ! . . . . 

' ; Perhaps the closest friendships will be found 
among men of inferior intellect, for such most 
completely accord with each other. There is 
scarcely any man with whom the whole of my 
being comes in contact ; and thus with different 
people I exist another and yet the same. With 
, for instance, the school-boy feelings re- 
vive : I have no other associations in common 
with him. With some I am the moral and in- 
tellectual agent ; with others I partake the daily 
and hourly occurrences of life. You and I, when 
we would see alike, must put on younger spec 
tacles. Whatever is most important in society, 



appears to us under different points of view. The 
man in Xenophon blundered when he said he had 
two souls — my life for it he had twenty ! God 
bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, 

' ; Robert Southey." 

To S. T Coleridge, Esq. ' 

" Jan. 8, 1800. 
" My dear Coleridge, 

" I have thought much, and talked much, and 
advised much about Thalaba, and will endeavor 
to travel without publishing it ; because 1 am in 
no mood for running races, and because I like 
what is done to be done so well, that I am not 
willing to let it go raggedly into the world. Six 
books are written, and the two first have under- 
gone their first correction. 

" I have the whim of making aDarwinish note 
at the close of the poem, upon the effects pro- 
duced in our globe by the destruction of the Dom 
Daniel. Imprimis, the sudden falling in of the 
sea's roots necessarily made the maelstrom ; then 
the cold of the north is accounted for by the 
water that rushed into the caverns putting out a 
great part of the central fire ; the sudden gen- 
eration of steam shattered the southern and south- 
east continents into archipelagos of islands ; also 
the boiling spring of Geyser has its source here 
— who knows what it did not occasion J 

'' Thomas Wedgewood has obtained a pass- 
port to go to France. I shall attempt to do the 
same, but am not very anxious for success, as 
Italy seems certainly accessible, or at least Trieste 
is. Is it quite impossible that you can go ? Surely 
a life of Lessing may be as well written in Ger- 
many as in England, and little time lost. I shall 
be ready to go as soon as you please : we should 
just make a carriage-full, and you and I would 
often make plenty of room by walking. You 
can not begin Lessing before May, and you al- 
low yourself ten months for the work. Well, we 
will be in Germany before June. At the towns 
where w T e make a halt of any time, something 
may be done, and the actual traveling will not 
consume more than two months ; thus three 
months only will be lost, and it is worth this 
price : we can return through France, and, in 
the interim, Italy offers a society almost as in- 
teresting. Duppa will fortify me with all nec- 
essary directions for traveling, &c. 5 and Moses* 
will be a very mock-bird as to languages : he 
shall talk German with you and me, Italian with 
the servants, and English with his mother and 
aunt ; so the young Israelite will become learned 
without knowing how. 

" * #'=* # # # # 

Beddoes advertised, at least six weeks ago, cer- 
tain cases of consumption treated in a cow-house, 
and the press has been standing till now in ex- 
pectation of — what think you? only waiting till 
the patients be cured! This is beginning to 
print a book sooner than even I should venture. 
Davy is in the high career of experience, and 

* This appellation was given to Hartley Coleridge in 
his infancy and childhood. 



118 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 26- 



will soon new-christen (if the word be a chem- ! 
ical one) the calumniated azote. They have a ! 
new palsied patient, a complete case, certainly 
recovering by the use of the beatifying gas. 

" Perhaps, when you are at a pinch for a par- 
agraph.* you may manufacture an anti-minis- 
terial one out of this passage in Bacon's Es- 
says : 

" ' You shall see a bold fellow many times do Mo- 
hammed's miracle. Mohammed made the peo- 
ple believe that he would call a hill to him, and 
from the top of it offer up his prayers for the ob- 
servers of his law. The people assembled ; Mo- 
hammed called the hill to come to him again and 
again, and when the hill stood still, he was never 
a bit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come 
to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the hill. 
So these men, when they have promised great 
matters and failed most shamefully, yet (if they 
have the perfection of boldness) they will but 
slight it over, make a turne, and no more 
adoe.' 

" I am glad I copied the passage, for in so do- 
ing I have found how to make this a fine inci- 
dent in the poem.f 

" Maracci's Refutation of the Koran, or, rather, 
his preliminaries to it, have afforded me much 
amusement and much matter. I am qualified 
in doctrinals to be a mufti. The old father 
groups together all the Mohammedan miracles : 
some, he says, are nonsense ; some he calls 
lies ; some are true, but then the devil did them ; 
but there is one that tickled his fancy, and he 
says it must be true of some Christian saint, and 
so stolen by the Turks. After this he gives, by 
way of contrast, a specimen of Christian mira- 
cles, and chooses out St. Januarius's blood and 
the Chapel of Loretto ! God bless you. 

" Robert Southey." 

It has already been mentioned that, during my 
father's residence at Burton, in Hampshire, he 
had made the acquaintance of Mr. Rickman, at 
that time residing there. This had soon ripen- 
ed into an intimacy, and a friendship and cor- 
respondence had now commenced which con- 
tinued through life, Mr. Rickman being not only, 
as Mr. Justice Talfourd well names him, "the 
sturdiest of jovial companions,"! and, as Charles 
Lamb equally well describes him, "fullest of 
matter with least verbosity," but also a man of 
vast and varied practical knowledge upon almost 
all subjects, of the kindest heart, and unwearied 
in offices of friendship. 

Two men more different in most respects than 
Mr. Rickman and my father could hardly be 
found — and yet the points of agreement proved 
stronger than the points of difference — both were 
pre-eminently straightforward men ; and they 
had what is perhaps the closest bond of real 
friendship — a high respect for each other's tal- 
ents, an admiration of each other's character, 
and a similarity of opinion on almost all the lead- 



* For the Morning Post, to which Mr. C. was then a 
contributor. t See p. 119. 

j Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, vol. ii., p. 206. 



ing questions of the day. Mr. Rickman had. 
however, been cast in somewhat the rougher 
mold of the two, and was made of "sterner ' 
stuff," and consequently sympathized less with 
his friend in his " poetic fancies" than on other 
subjects : and, in now writing to urge him to 
take up a subject in which he had always felt 
much interested, he commences by a recom- 
mendation which was acted upon fully to his 
satisfaction in after years. I quote the greatei 
part of this letter, that the reply to it may be 
the better understood : 

"Poetry has its use and its place, and, like 
some human superfluities, we should feel awk- 
ward without it ; but when I have sometimes 
considered, with some surprise, the facility with 
which you compose verse, I have always wish- 
ed to see that facility exerted to more useful pur- 
pose. The objects I propose for your investiga- 
tion are, therefore, the employment and conse- 
quent amelioration of woman-kind, the conse- 
quences on the welfare of society, and some il- 
lustration of the possibility of these things. You 
think it too good an alteration to be expected — 
and so do I, from virtue ; but if the vanity of 
any leading women could be interested, it might 
become fashionable to promote certain establish- 
ments for this purpose, and then it might go 
down. Besides, the glory of the proposal will 
remain ; and if Mary Woolstonecroft had lived, 
she would have recommended something like 
this to the world. Magnis tamen excidit ausis I 
Are you aware that female fraternities exist (or 
did exist) in all the great towns of Holland and 
Flanders, called Beguinages ? Employment 
enough would be found for females : I would 
take upon me to furnish you with an ample list. 
Any dry deductions on the head of political 
economy which might occur, I would also at- 
tempt in the service. This is my favorite study, 
and nothing could there operate more beneficial- 
ly than an increased utility of the fair half of our 
species. You like women better than I do, there- 
fore I think it likely that you may take as much 
trouble to benefit the sex, as I to benefit the 
community by their means. For all this, I have 
been in love these ten years 

"How do you and Bonaparte agree at pres- 
ent? I never liked the Corsican, and now he 
has given me new offense by his absurd misno- 
mers, which go to confound all the fixed ideas 
of consuls, tribunes, and Senate 

" I begin to be almost tired of staying in this 
obscure place so long ; I imagine I was born for 
better purposes than to vegetate at Christ Church. 
.... I long to see you in prose ; I think your 
conscience would keep you careful, and your 
imagination make you rapid, and, consequently, 
easy and fluent, in composition. I suppose you 
are in the enjoyment of much enlightened socie- 
ty at Bristol. I do not understand your taste 
for retirement ; no man's contemplation can be 
so spirited as when encouraged by the informa- 
tion and applause of literary friends."* .... 

* J. R. to R S„ Jan. 4. 1800. 



MtAT. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



119 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Bristol, Jan. 9, 1800. 

" The subject of your letter is important. I 
had considered it cursorily, for my mind has been 
more occupied by the possible establishment of 
a different state of society than by plans for im- 
proving the present. To my undertaking the 
work you propose, I wish there were no obsta- 
cles, but a very important one exists in the na- 
ture of my own powers. The compositions in 
which I have indulged have encouraged rapidity 
of feeling, a sudden combination of ideas, but 
they have been unfavorable to regular deduction 
and methodical arrangement. Another objec- 
tion arises from my present plans How- 
ever, I am impressed by your letter, and should 
much like to talk with you upon the subject, and 
map out the country before us. Have you not 
leisure for a visit to Bristol ? . . . 

" Poetry does not wholly engross my attention ; 
the history of Spanish and Portuguese literature 
is a subject on which I design to bestow much 
labor, and in which much useful matter may be 
conveyed. But poetry is my province, and at 
present no unimportant one; it makes its way 
where weightier books would not penetrate, and 
becomes a good mental manure. 

" I shall be selfishly sorry if you leave Christ 
Church : the prospect of having you my neighbor 
considerably influenced me in taking the Burton 
House. However, if I recover my health, Lon- 
don must be my place of residence; and you 
probably will be drawn into that great vortex — 
a place which you and I see w T ith widely differ- 
ent eyes. Much as I enjoy society, rather than 
purchase it by residing in that huge denatural- 
ized city, I would prefer dwelling on Poole Heath. 
Bristol allows of country enjoyments and magnif- 
icent scenery, and an open sky view, for in Lon- 
don you neither see earth, air, nor water, undis- 
guised. We have men of talent here also, but 
they are not gregarious — at least not regularly 
so as in Norwich and London. I mingle among 
them, and am in habits of intimacy with Davy, 
by far the first in intellect : w T ith him you would 

be much pleased Certainly this place has 

in my memory greatly advanced ; ten years ago, 
Bristol man was synonymous with Bceotian in 
Greece, and now w T e are before any of the pro- 
vincial towns. 

" The Corsican has offended me, and even his 
turning out the Mamelukes will not atone for his 
rascally constitution. The French are children, 
with the physical force of men ; unworthy, and 
therefore incapable, of freedom. Once I had 
hopes ; the Jacobins might have done much, but 
the base of morality was wanting, and where 
could the corner-stone be laid ? They have re- 
tarded our progress for a century to come. Lit- 
erature is suspected and discouraged; Method- 
ism, and the Catholic system of persecution and 
slavery, gaining ground. Our only hope is from 
more expeditions, and the duke commander; new 
disgrace and new taxes may bring the nation to 
their senses, as bleeding will tame a madman. 
Still, however, the English are the first people, 



the only men. Bonaparte has made me Anti- 
Gallican ; and I remember Alfred, and the two 
Bacons, and Hartley, and Milton, and Shakes- 
peare, with more patriotic pride than ever. 

" The Beguines I had looked upon as a relig- 
ious establishment, and the only good one of its 
kind. When my brother was a prisoner at Brest, 
the sick and wounded were attended by nuns, and 
these women had made themselves greatly belov- 
ed and respected. I think they had been regu- 
larly professed, and were not of the lay order. 
I think I see the whole importance of your spec- 
ulation. Mary Woolstonecroft was but begin- 
ning to reason when she died ; her volume is mere 
feeling, and its only possible effect to awaken a 
few female minds more excitable than the com- 
mon run. The one you propose would go on 
different grounds and enter into detail : the more 
my mind dwells upon it, the stronger interest it 
takes ; I could work under your directions, and 
w T ould work willingly at least, if not well. Come, 
I pray you, to Bristol ; talk over the plan, and map 
it out, and methodize my rambling intellect. I 
will submit to any drilling that shall discipline it 

to good purpose Farewell. 

" Yours, with respect and esteem, 

" Robert Southey." 

The two following months were passed in lodg- 
ings at Bristol, in a very unsettled state as to his 
future movements. Meantime he was engaged 
in editing another volume of the Annual Anthol- 
ogy, in pursuing the composition of Thalaba with 
unabated ardor, and in making various attempts 
in English hexameters. In this measure he had 
contemplated a "long and important poem," Mo- 
hammed the subject, of the plan of which he thus 
speaks at this time in one of his published letters 
to Mr. William Taylor, to whom he had sent a 
portion for his criticism : " From Coleridge I am 
promised the half, and we divided the book ac- 
cording as the subject suited us ; but I expect to 
have nearly the whole work ! His ardor is not 
lasting, and the only inconvenience that his der- 
eliction can occasion will be that I shall write 
the poem in fragments, and have to seam them 
together at the last. The action ends with the 
capture of Mecca ; the mob of his wives are kept 
out of sight, and only Mary, the Egyptian, in- 
troduced. Ali is of course my hero ; and if you 
will recollect the prominent characters of Omar, 
and Abubeker, and Hamza, you will see variety 
enough. Among the Koreish are Amrou and 
Caled. From Maracci's curious prolegomena to 
his Refutation of the Koran I have collected many 
obscure facts for the narrative. Still, however, 
though the plan is well formed and interesting. 
I fear it would not give the hexameters a fair 
chance. A more popular story, and one requir- 
ing not the elevation of thought and language 
which this demands, would probably succeed bet- 
ter ; a sort of pastoral epic, which is one of my 
boy-plans yet unexecuted."* 

A fragment only of "Mohammed" was ever 



* Feb 3, 1800. 



120 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^TAT. 26 



written, which may be found in the latest edition 
of the Poems. 

My father's health still continuing in a most 
unsatisfactory state, and change of climate being 
both the prescription of his physician (Dr. Bed- 
does) and the remedy in which he had himself 
the greatest faith, he was very desirous of again 
visiting Lisbon, and had written to his uncle on 
the subject, whose residence there, and his own 
desire to collect materials for a History of Por- 
tugal, combined to fix his choice. To this, as 
well as to other subjects of interest, he alludes 
in the following letter. 

To John May, Esq. 

"Feb. 18, 1800. 
" My dear Friend, 

" Your last letter entered into an interesting 
subject. A young man entering into the world 
is exposed to hourly danger — and what more 
important than to discover the best preservative ? 
To have a friend dear enough, and respectable 
enough, to hold the place of a confessor, would 
assuredly be the best ; and if the office of con- 
fessor could always be well filled, I would give 
up half the Reformation to restore it. In my 
moments of reverie I have sometimes imagined 
myself such a character — the obscure instrument 
in promoting virtue and happiness ; but it is ob- 
vious that more evil than good results from the 
power being, like other power, often in improper 
hands. I have wandered from the subject. It 
is not likely I shall ever gain the confidence of 
my brothers to the desired extent. Whatever 
affection they may feel for me, a sort of fear is 
mixed with it 5 I am more the object of their 
esteem than love : there has been no equality be- 
tween us ; we have been rarely domesticated to- 
gether, and when that has been the case, they 
have been accustomed, if they were faulty, to 
understand my silent disapprobation.* No ; 

will never intrust his feelings to me ; and 

as to precepts of warning, indeed, I doubt their 
propriety; I doubt lest, from the strange per- 
verting power of the mind, they should be made 
to minister to temptation. Indirect admonition, 
example — are not these better means ? Feel- 
ings almost romantically refined were my pres- 
ervation, and with these I amalgamated after- 
ward an almost stoical morality. * "* 

" My health fluctuates, and the necessity of 
changing climate is sadly and sufficiently ob- 
vious, lest, though my disease should prove of 
no serious danger, the worst habits of hypochon- 
driasm fasten upon me and palsy all intellectual 
power. I look with anxiety for my uncle's let- 
ter, and think so much of Lisbon that to abandon 
the thought would be a considerable disappoint- 



* In later life, in his intercourse with his children, to 
whom he was indeed "the father, teacher, playmate,*' his 
own beautifully expressed wish was fully realized : 
" And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know, 
Some harshness show, 
All vain asperities I day by day 

Would wear away, 
Till the smooth temper of my age should be 
Like the hish leaves upon the holly-tree." 

The Holly Tree : Poems, p. 129. 



ment. It would highly gratify me to see my 
uncle, and I have associations with Lisbon that 
give me a friendship for the place — recollect- 
ed feelings and hopes, pleasures and anxieties 
— all now mellowed into remembrances that en- 
dear the associated scenes. But that my uncle 
should approve — that is, perhaps, little probable ; 
a few weeks will decide ; and if I do not go to 
Portugal, I have no choice but Italy, for Madeira 
is a prison, and the voyage to the West Indies 
of a terrifying length. This detestable war ! if 
they would make peace upon motives as light as 
they made war, there would be cause enough, 
because I want to cross from Dover to Calais : it 
would save me some sea-sickness, and the wealth 
and blood of the nation into the bargain. 

" I have busied myself in idleness already in 
the History of Portugal, and the interest which 
I take in this employment will make me visit the 
field of Ourique, and the banks of Mondeyo, and 
the grave of Inez. The Indian transactions are 
too much for an episode, and must be separate- 
ly related. The manners and literature of the 
country should accompany the chronological or- 
der of events. I should disturb the spiders of 
the Necessidades, and leave no convent library 
unransacked. Should Italy be my destination, 
no definite object of research presents itself: the 
literature of that country is too vast a field to be 
harvested by one laborer ; the history split into 
fifty channels; the petty broils of petty states 
infinitely perplexed, infinitely insignificant. 

" You have heard me mention Rickman as 
one whose society was my great motive for tak- 
ing the cottage at Burton. He is coming to 
Bristol to assist me in an undertaking which he 
proposed and pressed upon me — an essay upon 
the state of women in society, and its possible 
amelioration by means, at first, of institutions 
similar to the Flemish beguinages. You will 
feel an interest in this subject. I shall be little 
more than mason in this business, under the mas- 
ter architect. Rickman is a man of uncommon 
talents and knowledge, and- political economy 
has been his favorite study : all calculations and 
facts requiring this knowledge he will execute. 
The part intended to impress upon the reader 
the necessity of alleviating the evil which he sees 
enforced, will be mine, for Rickman would write 
too strictly and too closely for the public taste 
You probably know the nature of the beguinages : 
they were female fraternities, where the mem- 
bers were engaged in some useful employments, 
and bound by no religious obligations. The ob- 
ject is to provide for the numerous class of wom- 
en who want employment the means of respect- 
able independence, by restoring to them those 
branches of business which the men have mis- 
chievously usurped, or monopolized, when they 
ought only to have shared. 

"0! what a country might this England be- 
come, did its government but wisely direct the 
strength, and wealth, and activity of the people ! 
Every profession, every trade is overstocked ; 
there are more adventurers in each than possibly 
can find employment ; hence poverty and crime. 



jEtat. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



121 



Do not misunderstand me as asserting this to be 
the sole cause, but it is the most frequent one. 
A system of colonization, that should offer an 
outlet for the superfluous activity of the country, 
would convert this into a cause of general good ; 
and the blessings of civilization might be extend- 
ed over the deserts that, to the disgrace of man, 
occupy so great a part of the world ! Assured- 
ly, poverty and the dread of poverty are the great 

sources of guilt That country can not be 

well regulated where marriage is imprudence, 
where children are a burden and a misfortune. 
A very, very small portion of this evil our plan, 
if established, will remove ; but of great magni- 
tude if separately considered. I am not very 
sanguine in my expectations of success, but I 
will do my best in examining the evil and pro- 
posing a remedy. God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

In the course of the following month a letter 
from his uncle reached him, cordially approving 
of his wish to try the effect of Lisbon air, and 
urging him to leave England as soon as possible. 
His arrangements were quickly completed, and 
in the following letter to Mr. Coleridge he pro- 
vides against all possible contingencies : 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

"Bristol. April 1, 1800. 
" My dear Coleridge, 
"The day of our departure is now definitely 
fixed. We leave Bristol next week, on Thurs- 
day. I do not wish to see you before we go ; 
the time is too short, and, moreover, the company 
of a friend who is soon to be left for a long ab- 
sence is not desirable. A few words upon busi- 
ness. For the Third Anthology Davy and Dan- 
vers will be my delegates : should you be in 
Bristol, of course the plenipotentiary ship is vest- 
ed in you. The Chatterton subscription will not 
fill in less than twelve months : if illness or aught 
more cogent detain me beyond that period, I pray 
you to let that duty devolve upon you ; there will 
be nothing but the task of arrangement. Dan- 
vers has a copy of Madoc. The written books 
of Thalaba will be left with Wynn. A man, 
when he goes abroad, should make his will ; and 
this is all my wealth : be my executor in case I 
am summoned upon the grand tour of the uni- 
verse, and do with them, and with whatever you 
may find of mine, what may be most advanta- 
geous for Edith, for my brothers Henry and Ed- 
ward, and for my mother. 

" There is not much danger in a voyage to 
Lisbon ; my illness threatens little, and faith will 
probably render the proposed remedy efficacious. 
In Portugal I shall have but little society ; with 
the English there I have no common feeling. 
Of course, I shall enjoy enough leisure for all 
my employments. My uncle has a good library, 
and I shall not find retirement irksome. 

" Our summer will probably be passed at Cin- 
tra, a place which may be deemed a cool para- 
dise in that climate. I do not look forward to 
I 



any circumstance with so much emotion as to 
hearing again the brook which runs by my un- 
cle's door. I never beheld a spot that invited to 
so deep tranquillity. My purposed employments 
you know. The History will be a great and 
serious work, and I shall labor at preparing the 
materials assiduously. The various journeys 
necessary in that pursuit will fill a journal, and 
grow into a saleable volume. On this I calcu- 
late : this is a harvest which may be expected ; 
perhaps, also, a few mushrooms may spring up. 
" If peace will permit me, I shall return along 
the south of Spain and over the Pyrenees. Edith 
little likes her expedition. She wants a female 
companion; but this can not be had, and she 
must learn to be contented without one ; more- 
over, there is at Lisbon a lady of her own age. 
for whom I have a considerable regard, and who 
will not be sorry to see once more an acquaint- 
ance with more brains than a calf. She will be 
our neighbor. My uncle, also, is a man for 
whom it is impossible not to feel affection. I 
wish we were there : the journey is troublesome, 
and the voyage shockingly unpleasant, from sick- 
ness and the constant feeling of insecurity ; how- 
ever, if we have but mild weather, I shall not be 
displeased at one more lesson in sea scenery. 

" I should willingly have seen Moses again : 
when I return he will be a new being, and I 
shall not find the queer boy whom I have been 
remembering. God bless him ! We are all 
changing : one wishes, sometimes, that God had 
bestowed upon us something of his immutability. 
Age, infirmities, blunted feelings, blunted intel- 
lect, these are but comfortless expectancies ! but 
we shall be boys again in the next world. 

" Coleridge, write often to me. As you must 
pay English postage, write upon large paper; 
as / must pay Portuguese by weight, let it be 
thin. My direction need only be, with the Rev. 
Herbert Hill, Lisbon ; he has taken a house for 
us. We shall thus govern ourselves, and the 
plea of illness will guarantee me from cards, 
and company, and ball-rooms ! No ! no ! I do 
not wear my old cocked hat again ! it can not. 
certainly, fit me now. 

" I take with me for the voyage your poems, 
the Lyrics, the Lyrical Ballads, and Gebir ; and, 
except a few books designed for presents, these 
make all my library. I like Gebir more and 
more. If you ever meet its author, tell hira I 
took it with me on a voyage. 

" God bless you ! 

"Yours affectionately, 

"R. S." 



CHAPTER VII. 

LETTERS FROM PORTUGAL. 

VOYAGE AND ARRIVAL VISITS ANECDOTES- 
DESCRIPTION OF LISBON ROMISH CUSTOMS 

DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY, PROCESSIONS, 
ETC. ACCOUNT OF A BULL-FIGHT PROPOSED 



122 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 26. 



MONUMENT TO FIELDING THALABA FINISHED 

LETTERS FROM CINTRA LENT PLAYS 

WINE LAWS MONASTIC SUPERSTITIONS BAD 

ROADS ADVICE TO HIS BROTHER HENRY AS TO 

HIS STUDIES ATTACHMENT TO CINTRA AC- 
COUNT OF MAFRA-, ITS CHURCH, CONVENT, AND 
LIBRARY PESTILENCE AT CADIZ DESCRIP- 
TION OF CINTRA 5 SCENERY, ETC. DIRECTIONS 

FOR THE PUBLICATION OF THALABA PROJECT- 
ED HISTORY OF PORTUGAL EXCURSION TO 

COSTA FISHERMEN IMAGE BY THE ROAD 

SIDE JOURNEY TO POMBAL TORRES VEDRAS, 

ETC. ENGLISH POLITICS THALABA MADOC 

KEHAMA PROBABLE INVASION OF PORTUGAL 

ACCOUNT OF JOURNEY TO FARO. 1800, 

1801. 

My father had at one time intended to publish 
a second volume of "Letters from Spain and 
Portugal ;" and, among some fragmentary prep- 
arations for these, I find a description of his em- 
barkation and voyage, with which the following 
series of letters may be fitly prefaced. They are 
so complete in themselves as to render any re- 
marks on my part needless. 

" My dear T., 

" I parted from you at Liskeard with a heavy 
heart. The thought of seeing you upon the way 
was a pleasure to look on to when we took our 
departure from Bristol ; but, having left you, we 
had taken leave of the last friend before our voy- 
age. Falmouth was not a place to exhilarate 
us : we were in the room where I met poor Lov- 
el on my former journey; he was the last person 
with whom I shook hands in England as I was 
stepping into the boat to embark, and the first 
news on my return, when, within three hours, I 
expected to have been welcomed by him, was, that 
he was in his grave. Few persons bear about 
with them a more continual feeling of the un- 
certainty of life, its changes and its chances, than 
I do. Well ! well ! I bear with me the faith also, 
that though we should never meet again in this 
world, we shall all meet in a better. 

" Thanks to the zephyrs, Capt. Yescombe was 
yet in the harbor. I went on board, chose our 
berths, passed the custom-house, and then en- 
deavored to make poor Time as easy as he could 
be upon the rack of expectation. Six days we 
watched the weather-cock, and sighed for north- 
easterns. I walked on the beach, caught soldier- 
crabs, and loitered to admire the sea-anemones 
in their ever-varying shapes of beauty; read 
Gebir, and wrote half a book of Thalaba. There 
was a sight on the Monday, but the rain kept 
me within doors : six boys ate pap for a hat, and 
six men jumped in sacks for a similar prize ; in 
the evening there was an assembly, and the best 
dancer was a man with a wooden leg. A short 
account of six days ; if, however, I were to add 
the bill, you would find it a long one ! 

" We embarked at four on Thursday afternoon. 
A s we sailed out of the harbor, the ships there 
3*d the shore seemed to swim before my sight 
like a vision. Light winds and favorable ; but 



we were before the wind, and my poor inside, 
being obliged to shift every moment with the 
center of gravity, was soon in a state of insur- 
rection. There is a pleasure in extracting mat- 
ter of jest from discomfort and bodily pain ; a 
wholesome habit if it extends no further, but a 
deadly one if it be encouraged when the heart is 
sore. I lay in my berth, which always reminded 
me of a coffin whenever I got into it, and, when 
any one come near me with inquiries, uttered 
some quaint phrase or crooked pun in answer, 
and grunted in unison with the intestinal grum- 
bling which might have answered for me; * 
# # # # # # We saw the 
Berlings* on Tuesday night; on Wednesday, 
Edith and I went on deck at five o'clock : we 
were off the rock, and the sun seemed to rest 
upon it for a moment as he rose behind. Mafra 
was visible ; presently we began to distinguish 
the heights of Cintra and the Penha Convent. 
The wind blew fresh, and we were near enough 
the shore to see the silver dust of the breakers, 
and the sea-birds sporting over them in flocks. 
A pilot-boat came off to us : its great sail seemed 
to be as unmanageable as an umbrella in a storm j 
sometimes it was dipped half over in the water, 
and it flapped all ways, like a woman's petticoat 
in a high wind. We passed the church and light- 
house of Nossa Senhora de Guiaf , the Convent 
of St. Antonio with a few trees behind it, and the 
town of Cascaes. Houses were now scattered in 
clusters all along the shore. The want of trees 
in the landscape was scarcely perceived, so de- 
lightful was the sight of land, and so cheerful 
does every thing look under a southern sun. 

" Our fellow-traveler was much amused by th« 
numerous wind-mills which stood in regiments 
upon all the hills. A large building he supposed 
to be an inn, and could see the sign and the great 



* Some rocks on the coast of Portugal, 
t I find some verses upon this light-house, translated 
from Vieira the painter, which were intended to go in a 
note to this letter : 

" Now was the time, when in the skies, 
Night should have shown her starry eyes; 
But those bright orbs above were shrouded, 
And heaven was dark and over-clouded. 
And now the beacon we espied, 
Our blessed Lady of the Guide ; 
And there, propitious, rose her light, 
The never-failing star of night. 
The seaman, on his weary way, 
Beholds with joy that saving ray, 
And steers his vessel, from afar, 
In safety o'er the dangerous bar. 
A holy impulse of delight 
Possess'd us at that well-known sight ; 
And, in one feeling all allied, 
We blessed Our Lady of the Guide. 
' Star of the sea, all hail !' we sung, 
And praised her with one heart and tongue ; 
And, on the dark and silent sea, 
Chanted Our Lady's Litany." 

From a letter to Lieut. Southey, July 11, 1808. 
The reader may perhaps be reminded of Sir Waltei 
Scott's beautiful impromptu on a similar subject : 
"Pharos loquitur. 
" Far in the bosom of the deep, 
O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep, 
A ruddy gem of changeful light, 
Bound on the dusky brow of Night; 
The seaman bids my luster hail, 
And scorns to strike his timorous sail." 

LockharVs Life of Scott, vol. ii., p. 184. 



Mtat. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



123 



gateway for the stage-coaches : the glass enabled 
him to find out that it was a convent door, with 
a cross before it. An absence of four years had 
freshened every object to my own sight, and per- 
haps there is even a greater delight in recollect- 
ing these things than in first beholding them. It 
is not possible to conceive a more magnificent 
scene than the entrance of the Tagus, and the 
gradual appearance of the beautiful city upon its 
banks. 

" The Portuguese say of their capital, 

1 Quern nad ha visto Lisboa 
Nad ha visto cousa boa? 

1 He who has not seen Lisbon has not seen a fine 
thing.' 

" It is indeed a sight, exceeding all it has ever 
been my fortune to behold in beauty, and rich- 
ness, and grandeur : Convents and Quintas, gray 
olive-yards, green orange-groves, and greener 
vineyards ; the shore more populous every mo- 
ment as we advanced, and finer buildings open- 
ing upon us ; the river, bright as the blue sky 
which illuminated it, swarming with boats of ev- 
ery size and shape, with sails of every imagina- 
ble variety ; innumerable ships riding at anchor 
far as the eye could reach, and the city extend- 
ing along the shore, and covering the hills to the 
furthest point of sight." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" Lisbon, May-day, 1800. 
" Here, then, we are, thank God ! alive, and 
recovering from dreadful sickness. I never suf- 
fered so much at sea, and Edith was worse than 
I was. We scarcely ate or slept at all ; but the 
passage was very fine and short ; five days and 
a half brought us to our port, with light winds 
the whole of the way. The way was not, how- 
ever, without alarm. On Monday morning, be- 
tween five and six, the captain was awakened 
with tidings that a cutter was bearing down upon 
us, with English colors, indeed, but apparently 
a French vessel ; we made a signal, which was 
not answered ; we fired a gun, she did the same, 
and preparations were made for action. We had 
another Lisbon packet in company, mounting six 
guns ; our own force was ten ; the cutter was a 
match, and more, for both, but we did not ex- 
pect to be taken. You may imagine Edith's ter- 
ror, awakened on a sick bed — disturbed I should 
have said — with these tidings ! The captain ad- 
vised me to surround her with mattresses in the 
cabin j but she would not believe herself in safe- 
ty there, and I lodged her in the cock-pit, and 
took my station on the quarter-deck with a mus- 
ket. How I felt I can hardly tell ; the hurry of 
the scene, the sight of grape-shot, bar-shot, and 
other ingenious implements of this sort, made an 

undistinguishablc mixture of feelings The 

cutter bore down between us. I saw the smoke 
from her matches, we were so near, and not a 
man on board 'had the least idea but that an im- 
mediate action was to take place. We hailed 
her ; she answered in broken English, and pass- 
ed on. 'Tis over ! cried somebody. Not yet ! 
said the captain ; and we expected she was com- 



ing round as about to attack our comrade vessel. 
She was English, however, manned chiefly from 
Guernsey, and this explained her Frenchified lan- 
guage. You will easily imagine that my sensa- 
tions at the ending of the business were very de- 
finable — one honest, simple joy that I was in a 
whole skin ! I laid the musket in the chest with 
considerable more pleasure than I took it out. I 
am glad this took place ; it has shown me what 
it is to prepare for action. 

" Four years' absence from Lisbon have given 
every thing the varnish of novelty, and this, with 
the revival of old associations, makes me pleased 
with every thing. Poor Manuel, too, is as hap- 
py as man can be to see me once more ; here 
he stands at breakfast, and talks of his meeting 
me at Villa Franca, and what we saw at this 
place and at that, and hopes that whenever I go 
into the country he may go with me. It even 
amused me to renew my acquaintance with the 
fleas, who opened the campaign immediately on 
the arrival of a foreigner. We landed yesterday 
about ten in the morning, and took possession of 
our house the same night. Our house is very 
small, and thoroughly Portuguese ; little rooms 
all doors and windows — odd, but well calculated 
for coolness. From one window we have a most 
magnificent view over the river — Almada Hill, 
and the opposite shore of Alentejo, bounded by 
hills about the half mountain height of Malvern. 

"To-day is a busy day; we are arranging 
away our things, and seeing visitors : these vis- 
its must all be returned ; there ends the ceremo- 
ny, and then I may choose retirement. I hurry 
over my letters for the sake of feeling at leisure 
to begin my employments. The voyage depriv- 
ing me of all rest, and leaving me too giddy to 
sleep well, will, with the help of the fleas, break 
me in well for early rising. The work before 
me is almost of terrifying labor : folio after folio 
to be gutted, for the immense mass of collateral 
knowledge which is indispensable ; but I have 
leisure and inclination. 

" Edith, who has been looking half her time 
out of the window, has just seen ' really a decent- 
looking woman 5' this will show you what cattle 
the passers-by must be. She has found out that 
there are no middle-aged women here, and it is 
true ; like their climate, it is only summer and 
winter. Their heavy cloaks of thick woolen, 
like horsemen's coats in England, amuse her in 
this weather, as much as her clear muslin would 
amuse them in an English winter. * * 

" Thalaba will soon be finished. Rickman is 
my plenipotentiary with the booksellers for this. 

Pray send me your Plays Thalaba finished, 

all my poetry, instead of being wasted in rivulets 
and ditches, shall flow into the great Madoc Mis- 
sissippi river. I have with me your volume, 
Lyrical Ballads, Burns, and Gebir. Read Gebir 
again : he grows upon me. 

" My uncle's library is admirably stocked with 
foreign books My plan is this : immedi- 
ately to go through the chronicles in order, and 
then make a skeleton of the narrative ; the tim- 



124 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 26. 



bers put together, the house may be furnished at 
leisure. It will be a great work, and worthy 
of all labor. 

"I am interrupted momentarily by visitors, 
like fleas infesting a new-comer ! Edith's spir- 
its are mending : a handful of roses has made 
her forgive the stink of Lisbon, and the green 
pease, the oranges, &c., are reconciling her to 
a country for which nature has done so much. 
We are transported into your midsummer, your 
most luxuriant midsummer ! Plague upon that 
heart-stop, that has reminded me that this is a 
voyage of prescription as well as of pleasure. 
But I will get well ; and you must join us, and 
return with us over the Pyrenees, and some of 
my dreams must be fulfilled ! 

; ' God bless you ! Write to me, and some long 
letters ; and send me your Christabell and your 
Three Graces, and finish them on purpose to 
send them. Edith's love. I reach a long arm, 
and shake hands with you across the seas. 

" Yours, Robert Southey." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Bellona. 

" Lisbon, May 8, 1800. 

" The English, when strangers here, are so 
suspicious of the natives as to be very rash in 
misinterpreting them. A young man, whom I 
knew, fired at the watch one night when they ac- 
costed him : the ball passed through the watch- 
man's hat ; he was seized and confined, and it 
required interest and money to excuse him for 
what was inexcusable. My uncle, walking one 
night with a midshipman, was stopped by per- 
sons bearing a young man who had been run 
through the body by a lieutenant. They had 
stopped him, seeing his companion's uniform, but, 
knowing my uncle, suffered him to pass after 
telling the circumstances. The lieutenant was 
drunk ; the young man was a gentleman, who, 
seeing him staggering about the streets, took 
him by the arm to lead him home ; the English- 
man did not understand what he said, and ran 
him through. 

" As yet, we have not done receiving all our 
visits of ceremony. We are going, the first night 
we are at liberty, to the Portuguese play. The 
court have shown a strange caprice about the 
Opera : they permitted them to have a few fe- 
male singers, and the proprietors of the Opera 
sent to Italy for more and better ones. They 
came. No ! they would not license any more ; 
the present women might act, but not the new- 
comers. You must not expect me to give you 
any reason for this inconsistency : 'tis the sheer 
whim of authority ; but an odd reason was as- 
signed for permitting two, who still act— one be- 
cause she is very religious, the other because 
she is Portuguese and of a certain age. 

" On Sunday a princess was christened. In 
the evening the guns fired a signal for all per- 
sons to illuminate. It was a pleasing sight from 
our window : the town all starred, and the mov- 
ing lights of the shipping But the river, 

seen by moonlight from hence, is a far finer spec- 



tacle than art can make. It lies like a plain of 
light under the heaven, the trees and houses now 
forming a dark and distinct foreground, and now 
undistinguishable in shade as the moon moves on 
her way — Almada stretching its black isthmus 
into the waters, that shine like midnight snow. 
. . . . A magnificent equipage passed our win- 
dow on Monday : it was a nobleman either going 
to be married or to court. The carriage was 
drawn by four horses, each covered with a white 
netting, and crested with white plumes : they 
were very restive — indeed, but half broke in. I 
had seen them breaking in before, and on these 
occasions they always fill the carriage with serv- 
ants to make it heavy, so that their necks also 
run a chance of being broken in. It was like 
the pomp of romance. They bury in covered 
buildings that adjoin the church : the graves are 
built in divisions, like tanners' pits : you may, 
perhaps, remember such at Bristol, at St. Paul's, 
which I saw building. Quicklime is thrown in 
with every body, which, of course, is soon con- 
sumed ; still the bones accumulate, and occa- 
sionally these places are cleared out 

" They have a singular mode of fishing at 
Costa, a sort of wigwam village on the sands 
south of the bar. The gang of fishermen to each 
net is about fifty, all paid and fed by the captain 
regularly — not according to their success. Half 
hold one end of a rope, the other is carried off 
in the boat : the rope is about half a mile in length, 
the net in the middle. A high surf breaks on 
the shore ; the men then thrust off the boat, them- 
selves breast-deep, and stooping under every 
wave that meets them ; the others row round to 
shore, and then they all haul in. This place is 
about nine miles only from Lisbon, and yet crim- 
inals run away there and are safe. Sometimes 
a magistrate goes down, but they always know 
that he is coming, and away to the woods for the 
day. It is common to go there from town, and 
dine upon the sands. The people are civil and 
inoffensive ; indeed, generally so over Portugal, 
except among the boatmen, who have enough 
intercourse with foreigners to catch all their 
vices. 

" Lord Somerville went by the last packet. I 
did not see him ; he would have called one even- 
ing, but my uncle, knowing him pressed for time, 
begged him to waive the ceremony. I have been 
very industrious, and continue so — rise early, and 
never waste a minute. If I am at home with- 
out visitors, I go from book to book ; and change 
is more relief than idleness. The American min 
ister called on me after supper on Tuesday : this 
was somewhat familiar, and, I apprehend, was 
meant as civility. God bless you. 

"R. S." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Bellona. 

" Lisbon, May 23, 1800. 
" Lisbon has twice been clean since the crea- 
tion. Noah's flood washed it once, and the fire 
after the earthquake purified it. When it will 
be clean again will be difficult to say ; probably 
not till the general conflagration. A house, at 



JKtat. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



125 



which I called yesterday, actually has a drain 
running round one of the sides, which empties 
all the filth before the entrance Govern- 
ment will neither cleanse the city themselves, nor 
suffer any one else to do it. An English mer- 
chant applied lately for permission to clean the 
street in which he lived, and it was refused. 
This is one of the curious absurdities of the P. 
government. An English invalid, who was ter- 
ribly shaken in his carriage by the ragged pave- 
ment in his street, applied to the proper officers 
to allow him to have it mended : they would not 
do it. He was a man of fortune. 

" The filthiest offices in the place are per- 
formed by negroes. . . . These poor people were 
brought as slaves into Portugal, till Pombal pro- 
hibited all future importation, still leaving those 
already in the country slaves, that property might 
not be invaded. Once since, a petition was pre- 
sented that the country w r anted negroes, and a 
few were imported in consequence. When they 
have grown old in service and slavery, the trick 
of Portuguese generosity is to give them their 
liberty ; that is as if, in England, a man, when 
his horse was grown old, should turn him adrift, 
instead of giving the old animal the run of his 
park. Of course, black beggars are numerous. 
Gray-headed, and with gray beards, they look 
strangely 5 and some, that have the leprosy, are 
the most hideous objects imaginable. The old 
women wear nothing on their heads, and, what 
with their woolly hair and their broad features, 
look sometimes so fearfully ugly that I do not 
wonder at the frequency of negresses in romance. 
A priest in this country sold his own daughter by 
a negress. The Portuguese despise the negroes, 
and by way of insult sneeze at them as they 
pass : this is their strongest mark of contempt. 
Our phrase, ' a fig for him,' is explained by an 
amulet in use here against witchcraft, called a 
figa : the mules and asses wear it. It is the 
figure of a hand closed, the thumb cocked out 
between the fore and middle fingers. I first saw 
it mentioned in a curious poem by Vieira, the 
famous, and, indeed, only good Portuguese paint- 
er. He had one given him when a child to save 
him from an evil eye, for he was in more danger 
on account of his being handsome and quick ; as 
we say, a child is too clever to live. The ' gift 
of the gab' must also be of Portuguese extrac- 
tion : gaban is to praise, to coax. 

" No doubt this is a regular government ; it is 
an old monarchy, and has an Established Church. 
... A lawyer in England wrote a book to prove 
that our monarchy w T as absolute also ; and Hughes, 
the clergyman at Clifton, whom you may have seen 
at my aunt's, lamented in a pamphlet that that 
awful tribunal, the Inquisition, had relaxed its 
vigilance ; but you may not forge and murder 
with impunity. An acquaintance of mine (Ten- 
nant, well known for some famous chemical ex- 
periments on the diamond) met an Irishman in 
Switzerland who had been at Rome. He said it 
was the most laineant government in the world : 
you might kill a man in the streets, and nobody 
woul \ take rhe laist notice of it. This also is a 



laineant government : a man stabs his antago- 
nist, wipes the knife in his cloak, and walks 
quietly away. It is a point of honor in the spec- 
tators to give no information. If one servant 
robs his master, it is a point of honor in his fel- 
low-servants never to inform of him. Both these 
points of honor are inviolable from prudence, for 
a stab would be the consequence. One method 
of revenge used in the provinces is ingeniously 
wicked : they beat a man with sand-bags. These 
do not inflict so much immediate pain as a cane 
would do, but they so bruise all the fine vessels, 
that, unless the poor wretch be immediately scar- 
ified, a lingering death is the consequence. My 
uncle has known instances at Porto. For all 
useful purposes of society, this, is a complete an- 
archy : in the police every individual is interest- 
ed ; security is the object of political institutions, 
and here every man is at the mercy of every ruf- 
fian he meets. These things make no noise here. 
A man was murdered this week within thirty 
yards of our house, and we only heard it ten days 
afterward by mere accident; yet all goes on 
smoothly, as the Tagus flows over the dead bod- 
ies that are thrown into it. ... In England you 
will imagine that this insecurity must occasion 
perpetual disquiet. Not so. As I do not quar- 
rel, and nobody has any interest in sending me 
to the next world, there is no danger. We are, 
indeed, safer than in England, because there is 
not so much ingenuity exerted in villainy. In- 
struments for picking pockets and breaking open 
houses have not yet been introduced. The coun- 
try is not civilized enough to produce coiners. 
A man may as easily escape being assassinated 
here, as he can fighting a duel in England. 

" On Sunday, some boys, dressed like blue- 
coat boys, went under our window, with baskets, 
begging provisions or money. A man has set 
up this charity school on speculation, and with- 
out funds, trusting to chance alms. The ' Em- 
peror of the Holy Ghost' also passed us in per- 
son : his flags are new, and his retinue magnifi- 
cent in their new dresses of white and scarlet. 
His musicians w T ere all negroes. Before him 
went a grave and comely personage, carrying a 
gilt wand of about ten feet high. The emperor 
is about six years old, exceedingly thin, dressed 
like a man in full dress, silk stockings, largo 
buckles, a sword, and an enormous cocked hat, 
bigger than yours, edged with white fringe. On 
either side marched a gentleman usher, from time 
to time adjusting his hat, as its heavy corners 
preponderated. The attendants carried silver 
salvers, on which they had collected much cop- 
per money : few poor people passed who did not 
give something. 

" Lately a negro went along our street with a 
Christ in a glass case, which he showed to everj 
one whom he met. They usually kissed the glass 
and gave him money. Pombal, in his time, pro- 
hibited such follies. These images have all been 
blessed by the pope, and are therefore thus re- 
spected. I was in a shop the other day waiting 
for change, when a beggar woman came in. As 
I did not give her any thing, she turned to an 



126 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 26. 



imasre of Oar Lady, prayed to it and kissed it. 
and then turned round to beg again. 

" Religion is kept alive by these images, &c., 
like a fire perpetually supplied with fuel. They 
have a saint for every thing. . . . One saint pre- 
serves from lightning, another from fire, a third 
clears the clouds, and so on — a salve for every 
sore. It is a fine religion for an enthusiast — for 
one who can let his feelings remain awake, and 
opiate his reason. Never was goddess so calcu- 
lated to win upon the human heart as the Virgin 
Mary ; and devotees, Moravians as well as Cath- 
olics, not unfrequently mingle the feelings of 
earthly and spiritual love, as strangely as our 
Bible has mixed the language in Solomon's Song. 
We have an instance in Crashaw the poet's hymn 
to St. Theresa. 

" One of the new convent towers is miserably 
disfigured by a projecting screen of wood. The 
man who rings the bell stands close by it, and the 
ugly thing is put there, lest he should see the 
nuns walking in the garden, or lest they should 
see him, for a nun has nothing but love to think 
of, and a powder magazine must be guarded wa- 
rily. A million sterling has been expended upon 
this convent : it is magnificent within, wholly of 
marble, and the color well disposed. A million 
sterling ! and the great square is unfinished, and 
the city without flagstones, without lamps, with- 
out drains ! 

' : I meet the galley slaves sometimes, and have 
looked at them with a physiognomic eye, to see 
if they differed from the rest of the people. It 
appeared to me that they had been found out, the 
others had not. The Portuguese face, when 
fine, is very fine, and it rarely wants the expres- 
sion of intellect. 

;: The gardens have usually vine-covered 
walks, stone pillars supporting the trellis poles. 
Some you see in the old-fashioned style — box cut 
into patterns like the zigzag twirling of a Turkey 
carpet pattern. The Convent of the Necessi- 
dades has a very large and fine garden, open to 
men, but not to women. This is laid out in 
shady walks, like the spokes of wheels, that cen- 
ter into fountains ; the space between the walks 
occupied with oranges, lemons, and other fruit- 
trees. Every where innumerable lizards are to be 
seen sporting in the sun, gray or green, from two 
inches to twenty in length, nimble, harmless, 
beautiful animals God bless you. R. S." 

To Mrs. Southey, Senr. 

Lisbon, May 23, 1800. 
"My dear Mother, 
" Our trunk arrived by the last packet : a joy- 
ful arrival, for I was beginning to be as bare as 

a plucked ostrich We go on comfortably ; 

as clean as an English house up stairs, as dirty 
as a Portuguese one below. Edith, like Mr. 
Pitt, is convinced of the impossibility of reform. 
Manuel will clean the kitchen, indeed, but im- 
mediately he will scrape the fish-scales all over it. 
These people have no foresight. We, however, 
<ue very well off; and, for a Portuguese, our Ma- 
ria Rosa is extraordinarily tidy. 



" is here, the Wine Street man, and he 

goes to market himself; and I am going to cul- 
tivate his acquaintance, in order to find out what 
good things may have escaped my appetite here. 
Nothing like a Bristol pointer at an eatable thing. 
.... My uncle has enough to do with burying 
and christening among the soldiers, though the 
priests poach among his flock sadly. We profit 
somewhat by the war, getting most excellent 
pieces of the sirloin from the rations. The sum- 
mer we pass at Cintra, whither, however, we 
shall not go till July, for in June we have to see 
the procession of the ' Body of God,' of St. An- 
thony, and the royal family with the knight of 
the new convent ; and we must also wait to see 
a bull-fight, which, being a cool summer amuse- 
ment, only takes place in the hottest weather. 

"I read nothing but Spanish and Portuguese. 
Edith knows enough of the common words to 
get all needful things done about the house. We 
have had an infinite number of visitors, and our 
debt is not yet paid off. # # # * 

" Edith has seen the aqueduct. Even after 
having seen it, I was astonished at its magni- 
tude. Shakspeare's ' lessen' d to a crow' seem- 
ed hardly hyperbolical when I looked down from 
the middle arch upon the brook of Alcantara : 
the women washing there would have escaped 
my sight if I had not seen them moving as they 
walked. It is a work worthy of Rome in the 
days of her power and magnificence. The Port- 
uguese delight in water ; the most luscious and 
cloying sweetmeats first — for instance, preserv- 
ed yolk of egg — and then a glass of water, and 
this is excellent which comes by the aqueduct. 
The view from the top is wonderfully fine : a 
stony, shallow brook below, a few women wash- 
ing in it, bare-kneed, the sides sprinkled with 
linen drying in the sun ; orange, and vine, and 
olive yards along the line of fertility that runs 
below the hills, and houses scattered in the little 
valley, and bare, dark hills and wind-mills, and 
houses far beyond, and distant mountains. She 
has also seen the new convent. The inside of 
the church is of marble, and the color very well 
disposed. You will remember that a marble 
room, chilling as it would be in England, is here 
only cool and comfortable. It is dedicated to 
the Heart of Jesus, which is the subject of more 
than one picture in the church. In one, the 
queen (for she built it) is represented adoring 
the heart. You would not like the Roman Cath- 
olic religion quite so well if you saw it here in 
all its naked nonsense — could you but see the 
mummery and smell the friars ! There is no 
dying in peace for these fellows : they kill more 
than even the country apothecaries. When a 
man is given over, in they come, set up singing, 
which they never cease till the poor wretch is 
dead ; build an altar in the room, light their can- 
dles, and administer extreme unction, which has 
much the same effect as if in England you meas- 
ured a sick man for his coffin and dressed him in 
his shroud. They watch after the dying like 
Bristol undertakers. My uncle is always obliged 



Mtat. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



12? 



to mount guard, and yet last week they smug- 
gled off an officer ; got at him when his senses 
were gone, stuck a candle in his hand, and sung 
' be joyful' for a convert. 

" We have had three illuminations for the new 

pope We had another illumination for the 

christening of a princess. These things are not, 
as in England, at the will of the mob. An illu- 
mination is proclaimed ; at a proper hour, the 
guns fire to say, ' Now light your candles ;' at 
ten they fire again to give notice you may put 
them out ; and if you do not illuminate, you are 
fined about thirty shillings — but no riots, no mob- 
bing, no breaking windows 

" The literature of this place takes up much 
of my time. I am never idle, and, I believe, 
must set at Thalaba in good earnest to get it out 
of my way. God bless you. 

" Your affectionate son, 

" Robert Southey. 1 ' 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Bellona. 

" Lisbon, May 30, 1800. 
" The country immediately adjoining Bue- 
nos Ayres, the hill on which we live, is very 
unpleasant ; bare, burned hills, bearing nothing 
but wind-mills. The Valley of Alcantara, over 
which the great aqueduct passes, is indeed very- 
striking : it winds among these hills, and per- 
haps owes much of its beauty to the contrast, 
like the villages in the South Downs, and that 
beautiful valley on the left of the road from Sal- 
isbury to Deptford. In rich countries they 
would not be noticed, but here the)'- are like wa- 
ter in the deserts. The whole road to Cintra is 
thus ugly and uninteresting. The road paved 
all the way — a very devil's bowling-alley — you 
can imagine no scenery more wearying ; but 
eastward of Lisbon it is totally different ; there 
all is rich and beautiful — exquisitely beautiful, 
now that the green corn and the vineyards give 
it all the fresh verdure of an English landscape. 
Yesterday evening I took a long ride there with 
my uncle about the Valley of Chellas, the gar- 
dens of which delightful spot chiefly supply Lis- 
bon. The place is intersected by a thousand 
by-lanes, unenterable by carriage, and as intri- 
cate as one of the last propositions in Euclid, all 
angles and curves. In this scenery there is 
scarcely an English feature. Orange-trees in 
the gardens, and vine-covered trellis-walks ; ol- 
ive-trees growing in the corn-fields, and now in 
full blossom : the blossom is somewhat like the 
old-man's-beard of our hedges ; not so striking 
at a distance as when looked into, but. it gives a 
grayness to the tree, a sober blossom, in char- 
acter with the dusty foliage ; fig-trees, their 
broad leaves so green and rich, and a few broad- 
headed pine-trees here and there, and cherries, 
apricots, &c, in the gardens, varying the verd- 
ure. In the gardens is usually a water-wheel, 
and the garden is veined with little aqueducts. 
These wheels creak eternally ; and such is the 
force of association, that the Portuguese reckon 
this creaking among the delights of the country : 
they think of water, and the garden revived by it. 



" The country looks covered with wood ; not. 
indeed, of forest size, but large enough for beau- 
ty, and all useful. The fences are either walls 
— and the walls are soon covered with luxuriant 
vegetation in this country — or aloe-guarded 
banks ; and the aloe is magnificent : the stem 
of the blossom looks almost like a piece of tim- 
ber ; and the fennel grows finely as a weed : 
you know its handsome leaf, fine as vegetable 
threads, or like hair fine and curled, its blossom 
growing tall, a fine yellow flower, distinguish- 
able at a considerable distance from its size ; 
and the acanthus, the plant that gave a man of 
genius the idea of the Corinthian capital, which 
he in consequence invented — blend these with 
wild roses and woodbines, more profusely beau- 
tiful than I ever saw them elsewhere, and you 
have the idea of these bank-fences. Our way 
was up and down steep hills, whence we looked 
over the valleys, its scattered houses, and here 
and there a convent, always a beautiful object, 
and sometimes the river, and its far shore like a 
low cloud. It was dusk before we returned, 
and the fire-flies were awake, flashing about the 
banks, and then putting out their candles, and 
again in light, like fairy fire-works. My uncle, 
when first in this country, had lost himself in a 
lane at Cintra : it was evening ; he had heard 
nothing of these fire-flies, and some hundreds 
rose at once before him : he says he thought 
there was a volcano beginning under his feet. 

" The warm weather is come. We shut our 
windows to exclude the heated air, and our 
shutters to darken the room. If half the money 
expended upon the souls in purgatory were em- 
ployed in watering the street, we should be re- 
lieved from the torment of burning. Yet is the 
heat more endurable than the intense light ; this 
is insufferably painful : the houses are white, the 
stones in the street white, the very dust bleached, 
and all reflect back upon us the scorching sun. 
The light is like the quivering of a furnace fire : 
it dazzles and makes the eyes ache, and blind- 
ness is very common. At evening the sea breeze 
rises ; a sudden change ! tremendous for an in- 
valid, but it purifies the town, and then, owl- 
like, we come out of our nests. At Cintra we 
shall be cool. We wait only for the processions 
of the Body of God, and St. Anthony, the 12th 
and 13th of June, and the Heart of Jesus on the 
28th, and the first bull-fight, which will be about 
that time. 

" The butchers annually pay a certain sum 
to government, like tax or turnpike-men in En- 
gland. Veal is prohibited 5 there are, however, 
smugglers who carry on a contraband trade in 
veal, and better mutton than is to be procured 
in the legal way : one of these was taken up 
near our door a few days since ; a public calam- 
ity, I assure you. The Portuguese servants do 
not like mutton, and they mutinied in an En- 
glish family the other day on this account. A 
tax of one real per pound on all meat sold in 
Lisbon raises the fund for the aqueduct ; a light 
tax (about the fifth of a halfpenny) for so great 
a benefit. The water is indeed purchased from 



128 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 26. 



the Gallegos, who are water-carriers by trade ; 
but you may send to the fountains if you please ; 
and the great aqueduct is known by a name ex- 
pressive of this — they call it the free waters. 
The number of Gallegos employed here is dis- 
graceful both to Spain and Portugal : to their 
own country, that these industrious people can 
not find employment at home ; to this, that the 
Portuguese are lazy enough to let foreigners do 
their work, who annually drain Lisbon of its 
specie. 

" The mules and goats have a most ugly, cup- 
shaped bell, from six to twelve inches long, hang- 
ing from their neck, with a clapper as rude as 
the rude cup in which it clinks. Manuel is at 
war with my uncle's mule, and, like worse peo- 
ple than himself, adopts the system of coercion 
when conciliation has been advised, and the ef- 
fects of force experienced. ' You should coax 
the mule,' said my uncle, ' and never go near 
her without carrying her something in 3-our 
hand.' 'No, senhor,' said Mambrino, 'that is 
the way with horned cattle, I know, but not with 
beasts like mules and horses ; nothing but beat- 
ing will do.' One day there was a hallaballoo 
(I never saw that word in a dictionary, so 
pardon the spelling if it be wrong) in the sta- 
bles, which alarmed my uncle ; out he went, 
and there was Manuel, discomfited by the mule, 
and crawled up under the manger in bodily 
fear. 

" Friday, June 6th. 

" Your letter has just reached me : a welcome 
visitant. Here a letter is of ten-fold more value 
than in England. Our friends are, perhaps, like 
our daily comforts — their value hardly under- 
stood till we are deprived of them. I go on 
comfortably. The weather makes me lazy, and 
yet I have read enormously, and digested much. 
Laziness is the influenza of the country. The 
stone-cutter will lay his head upon the stone at 
which he has worked, and sleep, though it be 
hot enough to broil a beef-steak. The very dogs 
are lazy : it was but yesterday I saw a great son 
of a bitch (literally) let a mule step upon him, from 
sheer laziness ; and then he rose, howling, and 
walked away. The fellows lie sleeping every 
where in the streets ; they seem to possess the 
power of sleeping when they will. Everlasting 
noise is another characteristic of Lisbon. Their 
noonday fire-works, their cannonading on every 
fool's pretext, their bells to every goat in a flock 
and every mule in a drove, prove this ; above all, 
their everlasting bell-ding-donging — for bell- 
ringing would convey the English idea of music, 
and here it is only rtoise.. A merchant, not far 
from my uncle's, has a private chapel, from 
whence his bells annoy the whole neighborhood. 
The English hotel, till lately, was near him, and 
the invalids were disturbed, and of course injured, 
by the noise. They sent to state this, and re- 
quest that he would have the goodness to dis- 
pense with the bell-ringing ; he returned for an- 
swer that the prince had given him leave to have 
a private chapel, and his bells should ring in 
spite of any body ! I would have this fellow- 



hung up by the heels, as a clapper to Great Tom 
of Lincoln, and punish him in kind. 

" We often heard a noise below which puzzled 
us ; it was like damping linen, but so often, that 
all the linen in Lisbon could not have supplied 
the sound. At last, when Maria was cleaning 
the adjoining room, we heard it. She was laying 
the dust, and in the same way as she damps the 
clothes in ironing — by taking a great mouthful of 
w r ater, and then spirting it out : this is the Port- 
uguese way, and the mouth makes a very good 
watering-pot. 

"I have heard a good anecdote to illustrate 
the personal insecurity in this kingdom. Did 
you ever see old H ? He was a Porto mer- 
chant, and had a quarrel with a Portuguese, in 
consequence of which he and his antagonist al- 
ways went out with guns, each watching for the 
first shot ; but the Portuguese used to attack his 
house at night, and fire through the windows at 

him, till Mrs. H , who did not like this 

chance-shooting, prevailed on her husband to 
quit the kingdom. The gallows here has a sta- 
tionary ladder ; and, God knows, if the hangman 
did all that was necessary, he would have a hard 
place. 

" My uncle has purchased charts of all the 
coasts and ports of Spain and its islands, with 
the intention of giving them to you. Should you 
ever get on this station, they will be eminently 
useful. Lord St. Vincent has a copy, but the 
copies are so rare and so expensive that there 
can be very few in the navy. 

" God bless you ! Edith's love. 
" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Bellona. 

" Sunday, June 15, 1800, Lisbon. 
" My dear Tom, 

" On Tuesday Rundell goes. To-morrow I 
have an engagement for the day, and lack of pa- 
per has till now prevented me from preparation ; 
so now for a galloping letter ! 

" Thursday last we saw the long-looked-for 
procession of the Body of God. The pix is car- 
ried in all other processions empty ; in this only 
it has the wafer — this is the only Real Presence. 
The pix is a silver vessel ; and our vulgarism, 
'please the pigs,' which has sometimes puzzled 
me, is only a corruption, and that an easy one, 
of ' please the pix' — the holiest church utensil. 
So, much for the object of this raree-show. On 
the night preceding, the streets through which 
it is to pass, are cleaned. The only miracle I 
ever knew the wafer perform is that of cleaning 
the streets of Lisbon : they are strewn with sand, 
and the houses hung with crimson damask from 
top to bottom. When the morning arrived, the 
streets were lined with soldiers ; they marched 
on, filing to the right and left : their new uni- 
forms are put on this day, and their appearance 
was very respectable : this alone was a fine sight. 
We were in a house in one of the new streets, 
where the houses are high and handsome, and 
perfectly regular, and the street longer than Red- 



jEtat. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



129 



cliffe Street, every window and balcony crowd- 
ed, and the Portuguese all in full dress ; and of 
the finery of Portuguese full dress you can have 
but very inadequate ideas : not a jewel in Lis- 
bon but was displayed — the rainbow would have 
been ashamed to be seen. The banners of the 
city and its various corporate trades led the way. 
I never saw banners so clumsily carried : they 
were stuck out with bars — not suffered to play 
freely and wave with the wind, and roll out their 
beauties in light and shade. Sticks were stuck 
at right angles in the poles to carry them by ; 
nothing could be more awkward or more labori- 
ous for the bearers, some of whom were walk- 
ing backward like lobsters, and others crab-sidling 
along. Then came a champion in armor, car- 
rying a flag : God knows, his armor was heavy 
enough; and as both his arms were employed 
upon the flag, his horse was led. Here, also, I 
saw St. George, but not St. George of England! 
This was a Portuguese wooden St. George, his 
legs stiff and striding like a boot-jack, a man 
walking on each side to hold him on by the feet ; 
his house, when he is at n"ome, is the Castle, from 
whence he goes to the Duke of Cadaval's, where 
they dress his hat up with all their magnificent 
jewels for the procession, which he calls and re- 
turns on his way back. When the late king 
was d} r ing, he had all the saints in Lisbon sent 
for, and this St. George was put to bed to him. 
The consultation produced no good effect. 

" Scarcely any part of the procession was more 
beautiful than a number of very fine led horses, 
their saddles covered with rich escutcheons. All 
the brotherhoods then w T alked — an immense train 
of men in red or gray cloaks ; and all the friars. 
Zounds, w T hat a regiment ! many of them fine 
young men, some few ' more fat than friars be- 
came,' and others, again, as venerable figures as 
a painter could wish. Among the bearded monks 
were many so old, so meager, so hermit-like in 
look, of such a bread-and-water diet appearance, 
that there needed no other evidence to prove they 
were indeed penitents, as austere as conscien- 
tious folly could devise. The knights of the dif- 
ferent orders walked in their superb dresses — the 
whole patriarchal church in such robes ! and aft- 
er the pix came the prince himself, a group of 
nobles round him closing the whole. I never 
saw aught finer than this : the crowd closing be- 
hind, the whole street, as far as the eye could 
reach, above and below, thronged, flooded with 
people — and the blaze of their dresses ! and the 
music ! I pitied the friars : it was hot, though 
temperate for the season ; yet the sun was pain- 
ful, and on their shaven heads ; they were hold- 
ing up their singing-books, or their hands, or their 
handkerchiefs, or their cowls, to shade them. I 
have heard that it has been death to some of them 
in a hot season. Two years ago, at this very 
procession, a stranger received a stroke of the 
sun, and fell down apparently dead. The Irish 
friars got hold of him, and carried him off to be 
buried. The coffins here are like a trunk, and 
the lid is left open during the funeral service; 
before it was over, the man moved. What then 



did the Paddies ? Oh, to be sure, and they could 
not bury him then ! but they locked him in the 
church instead of calling assistance, and the next 
day the man was dead enough, and they finished 
the job ! 

" Had this been well managed, it would have 
been one of the finest conceivable sights ; but it 
was a long procession broken into a number of 
little pieces, so irregularly they moved. On the 
prince, and the group about the Body of God — 
I like to translate it, that you may see the naked- 
ness of the nonsensical blasphemy — they shower- 
ed rose-leaves from the windows. The following 
day St. Anthony had a procession, and the trap- 
pings of the houses were ordered to remain for 
him : this was, like the Lent processions, a per- 
fect puppet-show — the huge idols of the people 
carried upon men's shoulders. There were two 
negro saints, carried by negroes : I smiled to think 
what black angels they must make. We have 
got another raree-show to see in honor of the 
Heart of Jesus : this w T ill be on Friday next ; and 
then we think of C intra. 

" This has been a busy time for the Catholics. 
Saturday, the 7th of this month, as the Eve of 
Trinity Sunday, w r as a festival at the emperor's* 
head-quarters ; his mountebank stage was illu- 
minated, and pitch barrels blazing along the street, 
their flames flashing finely upon the broad flags 
that floated across the w T ay. It was somewiiat 
terrible ; they were bonfires of superstition, and 
I could not help thinking how much better the 
spectators w T ould have been pleased with the 
sight had there been a Jew, or a heretic like me, 
in every barrel. The scene was thronged with 
spectators, and, to my great surprise, I saw 
women walking in safety ; nothing like personal 
insult was attempted : the boys had their bonfires 
and fire-works, but they seemed to have no idea 
that mischief was amusement. The succeeding 
day, Trinity Sunday, was the termination of the 
emperor's reign. His train was increased by a 
band of soldiers : he was crowned, and dined in 
public. The emperor for the ensuing year was 
elected ; and thus ends the mummery, till Lent, 
and feasting, and folly come round again. At 
Cascaes the emperor is a man, and the farce more 
formal. There was a brother of John V., who 
delighted in blackguard mischief. He went to 
the emperor, then on the throne, with the inten- 
tion of kicking him down, or some such practical 
jest. The emperor knew him, sat like an old 
senator when the Gauls approached, and held out 
his hand for the prince to kiss : it effectually dis- 
concerted him, and he growled out as he retired, 
' The rascal plays his part better than I expected.' 
" In the course of a conversation, introduced 
by these processions, I said to a lady, who re- 
members the auto-da-fes, ' What a dreadful day 
it must have been for the English when one of 
these infernal executions took place !' ' No,' 
she said, ' not at all ; it was like the processions, 
expected as a fine sight, and the English, whose 
houses overlooked the streets through which they 



* The Emperor of the Holy Ghost, as he is called ; see 
ante, p. 125. 



130 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



.EtAT. 26 



passed, kqjt open house as now, and made en- 
tertainments ! !' They did not, indeed, see the 
execution — that was at midnight ; but they should 
have shut up their houses, and, for the honor of 
their own country, have expressed all silent ab- 
horrence. Did such an event take place now, I 
should shake the dust from my feet, and curse 
the city, and leave it forever ! What is it that 
has prevented these Catholic bonfires ? I do not 
understand. The Constitution and the people 
never were more bigoted ; and the dislike of Pom- 
bal would, after his disgrace, have only been a 
motive for reviving them. Is it that the priests 
themselves and the nobles have grown irrelig- 
ious ? ' Perhaps the books of Voltaire may have 
saved many a poor Jew from the flames. 

"Portugal is certainly improving, but very, 
very, very slowly. The factories have been long 
declining in opulence ; and the Portuguese, who 
had some years since no merchants of note, have 
now the most eminent and wealthy in the place. 
They are beginning to take the profits themselves, 
which they had suffered us to reap. This is 
well, and as it should be ; but they have found 
out that Cintra is a fine place, and are buying up 
the houses there as they are vacant, so that they 
will one day dispossess the English, and this I 
do not like. Cintra is too good a place for the 
Portuguese. It is only fit for us Goths — for 
Germans or English. 

" Your Thalaba is on the stocks. You will 
have it some six months before it can possibly 
be printed, and this is worth while. I this morn- 
ing finished the tenth book — only two more ; and 
at the end of a journey Hope always quickens 
my speed. Farewell. I am hurried, and you 
must and may excuse (as Rundell is postman 
extraordinary) a sheet not quite filled. God 
bless you ! Edith's love. 

"R. S." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Bellona. 

"June 22, 1800. 
" My dear Tom, 
" We are just returned from a bull-feast, and 
I write to you while the feelings occasioned by 
this spectacle are fresh. I had never before seen 
one . The buffoonery of teazing bullocks at Mad- 
rid was rather foolish than cruel, and its extreme 
folly excited laughter, as much at the spectators 
as the thing itself. This is widely different. 
The hand-bill was pompous : ' Antonio de Cor- 
deiro, who had so distinguished himself last year, 
was again to perform. The entertainment would 
deserve the approbation of a generous public. 
Ten bulls were to be killed, four to be torment- 
ed : they were picked bulls, of the Marquis de 

's breed (I forget his name), and chosen out 

for their courage and ferocity.' Yesterday the 
bull-fighters paraded the streets, as you may have 
seen rope-dancers and the ' equestrian troop' at 
Bristol fair. They were strangely disfigured 
with masques : one fellow had a paunch and a 
Punch-humpback, and all were dressed in true 
tawdry style. Hot weather is always the sea- 
son, and Sunday always the day, the amusement 



being cool and devout ! At half after four it be- 
gan : the hero was on horseback, and half a doz- 
en men on foot to assist him ; about ten more sat 
with pitchforks to defend themselves, ready when 
wanted. The bulls were all in the area till the 
amusement opened. They were not large, and 
not the same breed as in England; they had 
more the face of the cow than the short, sulky 
look of gentlemen — quiet, harmless animals, 
whom a child might safely have played with, 
and a woman would have been ashamed to fear. 
So much for their ferocity ! Courage, indeed, 
they possessed ; they attacked only in self-de- 
fense, and you would, like me, have been angry 
to see a fellow with a spear provoking a bull 
whose horns were tipped with large balls, the 
brave beast, all bleeding with wounds, still facing 
him with reluctant resistance. Once I saw crack- 
ers stuck into his neck to irritate him, and heard 
them burst in his wounds : you will not wonder 
that I gave the Portuguese a hearty and honest 
English curse. It is not an affair of courage ; 
the horse is trained, the bull's horns muffled, and 
half a dozen fellows, each ready to assist the oth- 
er, and each with a cloak, on which the poor an- 
imal wastes his anger : they have the rails to 
leap over, also, and they know that when they 
drop the cloak he aims always at that ; there is, 
therefore, little danger of a bruise, and none of 
any thing else. The amusement is, therefore, 
as cowardly as cruel. I saw nine killed ; the 
first wound sickened Edith, and my own eyes 
were not always fixed upon the area. My cu- 
riosity was not, perhaps, strictly excusable, but 
the pain which I endured was assuredly penalty 
enough. The fiercest of the whole was one of 
the four who were only tormented : two fellows 
on asses attacked him with goads, and he knock- 
ed them over and over with much spirit; two 
more came on, standing each in the middle of a 
painted horse, ridiculously enough — and I fancy 
those fellows will remember him for the next 
fortnight whenever they turn in bed — and their 
sham horses were broken to pieces. Three dogs 
were loosed at another bull, and effectually sick- 
ened. I hate bull-dogs ; they are a surly, vicious 
breed, ever ready to attack, mischievous and ma- 
licious enough to deserve Parliamentary praise 
from Mr. Wyndham and Mr. Canning. A large 
theater was completely full ; men, women, and 
children were clapping their hands at every 
wound, and watching with delight the struggles 
of the dying beasts. It is a damnable sport ! 
and, much to the honor of the English here, they 
all dislike it : very rarely does an Englishman or 
Englishwoman witness it a second time. 

" You will find in Thalaba one accurate image 
which I observed this evening : a death-sweat 
darkening the dun hide of the animal. This 
amusement must have mischievous effects : it 
makes cruelty familiar; and as for the assertion 
that bull-baiting or bull-butchering keeps up the 
courage of the nation, only Wyndham and Can- 
ning could have been absurd enough and unfeel- 
ing enough to believe it ; if it were true, the 
Spaniards ought to be the bravest nation in the 



JEtat. 26. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



131 



world, because their amusement is the most cru- 
el, and a butcher ought to make the best sol- 
dier. 

"On Thursday we go to«Cintra; this, there- 
fore, will be my last letter of Lisbon anecdote. 
In Africa a Portuguese saw an orang-outang, 
the most human beast that has yet been discov- 
ered, walking quietly with a stick in his hand ; 
he had the wickedness to shoot him, and was not, 
as he ought to have been, hung for willful mur- 
der. The head and hands were sent here : I 
have seen them in the Museum, in spirits. I 
have seen many an uglier fellow pass for a man, 
in spite of the definition that makes him a rea- 
soning animal : .he has eyebrows,, and a wool- 
ly head, "almost like a negro's, but the face not 
black. 

" Fielding died and was buried here. By a 
singular fatality, four attempts have been made 
to erect a monument, and all have miscarried. 
A Frenchman set on foot a subscription for this 
purpose, and many of the factory engaged for 
one, two, or three moidores : circumstances took 
him from Lisbon, and this droppod. Another 
Frenchman had a monument made at his own 
expense, and paid for it ; there was a fine French 
inscription, that, as his own countrymen had nev- 
er given the great Fielding a monument, it was 
reserved for a Frenchman to honor his country 
by paying that respect to genius : he also went 
away, and is now following the French Pretend- 
er ; and his monument lies among masonry and 
rubbish, where I have sought for it in vain. 
Then De Visme undertook the affair ; and the 
bust of Fielding, designed for this purpose, is 
still in the house which belonged to him here. 
I know not what made this scheme abortive. 
Last, the Prince of Brazil went to work, and the 
monument was made. The Lady Abbess of the 
New Convent wished to see it : it was sent to 
her ; she took a fancy to it, and there it has re- 
mained ever since ; and Fielding is still without 
a monument. 

"De Visme introduced the present fashion of 
painting rooms in stucco, with landscapes on the 
walls, and borders of flowers or arabesque : the 
fashion is, I believe, Italian. The workmen 
whom he employed had taste enough to be 
pleased with it, and it is general in all new 
houses. The ceilings are now paintedj: thus, 
instead of the huge layer of boards which was 
usual, nothing can look more cool, or be more 
convenient, for a cloth and soap cleans it. 

" In the larger old houses, here and in Spain, 
in the country, there is usually a room with no 
windows, but, instead, arches quite open to the 
air. The appearance is strange and picturesque, 
and I should esteem it one of the inconveniences 
of Lisbon that the intolerable dust prevents the 
enjoyment of these open rooms there : the dust 
is a huge evil. * * * # * 

We had the hot wind for three days this week : 
a detestable burning blast, a bastard sort of siroc, 
tamed by crossing the sea and the land, but which 
parches the lips, and torments you with the Tan- 
talus plague of fanning your cheek and heating 



it at the same time. The sea breeze is, on the 
other hand, as delightful : we feel it immediate- 
ly ; it cools the air, and freshens up all our lan- 
guid feelings. In the West Indies they call this 
wind the doctor — a good seamanly phrase for its 
healing and comfortable effect. 

" At the time the aqueduct was built, a large 
reservoir was made for its waste water. In 
winter, much water runs to waste ; in summer, 
more is wanted, and the waterman wait a long 
time round the fountain before they can in turn 
fill their barrels ; but these people, in building 
the reservoir, never calculated the weight of the 
water till the building was finished : so it stands 
still uncovered, a useless pile, and a rare monu- 
ment of the national science. I saw a funeral 
from the country pass the window at night, the 
attendants holding torches, and the body in the 
trunk coffin carried upon a litter (that is, like a 
sedan chair carried by mules instead of men) . 

" The servants here, in marketing, think it a 
part of their fair profits to cheat you as much as 
they can, and have no idea that this is dishonesty : 
it is a sort of commission they think they are en- 
titled to. This is so much the case, that one of 
these fellows, when he was stipulating about 
wages, thought them too little, and inquired if 
he was to go to market ; he was told yes, and 
then he said he would come 

"The queen's stables serve as an asylum. 
Rogues and murderers go there, and do the 
work for nothing. They are safe by this means, 
and the people, whose business it is to hire and 
pay the servants, pocket the money, so that they 
infest the neighborhood. They quarreled with 
our dragoons, who broke into the stables, and 
thrashed them heartily, to the great satisfaction 
of the people near. 

" God bless you ! Edith's love. 

"Yours, R. S" 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Cintra, July 23, 1800. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" You must, long ere this, have received my 
second letter. I continue in comfortable health, 
and spirits that cast a sunshine upon every thing. 
I pray you make peace, that I may return in the 
spring over the Pyrenees. The cause would 
certainly be good, and so would the effects. 

" Thalaba is finished, and I am correcting it ; 
the concluding books you shall shortly receive. 
Giantly is not a coinage ; it is sterling English 
of the old mint : I used it to avoid the sameness 
of sound in the Giant Tyrant as it stood at first. 
You object to the ' fowls of the air, 1 * and do not 
remember the elision. You object, likewise, to 
a license which I claim as lawful, that of making 
two short syllables stand for one long one. * The 
eighth book explains enough what Azrael had 
been doing. The previous uncertainty is well. 
You will, I trust, find the Paradise a rich poet- 
ical picture, a proof that I can employ magnifi- 



* " I had written at first ' fowls of heaven,' but heaven 
occurs a few lines above. But the line is wholly altered 
this way." 



132 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 26. 



cence and luxury of language when I think them 
in place. The other faults you point out are re- 
moved. Thank you for letters. I shall 

inclose one to him when next I write, the only 
mode of conveyance with which I am acquaint- 
ed. a nd I, both of us, were sent into the 

world with feelings little likely to push us for- 
ward in it. One overwhelming propensity has 
formed my destiny, and marred all prospects of 
rank or wealth ; but it has made me happy, and 

it will make me immortal. , when I was 

his shadow, was almost my counterpart ; but his 
talents and feelings found no center, and perforce 
thus have been scattered ; he will probably suc- 
ceed in worldly prospects far better than I shall 
do, but he will not be so happy a man, and his 
genius will bring forth no fruits. I love him 
dearly, and I know he never can lose the in- 
stinctive attachment which led to our boyish in- 
timacy. Yet shrunk from me in London. 

I met him at your rooms ; he was the same im- 
mutable character. I walked home with him at 
night ; our conversation was unreserved, and, in 
silence and solitude, I rejoiced even with tears 
that I had found again the friend that was lost. 
From that time, a hasty visit is all I saw of him : 
it was his indolence ; I know he esteems me. 
Our former coolness I remember among my fol- 
lies ; you were with me when I atoned for it by 
a voluntary letter, and you saw an answer such 
us I had reason to expect. I wrote again to 
him, a common young man's letter; he never 
answered it : the fact was, I had the disease of 
epistolizing, and he had not. Our future inter- 
course can not be much ; by the time he returns 
to London, I trust I shall have retired from it, 
and pitched my tent near the church-yard in 
which I shall be buried. Of the East Indies I 
know not enough to estimate the reason and rea- 
sonableness of his dislike. Were I single, it is a 
country which would tempt me, as offering the 
shortest and most certain way to wealth, and 
many curious subjects of literary pursuit. About 
the language, is right ; it is a baboon jar- 
gon not worth learning ; but were I there, I 
would get the Vedams and get them translated. 
It is rather disgraceful that the most important 
acquisition of Oriental learning should have been 
given us by a Frenchman ; but Anquetil du Per- 
ron was certainly a far more useful and meri- 
torious Orientalist than Sir Wm. Jones, who dis- 
graced himself by enviously abusing him. Lat- 
terly, Sir William's works are the dreams of 
dotage. I have some distant view of manufac- 
turing a Hindoo romance, wild as Thalaba ; and 
a nearer one of a Persian story, of which see the 
germ of vitality. I take the system of the Zen- 
davesta for my mythology, and introduce the 
powers of darkness persecuting a Persian, one 
of the hundred and fifty sons of the great king ; 
every evil they inflict becomes the cause of de- 
veloping in him some virtue which his prosperi- 
ty had smothered : an Athenian captive is a 
prominent character, and the whole warfare of 
the evil power ends in exalting a Persian prince 
into a citizen of Athens. I pray you be Greek 



enough to like that catastrophe, and forget France 
when you think of Attic republicanism. 

" I have written no line of poetry here, ex- 
cept the four books of Thalaba, nor shall I till 
they are corrected and sent off, and my mind 
completely delivered of that subject. Some cred- 
it may be expected from the poem ; and if the 
booksellers will not give me <£100 for a 4to 
edition of 500 copies, or 66140 for a pocket one 
of 1000, why, they shall not have the poem. 

" I long to see the face of a friend, and hun- 
ger after the bread-and-butter comforts and green 
fields of England. Yet do I feel so strongly the 
good effects of climate — and I am now perspiring 
in my shirt while I write, in the coolness of Cin- 
tra, a darkened room, and a wet floor — that I 
certainly wish my lot could be cast somewhere 
in the south of Europe. The spot I am in is 
the most beautiful I have ever seen or imagined. 
I ride a jackass, a fine, lazy way of traveling : 
you have even a boy to beat old Dapple when 
he is slow. I eat oranges, figs, and delicious 
pears — drink Colares wine, a sort of half-way 
excellence between port and claret — read all I 
can lay my hands on — dream of poem after 
poem, and play after play — take a siesta of two 
hours, and am as happy as if life were but one 
everlasting to-day, and that to-morrow was not 
to be provided for. 

" Here is a long letter about myself, and not a 
word about Portugal. My next shall be a brim- 
ming sheet of anecdotes. 

"I am sorry is so disgusted with India, 

though I can not wish he were otherwise. From 
all accounts, an English East Indian is a very 
bad animal : they have adopted by force the 
luxury of the country, and its tyranny and pride 
by choice. A man who feels and thinks must 
be in solitude there. Yet the comfort is, that 
your wages are certain ; so many years of toil 
for such a fortune at last. Is a young man wise 
who devotes the best years of his life to such a 
speculation ? Alas ! if he is, then am I a pitia- 
ble blockhead. But to me, the fable of the ant 
and grasshopper has long appeared a bad one : 
the ant hoards and hoards for a season in which 
he is torpid ; the grasshopper — there is one sing- 
ing merrily among the canes — God bless him ! 
I wish you could see one, with his wings and 
his vermilion legs. 

"God bless you! Write often, and let me 
have a very long letter upon short paper, as 
postage is by weight. Remember me to Elms- 
ley; and pray pull Bedford's ears till I hear 
him bray : I wish my burro boy could get at 
him !" 

To Mrs. Southey, Sen. 

" Cintra, August 21, 1800. 
"My dear Mother, 
" You will have known, before this can ar- 
rive, that your Bristol dispatches reached me. 
That I have not written sooner is the fault of 
the wind. We have been three weeks without 
a packet ; and, now we have one, my letters 
may probably be detained for want of a convey 



Mtat. 27. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



133 



ance to Lisbon. Poor Peggy !* I am impa- 
tient for letters : your last was a troubling one, 
and undid half that Portugal had done for me. 
However, I am materially amended. Tom writes 
that she is better ; but I know the nature of the 
disease too well to hope so easily, perhaps, as 
you and he may have done. However, other 
diseases there are, undistinguishably similar in 
their symptoms, which are sometimes mistaken 
for this, and the patient is said to have recovered 
from a consumption when his lungs have been 
sound all the while. 

" We have been here about two months, liv- 
ing alone, and riding jackasses. My uncle is 
sadly confined in Lisbon : the soldiers' children 
die as fast as they are born, from inattention or 
bad management, one of the million war-evils ! 
and he must bury them. We have acquaint- 
ance out of number, but no friends : of course, I 
go among these people no oftener than absolute 
decorum requires. Patty Collins's niece has 
more brains than three parts of the factory : her 
I like hugely ; but she is never at Cintra. I 
want Danvers here, and Davy, and Rickman, 
and Cottle, and you, and some fresh butter, and 
the newspaper : howbeit, I am very comfortable, 
and very busy. I want you to eat melons : we 
get them for about three farthings a pound ; and 
grapes — oh ! what grapes ! Our desserts are 
magnificent. 

"We have three servants here, a man, and 
maid, and a boy — all good servants for the 
country. ###### 

" The Roman Catholics have contrived to rank 
nastiness among Christian virtues, and they prac- 
tice no other so universally. The poor Moris- 
coes in Spain were forbidden to use their baths, 
because it was a Turkish custom. Certain of 
the austerer monks would think it wicked to kill 
any of their vermin ; others wear no linen, and 
sleep in their woolen dress from one year to an- 
other — fine, fat, frying friars, looking as oily as 
Aaron's beard in the sun. I should like to catch 
a Quaker, and bring him here among filth and 
finery. 

" Since we left Lisbon I have written scarcely 
any letters, and have a week's work to settle 
my accounts with Tom : tell him that Thalaba 
has monopolized me ; that by the King George, 
in her next voyage (about three weeks hence), I 
send over his copy, together with that for the 
press. Except to Bristol and to Tom, I have 
neglected all my other correspondents. Actu- 
ally I have not time : I must ride ; I am visited 5 
and the correcting Thalaba and transcribing it 
is a very serious job. 

"The French! You are probably alarmed 
for us, and, perhaps, not without cause ; but we 
are in the dark, and only know that the situation 
is very critical. We are quite easy about the 
matter. The house is on fire ! ' Och ! and is 
that all ?' said the Paddy ; ' now, why did you 
disturb me ? I am but a lodger !* In my own 
opinion, no attempt will be made on Portugal ; 



* His cousin, Margaret Hill, at this time in very ill 
health. 



it is not worth the trouble. Why make a dust 
by pulling down a house that must fall? We 
shall have peace ! 

" By the next packet I shall write, and send 
to Biddlecombe his year's rent. When we re- 
turn, I shall immediately take a house in London, 
or near it : for a summer or two, Burton may 
do ; but if Rickman leaves Christ Church, I mast 
look for a situation where there is better society. 
I wish I could settle here ; the climate suits me 
so well, that I could give up society, and live 
like a bear by sucking my own paws. You like 
the Catholics : shall I give you an account of 
one of their Lent plays upon transubstantiation, 
which is lying on the table ? It begins by the 
Father turning Adam out of doors. c Get out 
of my house, you rascal !' Adam goes a beg- 
ging, and bitterly does he complain that he can 
find no house, no village, nobody to beg of. At 
last he meets the Four Seasons, and they give 
him a spade, and a plow, &c, but nothing to eat. 
Then comes Reason, and tells him to go to law 
with his Father, who is obliged to find him in 
victuals. Adam goes to law; an angel is his 
counsel, and the devil pleads against him. He 
wins his cause ; and the Father settles upon him 
oil — for extreme unction ; lamb ; and bread and 
wine. Up comes the Sacrament, and there is an 
end of the play. This is written by a priest, 
one of the best Spanish writers, who has written 
seventy-two of these plays, all upon the body and 
blood, and all in the same strain of quaint and 
pious blasphemy. In another, Christ comes in 
as a soldier to ask his reward of my Lord World 
for serving him, and he produces the testimo- 
nials of his service : that, on the eighth day of 
his enlisting, he was wounded with a knife ; that 
he had a narrow escape when the infantry were 
all cut off; that he went as a spy among the 
enemies, and even got into their Temple ; that 
he stood a siege of forty days, and would not 
capitulate, though without provisions, and, after 
three assaults, put the enemy to flight ; that he 
succored Castle Magdalen when the enemy had 
got possession ; that he supplied a camp consist- 
ing of more than 5000 persons with food, who 
would all have been starved ; that he did good 
service at sea in a storm ; therefore, for him and 
his twelve followers, he asked his reward. I 
could fill sheet after sheet with these Bunyan- 
isms, and send you miracles as strange as any in 
Thalaba. 

" But you are crying out already, and are sat- 
isfied with the specimen. Farewell ! We are 
going on well ; only Edith's burro fell with her, 
and threw her overhead down hill, and she is 
now lame with a bruised knee. She excels in 
ass-womanship ; and I am hugely pleased with 
riding sideways, and having a boy to beat the 
John and guide him. 

"Harry must forgive me. I do not forget 
him, and will write very soon ; but the interrup- 
tion it occasions, and the time it takes up, make 
letter- writing a serious evil. God bless you. 
" Your affectionate son, 

" Robert Southey." 



134 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. \:7. 



To John Hickman. Esq. 

Cintra, August 22, 1800. 
11 My dear Hickman, 

"In the long space of three months since I 
wrote to you (or rather four !), you will expect 
I have done much. In truth, I have not been 
idle. For the great history, I have only collect- 
ed the knowledge of what documents to reach, 
and where to seek them. The public library 
books are not removable ; and I, like all the En- 
glish, am driven to the cool retirement of Cintra. 
I have the general facts already in my memory, 
and I think a fair and accurate opinion of the 
chief personages, differing very considerably from 
their received characters, and a map of the meth- 
od to be pursued. The ground is well manured, 
and the seed is in. I speak the language, not, 
indeed, grammatically, but fluently ; and Portu- 
guese, from a familiar voice, is almost as intelli- 
gible to me as English. I know the progress of 
their language, step by step, and have written 
materials toward the literary history, of collat- 
eral and incidental information — such anecdotes 
as paint the manners and character of a people. 
My collection would fill half an octavo volume. 

i; But Thalaba : it has taken up a greater por- 
tion of my time than I expected or wished. I 
have been polishing and polishing, adding and 
adding, and my unlearned readers ought to thank 
me very heartily for the toil, unpleasant and un- 
productive, of translating so many notes. By 
the King George packet I shall send it over, 
which will probably sail from Lisbon in about 
three weeks The MS. (if the French way- 
lay it not) may reach you the beginning of Octo- 
ber at the latest ; and, if the booksellers fall into 
my terms, a London printer will dispatch one 
quarto in a month, or two pocket volumes in a 
fortnight : £100 I will have for 400 4to copies, 
£130~for 1000 of the smaUer size. The whole 
property I will not sell, because I expect the 
poem will become popular, and of course pro- 
ductive. 

" Our house stands here in a lemon-garden of 
somewhat less than half an acre. Its fruit usu- 
ally sells for twenty moidores ; this year, owinir 
to its failure, it produced only ten. These orch^ 
ards, you see, are wonderfully productive, but 
they require more attention than any English 
crops. They are watered regularly. Here there 
is a large tank in every garden, whence the wa- 
ter is conveyed by little channels, which the man 
conducts round the roots of every tree, loosening 
the soil with a hoe : by this the leaves, as they 
fall, are sooner mingled with the soil, and afford 
a constant manure. "Wages are as high as eight- 
een pence a day, with wine. The price of bread, 
of course, can differ little from its price in En- 
gland ; all other provisions are rather dearer, in 
some respects owing to actual scarcity, still more 
to the paper money, as every tradesman will 
have his profit upon the discount. The wine 
owes its advance to the enormous taxes in En- 
gland. As the English tax it so hiffhlv, said the 
government here, we will tax it too ; and they 



laid on the very moderate duty of a six-and-lhir- 
ty per pipe. If people will give £75 a pipe, 
said the Porto merchants, no doubt they will give 
£80, and we will have our profit. They there- 
fore laid on the five, and are making fortunes. 
More wine is imported than before the new du- 
ties, because the excise, to which it is subject, 
so materially checks the home-brewed; still 
much is manufactured. By an accident I hap- 
pened to know that one merchant made his own 

Lisbon 

" No debtor is imprisoned here : shame, shame 
to our own laws ! There is a Board of Bank- 
ruptcy — an institution, perhaps, of unequaled ab- 
surdity, so is it managed. Any debtor who will 
surrender all his effects to the board receives 10 
per cent. It has been established about thirty 
years, and they have never made one dividend. 
Where goes the money ? There is a fund for 
cleaning and lighting the city. There are no 
lamps and no scavengers. Where goes the fund ? 
* * =*"# # * # 

' : The number of monastics decreases; not 
from any dearth of laziness or fanaticism, but be- 
cause the revenues are not now equal to the sup- 
port of the original number. Sometimes the 
monks desert; is that case they pursue them. 
They took one poor fellow at work in a garden, 
where, for three months, he had been usefully 
employed, and enjoying freedom 

" Here is a fine soil of folly, and a plentiful 
crop do the friars reap ! Some little good they 
do in return. They are good landlords, and the 
Church lands are the only lands that are tolerably 
cultivated. The ruin of Spain and Portugal is 
the fashion that all the wealthy have of residing 
wholly in the metropolis, where they spend to 
the uttermost, vex their tenants, and never pay 
their debts. Portugal, you say, must have bad 
roads. It will be very difficult to make them 
good. In winter the very heavy rains wash away 
all the smaller parts, and leave only the larger 
stones ; in summer the sun dries them up, and 
the wind sweeps the stones bare. Brentford 
stones would be thought a fine road here. Hence 
slow and little traveling, and bad inns ; in coun- 
try towns no booksellers ! scarcely any reading 
any where. Like beasts and savages, the people 
can bear total indolence. Their delight is to 
look into the street, put somebody to hunt their 
heads at the same time, and it is happiness ! 
Even in their garden walls they have grates to 
look into the road 

" I lack society sadly. The people here know 
much of their own business, very little of the 
country they live in, and nothing of any thing 
else except cards. My uncle, indeed, is a man 
of extensive knowledge ; and here is one family, 
of which the master is a man of some science, 
and where I can open my flood-gates. I want 
you and Davy, and a newspaper, and bread and 
butter, and a green field for me and the horse : 
it would do his old English heart as much good 
as it would mine. But I have ample and pleas- 
ant employment — curiosity forever on the hunt — 
a situation the most beautiful that I have ever 



jEtat. 27. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



135 



seen, and a climate for which Nature seems to 
have destined me, only, blessed be God, she 

dropped me the other side of the bay 

Edith's remembrance. Farewell ! 

" Yours, R. Southey." 

To Henry Southey. 

" Cintra, August 25, 1800. 
" My dear Harry, 

" On my return to England in the next spring, 
I shall take a house in or near London, where 
you shall live with me, and study anatomy at the 
Westminster Hospital, under Carlisle, whom you 
know to be a man of genius and my friend. By 
the time you have acquired enough previous 
knowledge, I trust some of my eggs will have 
hatched, so that you may graduate either at Edin- 
burgh or in Germany, as shall appear best. Till 
my return' you will remain where you are 5 you 
are well employed, and evidently improving rap- 
idly. Nor is there any home to which you pos- 
sibly could remove ! On my return you will 
have one, and, I trust, more comfortable than 
any you have yet had. We are rising in the 
world : it is our turn, and will be our own faults 
if we do not, all of us, attain that station in the 
world to which our intellectual rank entitles us. 

" Attend to prose particularly ; excellence in 
that is acquirable. You know the value of lit- 
erature, and may, perhaps, one day find it, as I 
have done, a resource as well as a delight. In 
your course of history, Gibbon must be read : it 
is the link that connects ancient with modern his- 
tory. For the history of Portugal you must wait ; 
there is none but that in the Universal History. 
It is a fine subject, and you will see, on my re- 
turn, a skeleton — I hope half-musiled. 

" Thalaba has taken up too much of my time, 
and I am eager to send it off, and wash my hands 
of all that could have been written in England : 
it is finished, and half ready for the press. I am 
polishing and polishing, and hewing it to pieces 
with surgeon severity. Yesterday I drew the 
pen across six hundred lines, and am now writ- 
ing to you instead of supplying their place. It 
goes over for publication very shortly — I trust in 
three weeks. Rickman is my agent and super- 
visor of the press. I am sorry you do not know 
Rickman. I esteem him among the first men 
of my knowledge. * * * # * 

# # For six weeks we have been at 
Cintra — a spot the most beautiful that I have 
ever seen, and which is probably unique. Eight- 
een miles distant, at Lisbon, the sun is insup- 
portable. Here we are cool, with woods and 
water. The wealthier English are all here; 
still, however, I lack society, and, were it not for 
a self-sufficiency (like the bear, who sucks his 
paws when the snow shuts him up in his den), 
should be in a state of mental famine. My un- 
cle is little here : people will die, and must be 
buried. He is a man of extensive information ; 
his library very well furnished, and he very well 
acquainted with its contents. One Englishman 
here only talks politics with me : his taste in 



French is every thing, and in all else mine is 
right English and Antigallican. The English 
here know very little of the country they live in, 
and nothing of the literature. Of Camoens they 
have heard, and only of Camoens. By the help 
of my uncle I have acquired an extensive knowl- 
edge, and am almost as well acquainted with 
Portuguese literature as with that of my own 
country. It is not worth much ; but it is not 
from the rose and the violet only that the bee 
sucks honey. 

" You would be amused could you see Edith 
and myself on ass-back — I sitting sideways, glo- 
riously laz}*-, with a boy to beat my Bayardo, as 
well adapted to me as ever that wild courser 
was to Rinaldo. In this climate there is no 
walking : a little exercise heats so immoderately ; 
but their cork woods or fir woods, and mountain 
glens, and rock pyramids, and ever-flowing fount- 
ains, and lemon groves ever in flower and in fruit, 
want only society to become a Paradise. Could 
I but colonize Cintra with half a dozen familiars, 
I should wish never to leave it. As it is, I am 
comfortable, my health establishing itself, my 
spirits everlastingly partaking the sunshine of 
the climate ; yet I do hunger after the bread and 
butter, and the fireside comforts, and the intel- 
lect of England. You will, I think, whenever 
my library is at hand, learn Portuguese, because 
I have got the histoiy of Charlemagne and the 
Twelve Paladins in that language, and Palmerin 
of England. I have only laid hands on half an 
old Spanish romance, Don Florisel, son of Ama- 
dis of Greece, who was a perfect Jack the Giant 
Killer, and has taught me to forgive Don Quixote 
for knocking knight-errantry on the head. Bad 
poetry I find in abundance The Portu- 
guese Academy published a book in honor of the 
victories of the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa. 
My literary history will have a chapter upon the 
follies of literature, in which this work will fur- 
nish my best example. Every possible form of 
acrostic is there ; poems to read up and down, 
and athwart and across ; crosses, and circles, and 
wheels. Literature is almost dead here. More 
books are published annually at Bristol than in 
Portugal. There are no books to induce a love 
of reading — no Arabian Tales or Seven Cham- 
pions. # # # # # # 
In case of peace — and surely, surely, it must 
come — we shall return through Spain and France. 
I am anxious to see Biscay. Our man Bento, 
who served in the Spanish army against France, 
has given me a curious account of that province, 
where the people are clean, industrious, and free, 
and speak Welsh or something very like it. On 
entering France, one of the Spanish generals or- 
dered his company to kill man, woman, and child : 
in Roncesvalles (where Orlando and the Paladins 
were slain) a little boy of about six years was 
playing on a wall ; he stopped to look at the 
troops ; Bento saw one of his fellow-soldiers, in 
obedience to these orders, cut off the child's head. 
' I have seen a thousand men killed,' said he, 
when he told the story, ' but I never felt any pain 
I except when I saw that poor child murdered.' 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ^tat. 27. 



136 

What is to be the fate of Portugal ? We know 
not. Much is going on, but all in secrecy. I 
expect peace eveiy where. Bonaparte ought 
not to have risked that battle — to stake so much 
on one o-ame ! Moreau wou«ld not have done it : 
it was a prodigality of human blood merely to 

please the Parisians 

"God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To Lieutenant Southcy, H.M. S. Bellona. 
" October 6, 1800. 

"You saw Mafra from the sea, a magnificent 
object, but, like every thing in Portugal, it looks 
best at a distance : its history you know from 
the last letter in my first edition.* .... We 
vesterday went there from Cintra, a distance of 
three leagues (twelve miles) . A quinta of the 
Marquis Pombal, on the way, forms a pleasing 
object, from the olives which are planted to screen 
the vines, the gray foliage and the lively sun- 
shine, as it were, of the vines contrasting very 
well. The quarries are near where the first 
stone is dug for the Lisbon buildings. Two 
columns are now lying by the road, which in the 
great Pombal's time were hewn for the Square 
of Lisbon, each of a single stone : a foolish waste 
of labor, only becoming barbarian pride •, for col- 
umns whose parts are put together upon the spot 
look, as well, and are in reality as firm : there 
they lie, like the square itself, and the half- 
finished streets, monuments to the memory of 
Pombal. 

" Two leagues on the way lies a place called 
Cheleinas : it may contain fifty scattered houses 
— I assuredly speak on the outside of its num- 
ber — but the place is a town, and its inhabitants 
strangely jealous of its title. Some lads, lately 
passing through, inquired the name of the vil- 
lage ; the man replied, angrily, it was a town ; 
and as they, not believing it, laughed at him, he 
raised an uproar, and they were actually in dan- 
ger of being stoned by the offended townsmen. 
A bridge has been lately built here over a val- 
ley, and a great work it is : it happens to be in 
the prince's road from Queluz to Mafra, and on 
that account this improvement has been made. 
The valley in which Cheleinas stands would not 
be noticed for beauty in a cultivated country, but 
here it appears beautiful from the contrast of vine 
and olive yards with naked and sun-burned hills. 
The people are in fault, not the climate : trees 
will grow wherever they will plant them; but 
planting indicates foresight, and Portuguese never 
think of the future. A stream runs through it, 
which in the rainy season must be wide and 
rapid : this sweeps down the soil from the mount- 
ains, and fertilizes the bottom. A circuitous 
road round the hill top, to avoid a steep descent, 
leads to Mafra: there is a by-path, nearer by 
two miles, which I advise none but a pedestrian 
to take. Mafra itself is a small place, the esta- 
lagem rather better than usual, and not worse 
than a dirty English ale-house. Saturday had 



Letters from Spain and Portugal. 



been the day of St. Francisco— a holiday in all 
Franciscan communities, more especially there 
because the prince conceives himself under great 
obligations to St. Francisco, and regularly attends 
his festival at Mafra. Of course the country 
Was assembled there, food and fruit exposed for 
sale in the Plaza, and all the women equipped 
in all their finery. We went to mass ; the prince 
followed the Host as it was carried round the 
church : in the evening there was a procession, 
and the prince paraded with it ; and thus the re- 
gent of Portugal passes his time, dangling after 
saints, and assisting at puppet-shows, and no 
doubt he lay down last night thoroughly satisfied 
that he had done his duty. 

"The church, and convent, and palace are 
one vast building, whose front exhibits a strange 
and truly Portuguese mixture of magnificence 
and meanness; in fact, it has never been faced 
with stone — a mud plaster is in its place ; the 
windows are not half glazed, red boards filling up 
the workhouse-looking casements. The church 
is beautiful ; the library the finest book-room I 
ever saw, and well stored. The friar who ac- 
companied us said 'it would be an excellent 
room to eat and drink in, and go to play after- 
ward ;' and ' if we liked better to play in the 
dark, we might shut the windows !' He heard 
the servant remark to me that there were books 
enough for me to read there, and asked if I loved 
reading. ' And I,' said he, ' love eating and 
drinking.' Honest Franciscan ! He told us, 
also, that the dress of their order was a barbar- 
ous dress, and that dress did not change the feel- 
ings. ' I suspect this man wishes he had profess- 
ed in France. A Portuguese of some family 
was a nun in France : after the dissolution of 
the monasteries, her brother immediately engaged 
with a Portuguese abbess to receive her, and 
wrote in all haste for the distressed nun ; she 
wrote, in answer, that she was much obliged to 
him, but she was married. 

" ' You have a superb convent here,' said I 
' Yes,' said the monk ; ' but it is a wretched place 
in winter, we suffer so from the cold ; the rheu 
matism kills many : we have no fire in our cells, 
only in the kitchen.' Such is Mafra : a library, 
whose books are never used ; a palace, with a 
mud-wall front ; and a royal convent, inhabited 
by monks who loathe their situation. The monks 
often desert : in that case they are hunted like 
deserters, and punished, if caught, with confine- 
ment and flogging. They take the vows young 
— at fourteen : those who are most stupidly de- 
vout may be satisfied with their life ; those who 
are most abandoned in all vice may do well also ; 
but a man with any feeling, any conscience, any 
brains, must be miserable. The old men, whose 
necks are broken to their yoke, whose feelings 
are all blunted, and who are, by their rank or 
age, exempt from some services, and indulged 
with some privileges — these men are happy 
enough. A literary man would be well off, only 
that literature would open his eyes. 

" The library was not originally a part of the 
foundation : the Franciscan order excluded all 



JEtat. 27. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



137 



art, all science ; no pictures might profane their 
churches ; but when Pombal turned them out of 
this palace, he removed to it the regular canons 
of St. Vincent, an order well born and well edu- 
cated, wealthy enough to support themselves, 
and learned enough to instruct others. His de- 
sign was to make Mafra a sort of college for the 
education of the young Portuguese ; the library 
was formed with this intention : in what manner 
this plan was subverted by the present prince, you 
may see in the old ' Letters.' Incredibly absurd 
as the story may appear, it is nevertheless strict- 
ly true. 

" The Franciscan is by far the most numerous 
monastic family. A convent that subsists upon 
its revenues must necessarily be limited in its 
numbers, but every consecrated beggar gets 
more than enough for his own support ; so the 

more the merrier God bless you ! I 

conclude in haste. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" R. SoUTHEY." 

To Lieutenant Souther/, H.M.S. Bellona. 

" Cintra, Oct. 7, 1800. 
" My dear Tom, 

" . . . . You have probably heard enough of 
the infection at Cadiz to be anxious for informa- 
tion. Our accounts agree in nothing but in the 
extent of the calamity : one day we are assured 
it is the black vomit, another day the yellow fe- 
ver, and now it is ripened into the plague. This 
only is certain, that for the last ten or twelve 
days of our accounts, from 240 to 260 persons 
have died daily in Cadiz. Whether it has ex- 
tended beyond that city is also uncertain ; some 
reports say that it has spread to the south — to 
Malaga and Alicante ; others bring it to the 
frontier town, within 200 miles of us. We all 
think and talk seriously of our danger, and for- 
get it the moment the conversation is changed. 
Whenever it actually enters Portugal, we shall 
probably fly to England. I hope the rains, which 
we may soon expect, will stop the contagion. 

" So much have I to tell you, that it actually 
puzzles me where to begin. My Cintra mem- 
orandums must be made ; and more than once 
have I delayed the task of describing this place, 
from a feeling of its difficulty. There is no 
scenery in England which can help me to give 
you an idea of this. The town is small, like all 
country towns of Portugal, containing the Plaza 
or square, and a number of narrow, crooked 
streets, that wind down the hill: the palace is 
old — remarkably irregular — a large, rambling, 
shapeless pile, not unlike the prints I have seen 
in old romances of a castle — a place whose in- 
finite corners overlook the sea : two white tow- 
ers, like glass-houses exactly, form a prominent 
feature in the distance, and with a square tower 
mark it for an old and public edifice. From the 
valley the town appears to stand very high, and 
the ways up are long, and winding, a»d weary ; 
but the town itself is far below the summit of the 
mountain. You have seen the Rock of Lisbon 
from the sea — that rock is the Sierra, or Mount- 
K 



ain of Cintra : above, it is broken into a number 
of pyramidal summits of rock piled upon rock ; 
two of them are wooded completely, the rest 
bare. Upon one stands the Penha convent ; a 
place where, if the Chapel of Loretto had stood, 
one might have half credited the lying legend, 
that the angels or the devil had dropped it there 
— so unascendable the height appears on which 
it stands, yet is the way up easy. On another 
point the ruins of a Moorish castle crest the hills. 
To look down from hence upon the palace and 
town, my head grew giddy, yet is it further from 
the town to the valley than from the summit to 
the town. The road is like a terrace, now with 
the open heath on the left, all purple with heath 
flowers, and here and there the stony summits 
and coombs winding to the vale, luxuriantly 
wooded, chiefly with cork-trees. Descending as 
you advance toward Colares, the summits are 
covered with firs, and the valley appears in all 
the richness of a fertile soil under this blessed 
climate. 

"The cork is perhaps the most beautiful of 
trees : its leaves are small, and have the dusky 
color of evergreens, but its boughs branch out in 
the fantastic twistings of the oak, and its bark is 
of all others the most picturesque ; you have 
seen deal curl under the carpenter's plane : it 
grows in such curls ; the wrinkles are of course 
deep; one might fancy the cavities the cells of 
hermit fairies. There is one tree in particular 
here which a painter might well come from En- 
gland to see, large and old ; its trunk and branch- 
es are covered with fern — the yellow, sun-burn- 
ed fern — forming so sunny a contrast to the dark 
foliage ! a wild vine winds up and hangs in fes- 
toons from the boughs, its leaves of a bright green, 
like youth — and now the purple clusters are ripe. 
These vines form a delightful feature in the 
scenery ; the vineyard is cheerful to the eyes, 
but it is the wild vine that I love, matting over 
the 'hedges, or climbing the cork or the tall pop- 
lar, or twisting over the gray olive in all its un- 
pruned wantonness. The chestnut also is beau- 
tiful; its blossoms shoot out in rays like stars, 
and now its hedge-hog fruit stars the dark leaves. 
We have yet another tree of exquisite effect in 
the landscape — the fir ; not such as you have 
seen, but one that shoots out no branches, grows 
very high, and then spreads broad in a mush- 
room shape exactly, the bottom of its head of the 
brown and withered color that the yew and the 
fir always have, and the surface of the brightest 
green. If a mushroom serves as the Pantheon 
Dome for a faery hall, you might conceive a 
giant picking one of these pines for a parasol : 
they have somewhat the appearance in distance 
that the palm and cocoa have in a print. 

" The English are numerous here, enough to 
render it a tolerable market, for sellers will not 
be wanting where purchasers are to be found ; 
yet, last year, the magistrate of the place was 
idiot enough to order that no Englishman should 
be served till all the Portuguese were satisfied — 
one of those laws which carries its antidote in its 
own absurdity. Among this people the English 



133 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 27. 



are in high favor ; they are liberal, or, if you 
will, extravagant, and submit to imposition : now 
a Portuguese rights hard for a farthing — servants 
love to be in an English family. If a Portuguese 
mistress goes out, she locks up her maids for fear 
of the men : the relations of the servants often 
insist that this shall be done. Oftentimes the 
men and women of a family do not know each 
other. All kitchen work is done by men, who 
sleep and live below ; the females are kept above 
— a precious symptom of national morals ! cal- 
culated to extend the evil it is designed to pre- 
vent ; but I wander from Cintra. The fire-flies 
were abundant when we first came here : it was 
like faery land to see them sparkling under the 
trees at night ; the glow-worms were also nu- 
merous — their light went out at the end of July ; 
but we have an insect which almost supplies their 
places — a winged grasshopper, in shape like our 
own ; in color a gray .ground hue, undistinguish- 
able from the soil on which they live till they 
leap up, and their expanded wings then appear 
like a purple. We hear at evening the grillo : 
it is called the cricket, because its song is like 
that animal, but louder; it is, however, wholly 
different — shaped like a beetle, with wings like 
a bee, and black : they sell them in cages at Lis- 
bon by way of singing birds. 

" We ride asses about the country : you would 
laugh to see a party thus mounted ; and yet soon 
learn to like the easy pace and sure step of the 
John burros. At the southwestern extremity of 
the rock is a singular building which we have 
twice visited — a chapel to the Virgin (who is om- 
nipresent in Portugal), on one of the stony sum- 
mits, far from any house : it is the strangest mix- 
tures you can imagine of art and nature ; you 
scarcely, on approaching, know what is rock and 
what is building, and from the shape and position 
of the chapel itself, it looks like the ark left by the 
waters upon Mount Ararat. Long nights of steps 
lead up, and among the rocks are many rooms, 
designed to house the pilgrims who frequent the 
place. A poor family live below with the keys. 
From this spot the coast lies like a map below 
you to Cape Espichel with the Tagus. 'Tis a 
strange place, that catches every cloud, and I 
have felt a tempest there when there has been no 
wind below. In case of plague it would be an 
excellent asylum. At the northwestern extremi- 
ty is a rock whieh we have not yet visited, where 
people go to see fishermen run the risk of break- 
ing their necks, by walking down a precipice. 
I have said nothing to you of the wild flowers, 
so many and so beautiful : purple crocuses now 
cover the ground ; nor of the flocks of goats that 
morning and evening pass our door ; nor of the 
lemon venders— of these hereafter. 

" Our Lady of the Incarnation will about fill 
the sheet. Every church has a fraternity at- 
tached to its patron saint; for the anniversary 
festival they beg money, what is deficient the 
chief of the brotherhood supplies ; for there are 
four days preceding the holiday : thus people 
parade the country with the church banner, tak- 
ing a longer or a shorter circuit according to the 



celebrity of the saint, attacking the sun with sky- 
rockets, and merry-making all the way. Those 
of whom I now speak traveled for five days. I 
saw them return ; they had among them four 
angels on horseback, who, as they took leave of 
the Virgin at her church door, each alternately 
addressed her, and reminded her of all they had 
been doing to her honor and glory, and request- 
ed her to continue the same devout spirit in her 
Portuguese, which must infallibly render them 
still invincible ; this done, the angels went into 
the Plaza to see the fire-works ! * * 

*3k 3k 3k 3k • 3k 3k *l 

^ -7T *7T *7T 'fc -JV- TP 



" Yours truly, 



R. S. 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

" October, 1800. 
" My dear Rickman, 

"At last the opportunity is arrived of sending 
my important parcel.* My private instructions 
must be vague — to make the best bargain you 

can, and on no terms to sell the copyright 

Longman will probably offer to advance the ex- 
pense of publishing, and share the profits : this 
is not fair, as brains ought to bear a higher in- 
terest than money. If you are not satisfied with 
his terms, offer it to Arch, in Grace Church 
Street, or to Philips of the Monthly Magazine, a 
man who can afford to pay a good price, be- 
cause he can advertise and puff his own property 
every month. The sale of the book is not doubt- 
ful ; my name would carry it through an edition, 
though it were worthless. * * * * * 

" In literature, as in the play-things of school- 
boys and the frippery of women, there are the 
ins and outs of fashion. Sonnets, and satires, 
and essays have their day, and my Joan of Ara 
has revived the epomania that Boileau cured the 
French of 1 20 years ago ; but it is not every 
one who can shoot with the bow of Ulysses, and 
the gentlemen who think they can bend the bow 
because I made the string twang, will find them- 
selves somewhat disappointed. Whenever that 
poem requires a new edition, I think not of cor- 
recting it ; the ore deserves not to be new cast ; 
but of prefixing a fair estimate of its merits and 
defects. #=*#### 

" Foreign Jews are tolerated in Lisbon— that 
is, they are in no danger from the Inquisition, 
though forbidden to exercise the ceremonials of 
their faith. The intercourse with Barbary brings 
a few Moors here, so that the devout Portuguese 
are accustomed to the sight of Jews, Turks, and 
heretics. You remember Davy's story of the 
Cornishman's remark when his master said, 
' Now, John, we are in Devonshire :' 'I don'r 
see but the pigs have got tails the same as along 
o' we.' If the natives here have sense enough 
to make a similar inference, they will be one de- 
gree wiser than their forefathers. Lisbon grows •, 
many a corn-field, in which I have walked five 
years ago, is now covered with houses : this is 
a short-lived increase of population — a fine Feb- 
ruary day — for the English tenant these habita- 

* The MS. of Thalaba. 



/Etat. 27. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



139 



tions ; and when the army shall be recalled, the 
houses will be desolate ; but the city exhibits an 
unequivocal sign of recovering industry and op- 
ulence. The gaps in the new streets, that have 
stood vacant since the disgrace of Portal, are now 
filled up, or filling : these are not nests for pas- 
sage-birds, but large and magnificent houses for 
the merchants. 

"But commerce will for a long, long while 
be, as in America, a sordid, selfish, money-get- 
ting drudgery, encouraging no art, and ignorant 
of every science. It is not genius that is want- 
ed in Portugal — genius exists every where ; but 
encouragement, or the hope of encouragement, 
must waken it to action ; and here no ambition 
can exist, except the desire of place and court 
pageantry. A man of letters, a philosopher, 
would starve here ; a fine singer and a female 
dancer are followed as in London. # # # 
# * # The Italian opera is, in my mind, 
only high treason against common sense : noth- 
ing is attended to but the music ; the drama is 
simply a substratum for the tune, and the mind 
lies fallow while the sensual ear is gratified. 
The encouragement of a national theater may 
call up talents that shall confer honor upon the 
nation. 

" My first publication will probably be the 
literary part of the History, which is too im- 
portant to be treated of in an appendix, or in 
separate and interrupting chapters. Lisbon is 
rich in the books which suit my purpose ; but I, 
alas ! am not rich, and endure somewhat of the 
tortures of Tantalus. The public library is, in- 
deed, more accessible than our Museum, &c, in 
England ; but the books are under wire cases, 
and the freedom of research is miserably shack- 
led by the necessity of asking the librarian for 
every volume you wish to consult : to hunt a 
subject through a series of authfrs is thus ren- 
dered almost impossible. The Academy, how- 
ever, have much facilitated my labor by pub- 
lishing many of their old chronicles in a buyable 
shape, and also the old laws of Portugal. There 
is a Frenchman here busy upon the history of 
Brazil. His materials are excellent, and he is 
indefatigable ; but I am apprehensive for his pa- 
pers, even if his person should escape. The min- 
istry know what he is about, and you need not 
be told with what an absurd secrecy they hide 
from the world all information respecting that 
country : the population of Brazil is said to 
double that of the mother, and now dependent, 
country. So heavy a branch can not long re- 
main upon so rotten a trunk. God bless j^ou. 
" Yours truly, R. Southey." 

To Mrs. Southey, Sen. 

"Lisbon [no date]. 
" My dear Mother, 
" # # =* # ## * 

***** About Harry, it is 
necessary to remove him ; his room is wanted for 
a more profitable pupil, and he has outgrown 
his situation. I have an excellent letter from 
him, and one from William Tavlor, advising me 



to place him with some provincial surgeon of 
eminence, who will, for a hundred guineas, 
board and instruct him for four or five years. A 
hundred guineas ! well, but, thank God ! there 
is Thalaba ready, for which I ask this sum. I 
have, therefore, thus eat my calf, and desired 
William Taylor to inquire for a situation ; and 
so once more goes the furniture of my long-ex- 
pected house in London.* # # # 
# ####### 
The plague, or the yellow fever, or the black 
vomit, has not yet reached us, nor do we yet 
know what the disease is, though it is not three 
hundred miles from us, and kills five hundred a 
day at Seville ! Contagious by clothes or paper 
it can not be, or certainly it would have been 
here. A man was at Cintra who had recovered 
from the disease, and escaped from Cadiz only 
seventeen days before he told the story in a pot- 
house here. In Cadiz it might have been con- 
fined, because that city is connected by a bridge 
with the main land ; but once beyond that limit, 
and it must take its course — precautions are im- 
possible ; the only one in their power they do 
not take — that of suffering no boat to come from 
the opposite shore. Edith is for packing off to 
England ; but I will not move till it comes, and 
then away for the mountains. 

" Our weather is most delightful — not a cloud, 
cool enough to walk, and warm enough to sit 
still ; purple evenings, and moonlight more dis- 
tinct than a November noon in London. We 
think of mounting jackasses and rambling some 
two hundred miles in the country. I shall laugh 
to see Edith among the dirt and fleas, who, I 
suspect, will be more amused with her than she 
will with them. She is going in a few days to 
visit the nuns : they wanted to borrow some 
books of an English woman : ' What book would 
you like ?' said Miss Petre, somewhat puzzled 
by the question, and anxious to know. ' Why, 
we should like novels : have you got Ethelinde, 
or the Recluse of the Lake ? We have had the 
first volume, and it was so interesting ! and it 
leaves off in such an interesting part ! We used 
to hate to hear the bell for prayers while we 
were reading it.' And after a little pause she 
went on, ' And then it is such a good book : we 
liked it, because the characters are so moral and 
virtuous.'' By-the-by, they have sent Edith some 
cakes. 

" We are afraid the expedition under Sir 
Ralph Abercrombie is coming here : his men 
are dying of the scurvy, and have been for some 
time upon a short allowance of salt provisions : 
they will starve us if they come. What folly, 
to keep five-and-twenty thousand men floating 
about so many months ! horses and soldiers both 
dying for want of fresh food. * * * 

" God bless you. 

" Your affectionate son, 

" Robert Southey." 



* The sura ultimately received for the first edition of 
Thalaba (£115) was not required for this purpose, the fee 
for his brother's surgical education being paid by Mr. Hill 



140 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 27. 



To Lieut. Southcy, HJLS. JBellona. 

" Thursday, Feb. 12, 1801, Lisbon. 

" On Tuesday we crossed the river to Casil- 
has Point, procured jackasses, and proceeded to 
a place called Costa to dinner. You know the 
castle in the mouth of the Tagus, the state pris- 
on, where the man is confined that beat the king ? 
The Costa is a collection of fishermen's huts on 
the sand, in a line with it, on the south side of 
the river : the ride is about seven miles, over a 
hilly country, that every where displayed novel 
and striking views ; for the foreground, huge aloes 
and the prickly pear, the broom and furze in 
blossom 5 broad-headed firs every where where 
the sandy soil was not cultivated for vines or 
olives ; the sweep of the bay southward skirted 
by the pine-covered plains and the mountain 
boundary ; behind us Lisbon on its heights, and 
the river blue and boundless as a sea. Through 
a cleft in a sand-bank, a winter ravine way for 
the rains, we first saw the Costa at about half a 
mile below us — the most singular view I ever 
beheld — huts all of thatch scattered upon the 
sand : we descended by a very steep way cut 
through the sand-hill, the sand on either side 
fretted by the weather, like old sculpture long 
weather-worn : all below belongs to the sea ; 
but on the bare sands, a numerous tribe have 
fixed their habitations, which exactly resemble 
the wigwams of the Nootka savages — a wooden 
frame all thatched is all ; most commonly the 
floor descends for warmth, and the window often 
on a level with the ground without; two only 
symptoms showed us that we were in a civilized 
country — a church, the only stone building, and 
a party stretched upon the sand at cards. The 
men live by fishing, and a stronger race I never 
saw, or more prolific, for children seemed to 
swarm. As parties from Lisbon are frequent 
here, there are two or three hovels of entertain- 
ment. Ours had ragged rhymes upon its walls, 
recommending us to drink by the barrel and not 
by the quart. 

" In riding to Odwellas, I saw something curi- 
ous : it was a Padroha by the road side — we 
have no other word in English, and it occurs 
often in romance, for a place raised by the way 
side — where a station or inscription is placed : 
there was an image of Christ there, and some 
unaccountable inscriptions about robbery, and 
hiding heaven in the earth, which a series of 
pictures in tiles behind explained. A hundred 
years ago, the church of Odwellas was robbed 
of the church plate, and of the sacrament. Then 
I saw the thief playing at skittles when the sa- 
cristan of the church passed by, whom he fol- 
lowed in and hid himself; then I saw him rob- 
bing the altar ; next, he hides the church dresses 
in the house of a woman ; and here he is bury- 
ing the sacrament plate in a vineyard upon this 
very spot ; here he is examined upon suspicion, 
and denies all. and says who ever did the sacri- 
lege ought to have his hands cut off; here he is 
taken in the act of stealing the fowls of the con- 
vent, and he confesses all ; here they dig up the 
hidden treasure, and carry it back in a solemn 



procession ; here he is going to execution ; here 
you see his hands cut off, according to his own 
sentence, and here he is strangled and burned. 
It is remarkable that in almost all these tiles, the 
face of the criminal is broken to pieces, probably 
in abhorrence of his guilt. The loss of the wa- 
fer has been ever regarded as a national calam- 
ity, to be lamented with public prayer, and fasts, 
and processions. It happened at Mexico in the 
Conqueror's days, and Cortez himself paraded 
with the monks and the mob. 

Sat., March 28. 

"In the long interval that has elapsed since 
this letter was begun, we have traveled about 
three hundred and fifty miles. Waterhouse and 
I took charge of Edith and three ladies : a doc- 
tor at Alvea da Cruz, of whom we besought 
house-room one night in distress, told us, with 
more truth than politeness, that four women 
were a mighty inconvenience. We did not find 
them so : they made our chocolate in the morn- 
ing, laughed with us by day, enjoyed the scenery, 
packed our provisions basket, and at night en- 
dured flea-biting with a patience that entitles 
them to an honorable place in the next martyr- 
ology. All Lisbon, I believe, thought us mad 
when we set out ; and they now regard our re- 
turn with equal envy, as only our complexions 
have suffered. To detail the journey wou d be 
too long. We asked at Santarem if they had 
rooms for us ; they said plenty : we begged to 
see them : they had two rooms — four men in bed 
in one, one fellow in bed in the other. At Pom- 
bal, Waterhouse and I slept in public, in a room 
that served as a passage for the family. Men 
and women indiscriminately made the ladies' 
beds. One night we passed through a room 
wherein eight men were sleeping, who rose up 
to look at us, something like a picture of the 
resurrection. • These facts will enable you to 
judge of the comforts and decencies of the Port- 
uguese. They once wanted us, four women 
and two men, to sleep in two beds in one room. 
Yet, bad as these places are, the mail coach has 
made them still worse ; that is, it has rendered 
the people less civil, and made the expenses 
heavier. 

" We crossed the Zezere, a river of importance 
in the history of Portugal, as its banks form the 
great protection of Lisbon : it is the place where 
a stand might most effectually be made against 
an invading army. The river is fine, about the 
width of our Avon at Rownham, and flowing be- 
tween hills of our Clifton and Leigh height, that 
are covered with heath and gum-cistus ; the wa- 
ter is beautifully clear, and the bottom sand : like 
all mountain streams, the Zezere is of irregular 
and untamable force. In summer, horsemen 
ford it ; in winter, the ferry price varies accord- 
ing to the resistance of the current, from one 
vintem to nine — that is, from a penny to a shil- 
ling. It then enters the Tagus with equal wa- 
ters, sometimes with a larger body ; for, as the 
rains may have fallen heavier east or north, the 
one river with its rush almost stagnates the 
other. 



jEtat. 27. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



141 



"At Pombal we saw Our Lady's oven, where 
annually a fire is kindled, a wafer baked, and a 
man, the Shadrach of the town, walks round the 
glowing oven, and comes out unhux*t and unsinged 
by special miracle of Our Lady of Cardal. At 
Thomar is a statue of St. Christofer on the bridge : 
three grains of his leg, taken in a glass of water, 
are a sovereign cure for the ague ; and poor St. 
Christofer's legs are almost worn out by the ex- 
tent of the practice. Torres Vedras is the place 
where Father Anthony of the wounds died — a 
man suspected of sanctity. The pious mob at- 
tacked his body, stripped it naked, cut off all his 
hair, and tore up his nails to keep for relics. I 
have seen relics of all the saints — yea, a thorn 
from the crown of crucifixion, and a drop of the 
Redemption blood. All this you shall hereafter 
see at length in the regular journal. 

" A more interesting subject is our return. 
My uncle will, I think, return with us, or, at 
least, speedily follow. We look forward to the 
expulsion of the English as only avoidable by a 
general peace, and this so little probable that all 
[(reparations are making for removal. My uncle 
is sending away all his books, and I am now in 
the dirt of packing. In May I hope to be in 
Bristol ; eager enough. God knows, to see old 
friends, and old, familiar scenes, but with no 
pleasant anticipation of English taxes, and En- 
glish climate, and small beer, after this blessed 
sun, and the wines of Portugal. My health has 
received all the benefit I could and did expect : 
a longer residence would, I think, render the 
amendment permanent ; and, with this idea, the 
prospect of a return hereafter, to complete the 
latter part of my History, is by no means un- 
pleasant. 

" God bless you, and keep you from the north 
seas. I have written in haste, being obliged to 
write many letters on my return. Edith's love. 
I know not when or where we shall meet ; but, 
when I am on English ground, the distance be- 
tween us will not be so impassable. Farewell ! 
" Yours truly, 

" Robert Soutiiey." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Lisbon, Feb. 21, 1801. 

' " My dear Wynn, 

" Your letter gave me the first detail of the 
great news. A passage of four days made it as 
fresh as possible, and we are here cursing winds 
and water that we must wait a fortnight before 
another mail can reach us. What will happen ? 
the breach is made ; and this lath and plaster 
can not long keep out the weather. Will the old 
administration be strong enough to force their 
plans upon the crown ? Possibly. Equally so, 
that the art of alarming, in which they were 
so proficient, may now be turned successfully 
against them. Yet, on this point, the whole body 
of opposition is with them, and the whole intel- 
lect of the country. I rather expect, after more 
inefficient changes, the establishment of opposi- 
tion — and peace. The helm requires a strong 
hand. 



" Decidedly as my own principles lead to tol- 
eration, 1 yet think in the sufferance of converts 
and proselytism it has been carried too for. You 
might as well let a fire burn, or a pestilence 
spread, as suffer the propagation of popery. I 
hate and abhor it from the bottom of my soul, 
and the only antidote is poison. Voltaire and 
such writers cut up the wheat with the tares. 
The monastic establishments in England ought 
to be dissolved ; as for the priests, they will, for 
the most part, find their way into France ; they 
who remain should not be suffered to recruit, 
and would soon die away in peace. I half fear 
a breach of the Union — perhaps another rebell- 
ion — in that wretched country. 

" I do not purpose returning till the year of 
my house-rent be complete, and shall then leave 
Lisbon with regret, in spite of English house- 
comforts and the all-in-all happiness of living 
among old friends and familiar faces. This cli- 
mate so completely changes my whole animal 
being, that I would exchange every thing for it. 
It is not Lisbon ; Italy, or the south of Spain or 
of France, would, perhaps, offer greater induce- 
ments, if the possibility of a foreign settlement 
existed. 

' : On my History no labor shall be spared. 
Now I only heap marble : the edifice must be 
erected in England ; but I must return again to 
the quarry. You will find my style plain and 
short, and of condensed meaning — plain as a 
Doric building, and, I trust, of eternal durabili- 
ty. The notes will drain off all quaintness. I 
have no doubt of making a work by which I shall 
be honorably remembered. You shall see it, 
and Elmsly, if he will take the trouble, before 
publication. Of profit I must not be sanguine ; 
yet, if it attain the reputation of Robertson, than 
whom it will not be worse, or of Roscoe and 
Gibbon, it will procure me something more sub- 
stantial than fame. My price for Thalaba was, 
for 1000 copies 66115, twelve copies being al- 
lowed me ; the booksellers would have bargain- 
ed for a quarto edition also, but it would have 
been ill judged to have glutted the public. 

" I expect, in the ensuing winter, to be ready 
with my first volume : to hurry it would be in- 
judicious, and historic labor will be relieved by 
employing myself in correcting Madoc. My in- 
tention is therefore to journey through North 
Wales next summer to the lakes, where Coleridge 
is settled, and to pass the autumn (their summer) 
there. For a Welsh map of the roads, and what 
is to be seen, you must be my director ; pex-haps, 
too, you might in another way assist Madoc, by 
pointing out what manners or superstition of the 
Welsh would look well in blank verse. Much 
may have escaped me, and some necessarily 
must. Long as this poem (from the age of 
fourteen) has been in my head, and long as its 
sketch has now lain by me. I now look on at no 
very distant date to its publication, after an am- 
ple revision and recasting. You will see it and 
scrutinize it when corrected. 

" Thalaba is now a whole and unembarrassed 
story: the introduction of Laila is not an eoi-- 



142 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mr at. 27. 



sode, it is so connected with the murder of Ho- 
deirah and the after actions of Thalaba, as to be 
essentially part of the tale. Thalaba has cer- 
tainly and inevitably the fault of Samson Ago- 
nistes — its parts might change place ; but, in a 
romance, epic laws may be dispensed with ; its 
faults now are verbal. Such as it is, I know no 
poem which can claim a place between it and 
the Orlando. Let it be weighed with the Obe- 
ron ; perhaps, were I to speak out, I should not 
dread a trial with Ariosto. My proportion of 
ore to dross is greater. Perhaps the anti-Jaco- 
bin criticasters may spare Thalaba : it is so ut- 
terly innocent of all good drift, it may pass 
through the world like Richard Cromwell, not- 
withstanding the sweet savor of its father's name. 
Do you know that they have caricatured me be- 
tween Fox and Norfolk — worshiping Bonaparte ? 
Poor me — at Lisbon — who have certainly molest- 
ed nothing but Portuguese spiders ! Amen ! I 
am only afraid my company will be ashamed of 
me ; one, at least — he is too good for me ; and, 
upon my soul, I think myself too good for the 
other. 

" The Spanish embassador trundled off for 
Madrid this morning : he is a bad imitation of a 
hogshead in make. All is alarm "here, and I 
sweat in dreadfully cold weather for my books, 
creditors — alas ! for many a six-and-thirty ! We 
have two allies, more faithful than Austria the 
honest or Paul the magnanimous — famine and 
the yellow fever; but the American gentleman 
is asleep till summer, and as for famine, she is 
as busy in England as here. I rejoice in the 
eventual effects of scarcity — the cultivation of 
the wastes ; the population bills you probably 
know to be Rickman's, for which he has long 
been soliciting Rose, and the management is his, 
of course, and compliment. It is of important 
utility. 

" Of the red wines I spoke in my last. Will 
you have Bucellas as it can be got ? It should 
be kept rather in a garret than a cellar, a place 
dry and warm-, but ample directions shall be 
sent with it. You may, perhaps, get old now, 
when so just an alarm prevails ; new is better 
than none, because it will improve even in ideal 
value should Portugal be closed to England ; its 
price will little, if at all, differ from Port or Lis- 
bon ; it is your vile taxes that make the expense ; 
and, by-the-by, I must vent a monstrous oath 
against the duty upon foreign books. Sixpence 
per pound weight if bound — it is abominable ! 

- Farewell, and God bless you. 
" Yours affectionately, 

"R. SoUTHEY." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

"Lisbon, March 28, 1801. 
" The sight of your handwriting did not give 
me much pleasure : 'twas the leg of a lark to a 
hungry man — yet it was your handwriting. * 
" I have been more than once tottering on the 
brink of a letter to you, and more than once the 
glimpse at some old Spaniard, or the whim of a 
.walk, or an orange, or a bunch of grapes, has 



tempted me either to industry or idleness. I re- 
turn rich in materials : a twelvemonth's work in 
England will produce a first volume of my His- 
tory, and also of the Literary History. Of suc- 
cess I am not sanguine, though sufficiently so of 
desert; yet I shall leave a monument to my own 
memory, and perhaps, which is of more conse- 
quence, procure a few life-enjoyments. 

" My poetizing has been exclusively confined 
to the completion of Thalaba. I have planned 
a Hindoo romance of original extravagance, and 
have christened it ' The Curse of Keradon ;' bu 
it were unwise to do any thing here which wei\ 
as well done in England ; and, indeed, the easy 
business of hunting out every thing to be seen 
has taken up no small portion of my time. 1 
have ample materials for a volume of miscei 
laneous information : my work in England will 
be chiefly to arrange and tack together ; here I 
have been glutting, and go home to digest. 
In May we return ; and, on my part, with much 
reluctance. I have formed local attachments, 
and not personal ones : this glorious river, with 
its mountain boundaries, this blessed winter sun, 
and the summer paradise of C intra. I would 
gladly live and die here. My health is amend 
ed materially, but I have seizures enough to as- 
sure me that our own unkindly climate will blight 
me, as it does the myrtle and oranges of this bet- 
ter land; howbeit, business must lead me here 
once more for the after volumes of the History. 
If your ill health should also proceed from En- 
glish skies, we may, perhaps, emigrate together 
at last. One head full of brains, and I should 
ask England nothing else. 

" Meantime, my nearer dreams lay their scenes 
about the lakes.* Madoc compels me to visit 
Wales ; perhaps w 7 e can meet you in the au- 
tumn ; but for the unreasonable distance from 
Bristol and London, we might take up our abid- 
ing near you. I wish you were at Allfoxenf — 
there was a house big enough : you would talk 
me into a healthy indolence, and I should spur 
you to profitable industry.' 

" # ■ # # # # # # 

# * # * * * * * 

We are threatened w r ith speedy invasion, and 
the critical hour of Portugal is probably arrived 
No alarm has been so general : they have sent 
for transports to secure us a speedy retreat ; nor 
is it impossible that all idlers may be requested 
to remove before the hurry and crowd of a gen- 
eral departure. Yet I doubt the reality of the 
danger. Portugal buys respite : will they kill 
the goose that lays golden eggs ? Will Spain 
consent to admit an army through that will shake 
her rotten throne ? Will Bonaparte venture an 
army where there is danger of the yellow fever ? 
to a part whence all plunder will be removed, 
where that army w r ill find nothing to eat after a 
march of 1000 miles, through a starved coun- 
try ? On the other hand, this country may turn 
round, may join the coalition, seize on English 

* Mr. Coleridge was at this time residing at Keswick, 
t A house in Somersetshire, where Mr. Wordsworth 
resided at one time. 



^Etat. £7. 



ROBERT SOUTHED 



U3 



property, and bid us all decamp : this was ap- 
prehended ; and what dependence can be placed 
upon utter imbecility ? Were it not for Edith, 
I would fairly see it out, and witness the whole 
boderation. There is a worse than the Bastile 
here, over whose dungeons I often walk. * 

But this is not what is to be wished for Portu- 
gal — this conquest which would excite good feel- 
ings against innovation ; if there was peace, the 
business would probably be done at home. En- 
gland is' now the bedarkening power ; she is in 
politics what Spain was to religion at the Ref-. 
ormation. Change here involves the loss of 
their colonies, and an English fleet would cut off 
the supplies of Lisbon. # # # # 

* # # The monastic orders will ac- 

celerate revolution, because the begging friars, 
mostly young, are mostly discontented, and the 
rich friars every where objects of envy. I have 
heard the people complain of monastic oppression, 
and distinguish between the friars and the relig- 
ion they profess. I even fear, so generally is 
that distinction made, that popery may exist when 
monkery is abolished. 

" In May I hope to be in Bristol, and if it can 
be so arranged, in September at the lakes. I 
should like to winter there ; then I might labor at 
my History ; and we might, perhaps, amuse our- 
selves with some joint journeyman work, which 
might keep up winter fires and Christmas tables. 
Of all this we will write on my return. I now 
long to be in England, as it is impossible to re- 
main and root here at present. We shall soon 
and inevitably be expelled, unless a general peace 
redeem the merchants here from ruin. England 
has brought Portugal into the scrape, and with 
rather more than usual prudence, left her in it : 
it is understood that this country may make her 
own terms, and submit to France without incur- 
ring the resentment of England. When the 
Portuguese first entered this happy war, the 
phrase of their ministers was, that they were 
going to be pall-bearers at the funeral of France. 
Fools ! they were digging a grave, and have 
fallen into it. 

" Of all English doings I am quite ignorant. 
Thomas Dermody, I see, has risen again, and 
the Farmer's Boy is most miraculously over- 
rated. The Monthly Magazine speaks with 
shallow-pated pertness of your Wallenstein : it 
interests me much ; and, what is better praise, 
invited me to a frequent reperusal of its parts : 
will you think me wrong in preferring it to 
Schiller's other plays ? it appears to me more 
dramatically true. Max may, perhaps, be over- 
strained, and the woman is like all German he- 
roines : but in Wallenstein is that greatness and 
littleness united which stamp the portrait. Will- 
iam Taylor, you see, is making quaint theories 
of the Old Testament writers ; how are yoi* em- 
ployed ? Must Lessing wait for the Resurrec 
tion before he receives a now life ? 

" So you dipped your young pagan* in the 



* The Rev. Derwent Coleridge, principal of St. Mark's 
College, Chelsea. 



Derwent, and baptized him in the name of the 
river ! Should he be drowned there, he wii get 
into the next edition of Wanley's Wonders, ai- 
der the hpad of God's Judgments. And how 
comes on Moses, and will he remember me ! 
God bless you ! 

"Yours, Robert Southey." 

To Mrs. Southey. 

"Faro, April 17,1801. 

" By the luckiest opportunity, my dear Edith, 
I am enabled to write and ease myself of a load 
of uneasiness. An express is about to leave 
Faro, otherwise till Tuesday next there would 
have been no conveyance. We are at Mr. Lem- 
priere's, hospitably and kindly received, and for 
the first time resting after ten days' very hard 
labor. At Cassillas our letter to Kir wan was 
of no use, as he was absent. For mules they 
asked too much, and we mounted burros to 
Azectao ; there no supply was to be found, and 
the same beasts carried us to Setubal, which we 
did not reach till night. The house to which we 
had an introduction was deserted, and we lost 
nothing by going to an excellent estalagem. 
Next day it rained till noon, when we embark- 
ed, and sailed through dull and objectless shores 
to Alcacere : mules to Evora, the distance nine 
leagues. At the end of the first it set in a se- 
vere rain, and the coldest north wind we ever 
experienced : the road was one infinite cliar- 
reca, a wilderness of gum cistus. We would 
have stopped any where : about six in the even- 
ing we begged charity at a peasant's house, at 
the Monte dos Moneros, three leagues short of 
Evora, dripping wet and deadly cold, dreading 
darkness, and the effects of so severe a wetting, 
and the cold wind ; we got admittance, and all 
possible kindness ; dried ourselves and baggage, 
which was wet also ; supped upon the little 
round curd cheeses of the country, olives, and 
milk, and slept in comfort. The morning was 
fine, but the same wind continued till yesterday, 
and has plagued us cruelly by day and by night. 

" At Evora we remained half a day ; there 
our night sufferings began ; from thence till we 
reached Faro we have never slept in one ceiled 
room : all tiled so loosely that an astrologer 
would find them no bad observatories ; and by 
no possible means could we keep ourselves warm. 
Waterhouse I taught, indeed, by Niebuhr's ex- 
ample in Arabia, to lie with his face under the 
sheets, but it suffocated me. From Evora we 
took burros to Beja — a day and a half; we slept 
at Villa Ruina ; from Viana to that little town is 
a lovely track of country, and, except that little 
island of cultivation, we have seen nothing but 
charrecas till we reached Tavira. The bishop 
gave us cheese and incomparable wine, and a 
letter to Father John of the Palm at Castro : to 
Castro a day's journey. On the road there was 
a monumental cross, where a man had been eat- 
en by the wolves. John of the Palm is a very 
blackguard priest, but he was useful. We had 
a curious party there of his friends, drinking wine 
with us in the room, or, rather, between the four 



144 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



tEtat. 27 



walls where we were pounded, not housed, for 
the night : a deputy judge, with a great sword, 
old as the Portuguese monarchy, smoking, and 
handing round his cigar out of his own mouth to 
the rest of the company ; our muleteer, that was 
to be, hand and glove with the priest and the 
magistrate ; and another pot companion. Next 
day across the field of Ourique, and seven long 
leagues of wilderness : there was no estalagem ; 
in fact, we were in the wilds of Alentejo, where 
hardly any traveler has penetrated ; we were 
again thrown on charity, and kindly received : 
rhis was Tuesday. On Wednesday we crossed 
the mountains to Tavira, seven leagues ; in the 
bishop's language, long leagues, terrible leagues, 
infinite leagues : the road would be utterly im- 
passable were it not that the Host is carried on 
horseback in these wilds, and therefore the way 
must be kept open. As we passed one ugly spot, 
the guide told us a man broke his neck there 
lately. This day's journey, however, was quite 
new: wherever we looked was mountain — 
waving, swelling, breasting, exactlv like the sea- 
like prints of the Holy Hand which you see in 
old travels. At last the sea appeared, and the 
Gnadiana, and the frontier towns Azamonte and 
Castro MarinL We descended, and entered the 
garden, the Paradise of Algarve : here our troub- 
les and labor were to end ; we were out of the 
wilderness. 3Iilk and honey, indeed, we did not 
expect in this land of promise, but we expected 
every thing else. The sound of a drum alarm- 
ed as, and we found Tavira full of soldiers. The 
governor examined our pass, and I could not but 
smile at the way in which he eyed Roberto 
Southey, the negociente, of ordinary stature, thin 
and long face, a dark complexion, &c, and squint- 
ed at Waterkouse's lame legs. For a man in 
power he was civil, and sent us to the Corregi- 
dor to get our beasts secured. This second in- 
spection over, we were in the streets of Tavira, 
to beg a night's lodging — and beg hard we did 
for some hours. At last, induced by the mule- 
teer, whom she knew, and by the petition of 
some dozen honest people, whom our situation 
had drawn about us, a woman, who had one 
room unoccupied by the soldiers, turned the key 
with doubt and delay, for her husband was ab- 
sent, and we wanted nothing but a ceiling. Yes- 
terday we reached Faro, and to-day remain here 
to rest. * * * * * # 

" Our faces are skinned by the cutting wind 
and sun : my nose has been roasted by a slow 
fire — burned alive by sunbeams : 'tis a great 
comfort that Waterhouse has no reason to laugh 
at it : and even Bento's* is of a fine carbuncle 
color. Thank God ! you were not with us ; one 
room is the utmost these hovels contain; the 
walls of stone, unmortared, and the roofs what I 
have described them. 

" Yet we are well repaid, and have never fal- : 
tered either in health or spirits. At Evora, at 
Beja. at the Ourique field, was much to interest ; 
and here we are in a lovely country, to us a lit- ' 



* His 



tie heaven. ##-•#•■*#-.* 
I have hurried over cur way, that you may know 
simply where we have been, and where we are : 
the full account would be a week's work. You 
will be amused with the adventures of two Irish 
and one Scotch officers, who came from Gibral- 
tar to Lagos, with a fortnight's leave of absence, 
to amuse themselves : they brought a Genoese 
interpreter, and understood from him that it was 
eleven leagues to Faro, and a good turnpike road 
I write their own unexaggerated account : they 
determined to ride there to dinner, and they were 
three days on the way, begging, threatening, 
drawing their swords to get lodged at night — 
all in vain : the first night they slept in the fields ; 
afterward they learned an humbler tone, and got, 
between four of them, a shelter, but no beds ; 
here they waited six weeks for an opportunity of 
getting back ; and one of them was paymaster at 
Gibraltar : they were utterly miserable for want 
of something to do — billiards eternally; they 
even bought birds, a cat, a dog, a fox, for play- 
things ; yesterday embarked, after spending a 
hundred pieces here in six weeks, neither they 
nor any one else knowing how, except that they 
gave six testoons a piece for all the Port wine in 
the place. ###=*## 
" God bless you ! I have a thousand things 
to tell you on my return, my dear Edith, 
ctionately, 
Robert Southey." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

RETURN TO ENGLAND THINKS OF GOING DOWN 

TO CUMBERLAND LETTER FROM MR. COLE- 
RIDGE, DESCRIBING GRETA HALL THOUGHTS 

OF A CONSULSHIP THE LAW LYRICAL BAL- 
LADS—CONSPIRACY OF GOWRIE 31 ADO C DIF- 
FICULTY OF MEETING THE EXPENSE OF THE 
JOURNEY TO KESWICK LETTER TO MR. BED- 
FORD UNCHANGED AFFECTION GOES DOWN 

TO KESWICK FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE 

LAKES EXCURSION INTO WALES APPOINT- 
MENT AS PRIVATE SECRETARY TO MR. CORRY 

GOES TO DUBLIN LETTERS FROM THE>CCE 

GOES TO LONDON ACCOUNT OF HIS OFFI- 
CIAL DUTIES. 1801. 

In the course of the following June my father 
and mother returned to England, and for a short 
tune again took up their residence at Bristol. 
His sojourn abroad had in all respects been a 
most satisfactory as well as a most enjoyable 
one : the various unpleasant, and, indeed, alarm- 
ing symptoms under which he had previously la- 
bored, had proved to be rather of nervous than 
of organic origin; and as they seemed to have 
owed, their rise to sedentary habits and continued 
mental exertion, they had readily given way, 
under the combined influence of change of scene 
and place, a more genial climate, and the health- 
ful excitement of travel in a foreign land, and 
scenes full alike of beauty and of interest. He 



/Etat. 27. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



145 



had not, indeed, been idle the while, for he had 
laid up large stores for his projected History of 
Portugal (never, alas ! destined to be completed) ; 
and he had finished Thalaba, a transcript of which 
had been sent to England, and its publication 
negotiated for with the Messrs. Longman, by his 
friend Mr. Rickman. He had now entirely aban- 
doned all idea of continuing the study of the law, 
and his thoughts and wishes were strongly turned 
toward obtaining some appointment which would 
enable him to reside in a southern climate. In 
the mean time, having no especial reason for 
wishing to remain in Bristol, he had for some 
time contemplated a journey into Cumberland, 
for the double purpose of seeing the lakes and 
visiting Mr. Coleridge, who was at this time 
residing at Greta Hall, Keswick, having been 
tempted into the north by the proximity of Mr. 
Wordsworth, and to whom he had written con- 
cerning this intention some months before leav- 
ing Lisbon. Mr. Coleridge's answer waited his 
return, and a portion of it may not unfitly be 
transcribed here, describing, as it does, briefly 
yet very faithfully, the place destined to be my 
father's abode for the longest portion of his life 
— the birth-place of all his children (save one), 
and the place of his final rest. 

To Robert Southey . Esa 

"Greta Hall, Keswick, *pril 13, 1801. 
" My dear Southey, 

"I received your kind letter on the evening 
before last, and I trust that this will arrive at 
Bristol just in time to rejoice with them that re- 
joice. Alas ! you will have found the dear old 
place sadly minused by the removal of Davy. 
It is one of the evils of long silenc*, that when 
one recommences the correspondence, one has so 
much to say that one can say nothing- I have 
enough, with what I have seen, and with what I 
have done, and with what I have suffered, and 
with what I have heard, exclusive of all that I 
hope and all that I intend — I have enough to pass 
away a great deal of time with, were you on a 
desert isle, and I your Friday. But at present 
I purpose to speak only of myself relatively to 
Keswick and to you. 

" Our house stands on a low hill, the whole 
front of which is one field and an enormous gar- 
den, nine tenths of which is a nursery garden. 
Behind the house is an orchard, and a small wood 
on a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the 
River Greta, which winds round and catches the 
evening lights in the front of the house. In front we 
nave a giant's camp — an encamped army of tent- 
like mountains, which by an inverted arch gives 
a view of another vale. On our right the love- 
ly vale and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassen- 
thwaite ; and on our left Derwentwater and Lo- 
dore full in view, and the fantastic mountains 
of Borrodale. Behind us the massy Skiddaw, 
smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a 
tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you 
have not seen in all your wanderings. Without 
going from our own grounds, we have all that 
can please a human being. As to books, my 



landlord, who dwells next door,* has a very re- 
spectable library, which he has put with mine — 
histories, encyclopedias, and all the modern gen- 
try. But then I can have, when I choose, free 
access to the princely library of Sir Guilfred 
Lawson, which contains the noblest collection of 
travels and natural history of perhaps any private 
library in England ; besides this, there is the 
Cathedral library of Carlisle, from whence I can 
have any books sent to me that I wish ; in short, 
I may truly say that I command all the libraries 
in the county. # # # # # 

" Our neighbor is a truly good and affection- 
ate man, a father to my children, and a friend to 
me. He was offered fifty guineas for the house 
in which we are to live, but he preferred me for 
a tenant at twenty-five ; and yet the whole of his 
income does not exceed, I believe, £ 200 a year. 
A more truly disinterested man I never met with ; 
severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous ; 
and yet he got all his money as a common car- 
rier^ by hard labor, and by pennies and pennies. 
He is one instance among many in this country 
of the salutary effect of the love of knowledge — 
he was from a boy a lover of learning. * * 
The house is full twice as large as we want : it 
hath more rooms in it than Allfoxen : you might 
have a bed-room, parlor, study, &c, &c, and 
there would always be rooms to spare for your 
or my visitors. In short, for situation and con- 
venience — and when I mention the name of 
Wordsworth, for society of men of intellect — I 
know no place in which you and Edith would find 
yourselves so well suited." 

The remainder of this letter, as well as another 
of later date, was filled with a most gloomy ac- 
count of his own health, to which my father re- 
fers in the commencement of his reply. 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

"Bristol, July 11, 1801. 
" Yesterday I arrived, and found your letters ; 
they did depress me, but I have since reasoned 
or dreamed myself into more cheerful anticipa- 
tions. I have persuaded irryself that your com- 
plaint is gouty ; that good living is necessary, 
and a good climate. I also move to the south ; 
at least so it appears ; and if my present pros- 
pects ripen, we may yet live under one roof. 

TV TV* TV TV TV TV TV 

" You may have seen a translation of Persius, 
by Drummond, an M.P. This man is going em- 
bassador, first to Palermo, and then to Constan- 
tinople : if a married man can go as his secre- 
tary, it is probable that I shall accompany him. 
I daily expect to know. It is a scheme of 
Wynn's to settle me in the south, and I am re- 
turned to look about me. My salary will be 
small — a very trifle ; but after a few years I 
look on to something better, and have fixed my 
mind on a consulship. Now, if we go, you must 



* Greta Hall was at this time divided into two houses, 
which were afterward thrown together. 

t This person, whose name was Jackson* was the 
" master" in Mr. YYor dsworth's poem of " The Wagoner," 
the circumstances of which are accurately correct 



146 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 27. 



join us as soon as we are housed, and it will be 
marvelous if we regret England. I shall have 
so little to do that my time may be considered 
as wholly my own : our joint amusements will 
easily supply us with all expenses. So no more 
of the Azores, for we will see the Great Turk, 
and visit Greece, and walk up the Pyramids, and 
ride camels in Arabia. I have dreamed of noth- 
ing else these five weeks. As yet every thing 
is so uncertain, for I have received no letter since 
we landed, that nothing can be said of our inter- 
mediate movements. If we are not embarked 
too soon, we will set off as early as possible for 
Cumberland, unless you should think, as we do, 
that Mohammed had better come to the mount- 
ain ; that change of all externals may benefit 
you; and that, bad as Bristol weather is, it is 
yet infinitely preferable to northern cold and 
damp. Meet we must, and will. 

-: You know your old Poems are a third time 
in the press ; why not set forth a second volume ? 
* * * * Your Christabel, your 

Three Graces, which I remember as the very 
consummation of poetry. I must spur you to 
something, to the assertion of your supremacy ; 
if you have not enough to muster, I will aid you 
in any way — manufacture skeletons that you may 
clothe with flesh, blood, and beauty ; write my 
best, or what shall be bad enough to be popular ; 
we will even make plays a-la-mode Robespierre. 
.... Drop all task- work ; it is ever unprofit- 
able : the same time, and one twentieth part of 
the labor, would produce treble emolument. For 
Thalaba I received <£ll5: it was just twelve 
months' intermitting work, and the after editions 
are my own. 

c: I feel here as a stranger — somewhat of 
Leonard's feeling. God bless Wordsworth for 
that poem !* "What tie have I to England '? My 
London friends ? There, indeed, I have friends. 
But if you and yours were with me, eating dates 
in a garden at Constantinople, you might assert 
that we were in the best of all possible places ; 
and I should answer, Amen; and if our wives 
rebelled, we would send for the chief of the 
black eunuchs, and sell them to the Seraglio. 
Then should Moses learn Arabic, and we would 
know whether there was any thing in the lan- 
guage or not. We would drink Cyprus wine and 
Mocha coffee, and smoke more tranquilly than 
ever we did in the Ship in Small Street. 

" Time and absence make strange work with 
our affections ; but mine are ever returning to 
rest upon you. I have other and dear friends, 
but none with whom the whole of my being is 
intimate — with whom every thought and feeling 
can amalgamate. Oh ! I have yet such dreams ! 
Is it quite clear that you and I were not meant 
for some better star, and dropped, by mistake, 
into this world of pounds, shillincrs. and pence ? 
* * # * * " # # 

" God bless you ! 

" Robert Southey." 

* " The Brothers" is the title of this poem. 



To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 



July 



" In about ten days we shall be ready to set 
forward for Keswick, where, if it were not for 
the rains, and the fogs, and the frosts, I should 
probably be content to winter ; but the climate 
deters me. It is uncertain when I may be sent 
abroad, or where, except that the South of Eu- 
rope is my choice. The appointment hardly 
doubtful, and the probable destination Palermo 
or Naples. We will talk of the future, and 
dream of it, on the lake side. # * # 

* * I may calculate upon the next six 
months at my own disposal ; so we will climb 
Skiddaw this year, and scale .^Etna the next; 
and Sicilian air will keep us alive till Davy has 
found out the immortalizing elixir, or till we are 
very well satisfied to do without it, and be im- 
mortalized after the manner of our fathers. My 
pocket-book contains more plans than will ever 
be filled up ; but, whatever becomes of those 
plans, this, at least, is feasible. * * - * 

# ####### 

Poor H , he has literally killed himself by 

the law; which, I believe, kills more than any 
disease that takes its place in the bills of mor- 
tality. Blackstone is a needful book, and my 
Coke is a borrowed one ; but I have one law 
book whereof to make an auto-da-fe ; and burned 
he shall be ; but whether to perform that cere- 
mony, with fitting libations, at home, or fling rum 
down the crater of iEtna directly to the devil, is 
worth considering at leisure. 

" I must work at Keswick ; the more will- 
ingly, because with the hope, hereafter, the ne- 
cessity will cease. My Portuguese materials 
must lie dead, and this embarrasses me. It is 
impossible to publish any thing about that conn- 
try now, because I must one day return there — 
to their libraries and archives ; otherwise I have 
excellent stuff for a little volume, and could soon 
set forth a first vol. of my History, either civil 
or literary. In these labors I have incurred a 
heavy and serious expense. I shall write to 
Hamilton, and review airain, if he chooses to 
employ me. * # * # # # 

It was Cottle who told me that your Poems were 
reprinting in a third edition : this can not allude 
to the Lyrical Ballads, because of the number 
and the participle present. * * * 

I am bitterly angry to see one new poem smug- 
gled into the world in the Lyrical Ballads, where 
the 750 purchasers of the first can never get at 
it. At Falmouth I bought Thomas Dermody's 
Poems, for old acquaintance' sake ; alas ! the boy 
wrote better than the man ! * * * 

Pyes Alfred (to distinguish him from Alfred the 
Pious*) I have not yet inspected, nor the will- 
ful murder of Bonaparte, by Anna Matilda, nor 
the high treason committed by Sir James Bland 
Burgess, Baronet, against our lion-hearted Rich- 
ard. Davy is fallen stark mad with a play, call- 
ed the Conspiracy of Gowrie, which is by Rough ; 
an imitation of Gebir, with some poetry ; but mis- 

* This alludes to Mr. Cottle's " Alfred.' 



Mr at. : J7. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



147 



e.J !y and hopelessly deficient in all else : every 
character reasoning, and metaphorizing, and met- 
aphy sicking the reader most nauseously. By- 
the-by, there is a great analogy between hock, 
laver, pork pie, and the Lyrical Ballads : all have 
& flavor, not beloved by those who require a taste, 
and utterly unpleasant to dram-drinkers, whose 
diseased palates can only feel pepper and brandy. 
I know not whether Wordsworth will forgive the 
stimulant tale of Thalaba — 'tis a turtle soup, 
highly seasoned, but with a flavor of its own 
predominant. His are sparagrass (it ought to 
be spelled so) and artichokes, good with plain 
butter, and wholesome. 

"I look on Madoc with hopeful displeasure; 
probably it must be corrected, and published 
now. This coming into the world at seven 
months is a bad way ; with a Doctor Slop of a 
printer's devil standing ready for the forced birth, 
and frightening one into an abortion. * * 

* * * * Is there an emigrant 
at Keswick who may make me talk and write 
French ? And I must sit at my almost forgot- 
ten Italian, and read German with you ; and we 
must read Tasso together. # # # 

" God bless you! 

"Yours, R. S." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" Bristol, August 3, 1801. 
•" following the advice of the Traumatic 
Poet,* I have been endeavoring to get money — 

and to get it honestly. I wrote to , and 

propounded to him Madoc, to be ready for the 
press in six months, at a price equivalent to that 
of Thalaba, in proportion to its length; and I 
asked for fifty pounds now, the rest on publica- 
tion. writes to beat down the price. * 

* * * # And I have answered, 
that the difference about terms sets me at liber- 
ty from my proposal. 

" And so, how to raise the wind for my long 
land voyage ? Why, I expect Hamilton's ac- 
count daily (for whom, by-the-by, I am again at 
work !), and he owes me I know not what — it 
may be fifteen pounds, it may be five-and-twen- 
ty : if the latter, off we go, as soon as we can 
get an agreeable companion in a post-chaise ; if 
it be not enough, why I must beg, borrow, or 
steal. I have once been tempted to sell my soul 
to Stuart for three months,- for thirteen guineas 
in advance ; but my soul mutinied at the bar- 
gain # # # # * Madoc 
has had a miraculous escape ! it went against 
my stomach and my conscience — but malesuada 
fames. 

"Your West India plan is a vile one. Italy, 
Italy. I shall have enough leisure for a month's 
journey. Moses, and the young one with the 
heathenish name, will learn Italian as they are 
learning English — an advantage not to be over- 



* The " Traumatic Poet" was a Bristol acquaintance of 
Bjy father's and Mr. Coleridge, who somewhat overrated 
his own powers of poetical composition ; two choice son- 
nets of his, on "Metaphor" and ''Personification," were 
printed in the first volume of the Annual Anthology. 



looked ; society, too, is something ; and Italy 
has never been without some great mind or oth- 
er, worthy of its better ages. When we are 
well tired of Italy, why, I will get removed to 
Portugal, to which I look with longing eyes as 
the land of promise. But, in all sober serious- 
ness, the plan I propose is very practicable, very 
pleasant, and eke also very prudent. My busi- 
ness will not be an hour in a week, and it will 
enable me to afford to be idle — a power which 
I shall never wish to exert, but which I do long 
to possess. ###=*** 
Davy's removal to London extends his sphere of 
utility, and places him in affluence ; yet he will 
be the worse for it. Chameleon-like, we are all 
colored by the near objects ; and he is among 
metaphysical sensualists : he should have re- 
mained a few years longer here, till the wax 
cooled, which is now passive to any impression. 
I wish it was not true, but it unfortunately is, 
that experimental philosophy always deadens the 
feelings ; and these men who ' botanize upon 
their mothers' graves' may retort and say that 
cherished feelings deaden our usefulness ; and so 
we are all well in our way. 

"# # # # # # # 

Do not hurry from the baths for the sake of meet- 
ing me, for when I set out is unpleasantly un- 
certain ; and as I suppose we must be Lloyd's 
guests a few days, it may as well or better be 
before your return. My mother is very unwell, 
perhaps more seriously so than I allow myself to 
fully believe. If Peggy* were — what shall I 
say ? — released is a varnishing phrase ; and 
death is desirable, when recovery is impossible. 
I would bring my mother with me for the sake 
of total change, if Peggy could be left, but that 
is impossible ; recover she can not, yet may, and 
I believe will, suffer on till winter. Almost I 
pre-feel that my mother's illness will, at the 
same time, recall me. # # # # 
The summer is going off, and I am longing for 
hot weather, to bathe in your lake ; and yet am 
I tied by the leg. Howbeit, Hamilton's few 
days can not be stretched much longer ; and 
when his account comes, I shall draw the money, 
and away. God bless you ! 

" R. SOUTHEY." 

A letter from Mr. Bedford, containing some 
reproaches for a much longer silence than was 
his wont, called forth the following reply : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" August 19, 1801. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" The tone and temper of your letter left me 
in an uncomfortable mood — certainly I deserved 
it, as far as negligence deserves reproof so harsh 
— but indeed, Grosvenor, you have been some- 
what like the Scotch judge, who included all 
rape, robbery, murder, and horse-stealing under 
the head of sedition ; so have you suspected neg- 
ligence of cloaking a cold, and fickle, and insin 

* His cousin, Margaret Hill, to whom he was greuly at- 
tached, then dying in a consumption. 



143 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat.28. 



cere heart. Dear, dear Grosvenor, if by any 
magic of ear you could hear how often your 
name passes my lips ! or could you see how often 
I see your figure in my walks — the recollections 
— and the wishes — but what are these? A 
hundred times should I have begun a letter if 
there had been enough to fill it — if I could have 
sent you the exquisite laugh when I again saw 
St. Augustine and his load, or the smile when I 
read Saunders's death in the newspaper ; but 
these are unwritable things — the gossip, and 
the playfulness, and the boyishness, and the hap- 
piness : I was about to write, however — in con- 
science and truth I was — and for an odd reason. 
I heard a gentleman imitate Henderson ; and 
there was in that imitation a decisiveness of pro- 
nunciation, a rolling every syllable over the 
tongue, a force and pressure of lip and of pal- 
ate, that, had my eyes been shut, I could have 
half believed you had been reading Shakspeare 
to me — and I was about to tell you so, because 
the impression was so strong. 

" With Drummond it seems I go not, but he 
and Wynn design to get for me — or try to get 
— a better berth — that of secretary to some Ital- 
ian legation, which is permanent, and not per- 
sonally attached to the minister. Amen. I love 
the south, and the possibility highly pleases me, 
and the prospect of advancing my fortunes. To 
England I have no strong tie ; the friends whom 
I love live so widely apart that I never see two 
in a place ; and for acquaintance, they are to be 
found every where. Thus much for the future ; 
for the present I am about to move to Coleridge, 
who is at the lakes ; and I am laboring, some- 
what blindly indeed, but all to some purpose, 
about my ways and means ; for the foreign ex- 
pedition that has restored my health, has at the 
same tune picked my pocket ; and if I had not 
good spirits and cheerful industry, I should be 
somewhat surly and sad. So I am — I hope 
most truly and ardently for the last time — pen- 
ami-inking for supplies, not from pure inclina- 
tion. I am rather heaping bricks and mortar 
than building — hesitating between this plan and 
that plan, and preparing for both. I rather think 
it will end in a romance, in meter Thalabian — 
in mythology Hindoo — by name the Curse of 
Kehama, on which name you may speculate ; 
and if you have any curiosity to see a crude out- 
line, the undeveloped life-germ of the egg, say 
so, and you shall see the story as it is, and the 
poem as it is to be, written piece-meal. 

" Thus, then, is my time employed, or thus it 
ought to be ; for how much is dissipated by going 
here and there — dinnering, and tea-taking, and 
suppering, traying, or eveninging, take which 
phrase of fashion pleases you — you may guess. 

"• Grosvenor, I perceive no change in myself, 
nor any symptoms of change ; I differ only in 
years from what I was. and years make less dif- 
ference in me than in most men. All things 
considered, I feel myself a fortunate and happy 
man ; the future wears a better face than it has 
ever done, and I have no reason to regret that 
indifference to fortune which has marked the I 



past. By-the-by, it is unfortunate that you can 
not come to the sacrifice of one law book — my 
whole proper stock — whom I design to take up 
to the top of Mount iEtna, for the express pur- 
pose of throwing him down straight to the devil. 
Huzza, Grosvenor ! I was once afraid that 1 
should have a deadly deal of law to forget when- 
ever I had done with it ; but my brains, God 
bless them ! never received any, and I am as ig- 
norant as heart could wish. The tares would 
not grow. 

" You will direct to Keswick, Cumberland. I 
set off on Saturday next, and shall be there about 
Tuesday ; and if you could contrive to steal time 
for a visit to the lakes, you would find me a rare 
guide. 

" If you have not seen the second volume of 
Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, I counsel you to 
buy them, and read aloud the poems entitled The 
Brothers, and Michael, which, especially the first, 
are, to my taste, excellent. I have never been 
so much affected, and so well, as by some pas- 
sages there. 

" God bless 3-ou. Edith's remembrance. 
" Yours as ever, 

"Robert Southey." 

My father's first impression of the lake coun- 
try was not quite equal to the feelings with which 
he afterward regarded it; and he dreaded the 
climate, which, even when long residence had 
habituated him to it, he always considered as 
one of the greatest drawbacks to the north of 
England. " Whether we winter here or not," 
he writes, immediately on his arrival at Kes- 
wick, " time must determine ; inclination would 
lead me to, but it is as cold as at Yarmouth, 
and I am now growling at clouds and Cumber- 
land weather. The lakes at first disappointed 
me — they were diminutive to what I expected ; 
the mountains little, compared to Monchique ; 
and for beauty, all English, perhaps all existing 
scenery, must yield to Cintra, my last summer's 
residence. Yet, as I become more familiar with 
these mountains, the more is their sublimity felt 
and understood : were they in a warmer climate, 
they would be the best and most desirable neigh- 
bors." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 



* 



Keswick, Sept. 6, 1801. 
# # # # 



*= * # De Anthologia, which is of 

or concerning the Anthology. As I hope to be 
picking up lava from iEtna, I can not be tying 
up nosegays here in England ; but blind Tobin, 
whom you know — God bless him for a very good 
fellow ! — but Tobin the blind is very unwilling 
that no more anthologies should appear ; where- 
fore there will be more volumes, with which all 
I shall have to do will be to see that large-paper 
copies be printed to continue sets, becoming my- 
self only a gentleman contributor, to which in- 
genious publication I beg your countenance, sir, 
and support. * * "# * * * 
You ask me questions about my future plana 



jEtat. 28. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



149 



which I can not readily answer, only that if I 
got a decent salary abroad, even should my 
health take a fancy to this queer climate, I have 
no estate to retire to at home, and so shall have 
a good prudential reason for remaining there. 
My dreams incline to Lisbon as a resting-place : 
I am really attached to the country, and, odd as 
it may seem, to the people. In Lisbon they 
are, like all metropolitans, roguish enough, but 
in the country I have found them hospitable, 
even to kindness, when I was a stranger and 
in want. The consulship at Lisbon would, of 
all possible situations, best delight me — better 
than a grand consulship — 'tis a good thousand 
a year. But when one is dreaming, you know, 
Grosvenor — 

" These lakes are like rivers ; but oh for the 
Mondego and Tagus ! And these mountains, 
beautifully indeed are they shaped and grouped ; 
but oh for the great Monchique ! and for Cintra, 
my paradise ! the heaven on earth of my hopes ; 
and if ever I should have a house at Cintra, as in 
earnest sincerity I do hope I shall, will not you 
give me one twelvemonth, and eat grapes, and 
ride donkeys, and be very happy? In truth, 
Grosvenor, I have lived abroad too long to be 
contented in England : I miss southern luxuries 
— the fruits, the wines ; I miss the sun in heaven, 
having been upon a short allowance of sunbeams 
these last ten days ; and if the nervous fluid be 
the galvanic fluid, and the galvanic fluid the 
electric fluid, and the electric fluid condensed 
light, zounds ! what an effect must these vile, 
dark, rainy clouds have upon a poor nervous fel- 
low, whose brain has been in a state of high il- 
lumination for the last fifteen months ! 

" God bless you ! I am going in a few days 
to meet Wynn at Liverpool, and then to see the 
Welsh lions. *##### 
Grosvenor Bedford, I wish you would write a 
history, for, take my word for it, no employment 
else is one thousandth part so interesting. I 
wish you would try it. We want a Venetian 
history. I would hunt Italy for your materials, 
and help you in any imaginable way. Think 
about it, and tell me your thoughts. 
" Yours affectionately, 

" R. Southey." 

On ray father's arrival at Llangedwin, the 
residence of his friend Mr. C. W. W. Wynn, he 
found a letter awaiting him, offering him the ap- 
pointment of private secretary to Mr. Corry, at 
that time Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ire- 
land : the terms " prudently limited to one year, 
lest they should not suit each other ;" the proffer- 
ed salary .£400 Irish (about £350 English), of 
which the half was specified as traveling ex- 
penses. This had been brought about through 
his friend Mr. Rickman, who was at that time 
secretary to Mr. Abbot, and, in consequence, re- 
siding in Dublin — an additional inducement to 
my father to accept, the appointment, as he 
would have to reside there himself during half 
the year. 

His immediate services being required, after 



hurrying back for a few days to Keswick, he 
lost no time in taking possession of his new office. 

To Mrs. Southey. 
" Dublin, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 1801. 

" On Sunday, after delaying till the latest pos- 
sible moment for the chance of passengers, we 
dropped down the River Dee. The wind almost 
immediately failed us ; I never saw so dead a 
calm; there was not a heaving, a ripple, a 
wrinkle on the water; the ship, though she 
made some way with the tide, was as still as a 
house, to our feelings. Had the wind continued 
as when we embarked, eighteen hours would 
have blown us to Dublin. I saw the sun set 
behind Anglesea; and the mountains of Car- 
narvonshire rose so beautifully before us, that, 
though at sea, it was delightful. The sunrise 
on Monday was magnificent. Holyhead was 
then in sight, and in sight on the wrong side it 
continued all day, while we tacked and retack- 
ed with a hard-hearted wind. We got into 
Beaumaris Bay, and waited there for the mid- 
night tide : it was very quiet ; even my stomach 
had not provocation enough, as yet, to be sick. 
In the night we proceeded. About two o'clock 
a very heavy gale arose : it blew great guns, as 
you would say ; the vessel shipped water very 
fast ; it came pouring down into the cabin, and 
both pumps were at work— the dismallest thump, 
thump, I ever heard : this lasted about three 
hours. As soon as we were clear of the Race 
of Holyhead the sea grew smoother, though the 
gale continued. On Tuesday the morning was 
hazy ; we could not see land, though it was not 
far distant ; and when at last we saw it, the wind 
had drifted us so far south that no possibility ex- 
isted of our reaching Dublin that night. The 
captain, a good man and a good sailor, who never 
leaves his deck during the night, and drinks 
nothing but butter-milk, therefore readily agreed 
to land us at Balbriggen ; and there we got 
ashore at two o'clock. Balbriggen is a fishing 
and bathing town, fifteen miles from Dublin — 
but miles and money differ in Ireland from the 
English standard, eleven miles Irish being as 
long as fourteen English. * * * 

" To my great satisfaction, we had in our 
company one of the most celebrated characters 
existing at this day; a man whose name is as 
widely known as that of any human being, ex- 
cept, perhaps, Bonaparte ! 

" He is not above five feet, but, notwithstand- 
ing his figure, soon became the most important 
personage of the party. ' Sir,' said he, as soon 
as he set foot in the vessel, ' I am a unique ; I 
go any where, just as the whim takes me : this 
morning, sir, I had no idea whatever of going to 
Dublin ; I did not think of it when I left home ; 
my wife and family know nothing of the trip. I 
have only one shirt with me besides what I have 
on ; my nephew here, sir, has not another shirt 
to his back ; but money, sir, money — any thing 
may be had at Dublin.' Who the devil is this 
fellow ? thought I. We talked of rum — he had 



150 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 28. 



just bought 100 puncheons, the weakest drop 
15 above proof : of the west of England — out he 
pulls an Exeter newspaper from his pocket : of 
bank paper — his pocket-book was stuffed with 
notes, Scotch, Irish, and English ; and I really 
am obliged to him for some clews to discover 
forged paper. Talk, talk, everlasting : he could 
draw for money on any town in the United King- 
doms, ay, or in America. At last he was made 
known for Dr. Solomon. At night I set upon the 
doctor, and turned the discourse upon disease in 
general, beginning with the Liverpool flux — 
which remedy had proved most effectual — noth- 
ing like the Cordial Balm of Gilead. At last I 
ventured to touch upon a tender subject : did he 
conceive Dr. Brodum's medicine to be at all 
analogous to his own ? ' Not in the least, sir ; 
color, smell, all totally different. As for Dr. Bro- 
dum, sir — all the world knows it — it is manifest 
to every body — that his advertisements are all 
stolen, verbatim et literatim, from mine. Sir, I 
don't think it worth while to notice such a fel- 
low.' But enough of Solomon, and his nephew 
and successor that is to be — the Rehoboam of 
Gilead — a cub in training. 

" Mr. Corry is out of town for two days, so I 
have not seen him. The probability is, Rick- 
man tells me, that I shall return in about ten 
days : you shall have the first intelligence. At 
present I know no more of my future plans than 
that I am to dine to-day with the secretary of 
the lord lieutenant, and to look me out a lodging 
first. 

" But you must hear all I have seen of Ire- 
land. The fifteen miles that we crossed are so 
destitute of trees, that I could only account for 
it by a sort of instinctive dread of the gallows in 
the natives. I find they have been cut down to 
make pikes. Cars instead of carts or wagons ; 
women without hats, shoes, or stockings. One 
little town we passed, once famous — its name 
Swords : it has the ruins of a castle and a church, 
with a round tower adjoining the steeple, making 
an odd group : it was notoriously a pot-wallop- 
ing borough ; and for breeding early ducks for 
the London market, the manufactory of ducks 
appeared to be in a flourishing state. Post- 
chaises very ugly, the doors fastening with a 
staple and chain ; three persons going in one, 
paying more than two. The hotel here abomin- 
ably filthy. I see mountains near Dublin most 
beautifully shaped, but the day is too hazy. You 
shall hear all I can tell you by my next. I am 
quite well, and, what is extraordinary, was never 
once sick the whole way. * * * * 

Edith, God bless you ! I do not expect to be 
absent from you above a fortnight longer. 
" Yours affectionately, 

"R. SoUTHEY." 

To Mis. Sou they. 

"Dublin, Oct. 16, 1S01. 
" Dear Edith, 
" In mv last no direction was jjiven. You 
will write under cover, and direct thus : 



Right HonMe 

Isaac Corry, 

&c, &c., &c., 

Dublin. 
This said personage I have not yet seen, where- 
by I am kept in a state of purportless idleness. 
He is gone to his own country, playing truant 
from business among his friends. To-morrow 
his return is probable. I like bis character ; he 
does business well, and with method, but loves 
his amusement better than business, and prefers 
books better than official papers. It does not 
appear that my work will be any ways difficult 
— copying and letter- writing, which any body 
could do, if any body could be confidentially 
trusted. 

" John Rickman is a great man in Dublin and 
in the eyes of the world, but not one jot altered 
from the John Rickman of Christ Church, save 
only that, in compliance with an extorted prom- 
ise, he has deprived himself of the pleasure of 
scratching his head by putting powder in it. He 
has astonished the people about him. The gov- 
ernment stationer hinted to him, when he was 
giving an order, that if he wanted any thing in 
the pocket-book way, he might as well put it 
down in the order. Out he pulled his own : 
' Look, sir, I have bought one for two shillings.' 
His predecessor admonished him not to let him- 
self down by speaking to any of the clerks. 
' Why, sir,' said John Rickman, ' I should not let 
myself down if I spoke to every man between 
this and the bridge.' And so he goes on in his 
own right way. He has been obliged to mount 
up to the third story before he could find a room 
small enough to sleep in ; and there he led me, 
to show me his government bed, which, because 
it is a government bed, contains stuff enough to 
make a dozen ; the curtains being completely 
double, and mattress piled upon mattress, so that 
tumbling out would be a dangerous fall. About 
our quarters here, when we remove hither in 
June, he will look out. The filth of the houses 
is intolerable — floors and furniture offending you 
with Portuguese nastiness ; but it is a very fine 
city — a magnificent city — such public buildings, 
and the streets so wide ! For these advantages 
Dublin is indebted to the prodigal corruption of 
its own government. Every member who asked 
money to make improvements got it ; and if he 
got ^620,000, in decency spent five for the pub- 
lic, and pocketed the rest. These gentlemen are 
now being hauled a little over the coals, and they 
have grace enough to thank God the Union did 
not take place sooner. 

" The peace was not welcome to the patri- 
cians ; it took away all their hopes of ' any fun' 
by the help of France. The government, act- 
ing well and wisely, control both parties — the 
Orangemen and the United Irishmen — and com- 
mand respect from both ; the old fatteners upon 
the corruption are silent in shame : the military, 
who must be kept up, will be well employed in 
making roads : this measure is not yet announced 
to the public. It will be difficult to civilize this 
people. An Irishman builds bim a turf stye, 



Mtat. 28. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



151 



gets his fuel from the bogs, digs his patch of 
potatoes, and then lives upon them in idleness : 
like a true savage, he does not think it worth 
while to work that he may better himself. Po- 
tatoes and butter-milk — on this they are born 
and bred ; and whisky sends them to the third 
heaven at once. If Davy had one of them in his 
laboratory, he could analyze his flesh, blood, and 
bones into nothing but potatoes, and butter-milk, 
and whisky : they are the primary elements of 
an Irishman. Their love of ' fun' eternally en- 
gages them in mischievous combinations, which 
are eternally baffled by their own blessed instinct 
of blundering. The United Irishmen must have 
obtained possession of Dublin but for a bull. 
On the night appointed, the mail-coach was to be 
stopped and burned about a mile from town, and 
that was the signal : the lamplighters were in 
the plot ; and oh ! to be sure ! the honeys would 
not light a lamp in Dublin that evening, for fear 
the people should see what was going on. Of 
course, alarm was taken, and all the mischief 
prevented. Modesty characterizes them as much 
here as on the other side of the water. A man 
stopped Rickman yesterday : ' I'll be oblaged to 
you, sir, if you'll plaise to ask Mr. Abbot to give 
me a place of sixty or seventy pounds a year.' 
Favors, indeed, are asked here with as unblush- 
ing and obstinate a perseverance as in Portugal. 
This is the striking side of the picture — the dark 
colors that first strike a stranger ; their good 
qualities you can not so soon discover. Genius, in- 
deed, immediately appears to characterize them ; 
a love of saying good things, which 999 English- 
men in a thousand never dream of attempting in 
the course of their lives. When Lord Hard- 
wicke came over, there fell a fine rain, the first 
after a long series of dry weather. A servant 
of Dr. Lindsay's heard an Irishman call to his 
comrade in the street, ' Ho, Pat ! and we shall 
have a riot' — of course, a phrase to quicken an 
Englishman's hearing — 'this rain will breed a 
riot : the little potatoes will be pushing out the 
big ones.' 

" Did I send, in my last, the noble bull that 
Rickman heard ? He was late in company, 
when a gentleman looked at his watch, and cried, 
' It is to-morrow morning ! I must wish you 
good nightS 

"I have bought no books yet, for lack of 
money. To-day Rickman is engaged to dinner, 
and I am to seek for myself some ordinary or 
chop-house. This morning will clear off my 
letters, and I will make business a plea hereafter 
for writing fewer — 'tis a hideous waste of time. 
My love to Coleridge, &c, if, indeed, I do not 
write to him also. 

" Edith, God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

"Dublin, Oct. 16,1801.' 
"Dear Coleridge, 
" The map of Ireland is a beautiful map — 
mountains, and lakes, and rivers, which I hope 



one day to visit with you. St. Patrick's Purga- 
tory and the Giant's Causeway lie in the same 
corner. Where ■ Mole, that mountain hoar,' is, 
I can not find, though I have hunted the name 
in every distortion of possible orthography. A 
journey in Ireland has, also, the great advantage 
of enabling us to study savage life. I shall be 
able to get letters of introduction, which, as 
draughts for food and shelter in a country where 
whisky - houses are scarce, will be invaluable. 
This is in the distance : about the present, all I 
know has been just written to Edith ; and the 
sum of it is, that I am all alone by myself in a 
great city. 

" From Lamb's letter to Rickman I learn ihat 
he means to print his play, which is the luke- 
warm John,* whose plan is as obnoxious to Rick- 
man as it was to you and me ; and that he has 
been writing for the Albion, and now writes for 
the Morning Chronicle, where more than two 
thirds of his materials are superciliously reject- 
ed. Stuart would use him more kindly. God- 
win, having had a second tragedy rejected, has 
filched a story from one of De Foe's novels for a 
third, and begged hints of Lamb. * * 

# #..#*<#-#.-.*# 

Last evening we talked of Davy. Rickman also 
fears for him ; something he thinks he has (and 
excusably, surely) been hurt by the attentions of 
the great : a worse fault is that vice of meta- 
physicians — that habit of translating right and 
wrong into a jargon which confounds them — 
which allows every thing, and justifies every 
thing. I am afraid, and it makes me very mel- 
ancholy when I think of it, that Davy never will 
be to me the being that he has been. I have a 
trick of thinking too well of those I love — better 
than they generally deserve, and better than my 
cold and containing manners ever let them know. 
The foibles of a friend always endear him, if they 
have coexisted with my knowledge of him ; but 
the pain is, to see beauty grow deformed — to 
trace disease from the first infection. These 
scientific men are, indeed, the victims of science ; 
they sacrifice to it their own feelings, and vir 
tues, and happiness. 

" Old and ill-suited moralizings, Coleridge, for 
a man who has left the lakes and the mountains 
to come to Dublin with Mr. Worldly Wisdom ! 
But my moral education, thank God ! is pretty 
well completed. The w T orld and I are only 
about to be acquainted. I have outgrown the 
age for forming friendships. # * * 

" God bless you ! R. Southey. 

My father's presence seems only to have been 
required in Dublin for a very short time, and 
after rejoining my mother at Keswick, they went 
at once to London, Mr. Corry's duties requiring 
his residence there for the winter portion of the 
year. Here, when fairly established in his 
"scribe capacity," he appears to have expe- 
rienced somewhat of the truth of the saying, 
"When thou doest well to thyself, men shall 



* The name of this play is "John YVoodvil." 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ^Ltat. 28. 



152 

speak good of thee. : ' " I have been a week in 
town," he writes to Mr. William Taylor, " and 
in that time have learned something. The ci- 
vilities which already have been shown me dis- 
cover how much I have been abhorred for all 
that is valuable in my nature : such civilities ex- 
cite more contempt than anger, but they make 
me think more despicably of the world than I 
could wish to do. As if this were a baptism 
that purified me of all sins — a regeneration ; and 
the one congratulates me, and the other visits 
me, as if the author of Joan of Arc and of Thai- 
aba were made a great man by scribing for the 
Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

,; I suppose," he continues, " my situation, by 
all these symptoms, to be a good one; for a 
more ambitious man, doubtless very desirable, 
though the ladder is longer than I design to 
climb. My principles and habits are happily 
enough settled ; my objects in life are, leisure to 
do nothing but write, and competence to write 
at leisure ; and my notions of competence do not 
exceed £300 a year. Mr. Corry is a man of 
gentle and unassuming manners : fitter men for 
his purpose he doubtless might have found in 
some respects, none more so in regularity and 
dispatch."* * * *.,.-* * 

These qualities, however, which my father 
might truly say he possessed in a high degree, 
were not called into much exercise by the du- 
ties of his secretaryship, which he thus humor- 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

" London, Nov. 20, 1801. 
" The chancellor and the scribe go on in the 
same way. The scribe has made out a cata- 
logue of all books published since the commence- 
ment of ; 97 upon finance and scarcity; he hath 
also copied a paper written by J. R., containing 
some Irish alderman's hints about oak bark ; and 
nothing more hath the scribe done in his voca- 
tion. Duly he calls at the chancellor's door; 
sometimes he is admitted to immediate audience ; 
sometimes kicketh his heels in the ante-chamber 
(once he kicked them for cold, but now there is 
a fire) ; sometimes a gracious message emanci- 
pates him for the day. Secrecy hath been en- 
joined him as to these state proceedings. On 
three subjects he is directed to read and research 
— corn-laws, finance, tithes, according to their 
written order. Alas ! they are heathen Greek 
to the scribe ! He hath, indeed, in days of old, 
read Adam Smith, and remembereth the general 
principle established ; he presupposeth that about 
corn, as about every thing else, the fewer laws 
the better : of finance he is even more ignorant : 
concerning the tithes, something knoweth he of 
the Levitical law, somewhat approveth he of a 
commutation for land, something suspecteth he 
why they are to be altered ; gladly would the 
people buy off the burden, gladly would the gov- 
ernment receive the purchase money — the scribe 
seeth objections thereunto. Meantime, sundry 



Nov. 11, 1801. 



are the paragraphs that have been imprinted re- 
specting the chancellor and the scribe : they 
have been compared (in defiance of the Butlera- 
boo statute) to Empson and Dudley ; and Peter 
Porcupine hath civilly expressed a hope that the 
poet will make no false numbers in his new work. 
Sometimes the poet is called a Jacobin ; at oth- 
ers it is said that his opinions are revolutionized. 
The chancellor asked him if he would enter a 
reply in that independent paper whose lying 
name is the True Briton, a paper over which 
the chancellor implied he had some influence ; 
the poet replied ' No ; that those flea-bites itch- 
ed only if they were scratched.' The scribe 
hath been courteously treated, and introduced to 
a Mr. Ormsby ; and this is all he knoweth of the 
home politics. 

^f -ft- -Tr *7T -7? -7r * 



'EvprjKa. 'Etvprjua. ~EvprjKa. 

You remember your heretical proposition dt 
Cambro-Britannis — that the Principality had 
never produced, and never could produce, a great 
man; that I opposed Owen Glendower and Sir 
Henry Morgan to the assertion in vain. But I 
have found the great man, and not merely the 
great man, but the maximus homo, the [leyiGTog 
avOponog, the p.tyiaroraroq — we must create a 
super-superlative to reach the idea of his magni- 
tude. I found him in the Strand, in a shop-win- 
dow, laudably therein exhibited by a Cambro- 
Briton ; the engraver represents him sitting in a 
room, that seems to be a cottage, or, at best, a 
farm, pen in hand, eyes uplifted, and underneath 
is inscribed 

1 The Cambrian Shakespear.' 

But woe is me for my ignorance ! the motto that 
followed surpassed my skill in language, though 
it doubtless was a delectable morsel from that 
great Welshman's poems. You must, however, 
allow the justice of the name for him, for all his 
writings are in Welsh ; and the Welshmen say 
that he is as great a man as Shakspeare, and 
they must know, because they can understand 
him. I inquired what might be the trivial name 
of this light and luster of our dark age, but it 
hath escaped me ; but that it meant, being in- 
terpreted, either Thomas Denbigh, or some such 
every-day baptismal denomination. And now I 
am no prophet if you have not, before you have 
arrived thus far, uttered a three-worded sentence 
of malediction. # # # # # 

To-day I dine with Lord Holland. Wynn is in- 
timate with him, and my invitation is for the 
sake of Thalaba. The sale of Thalaba is slow 
— about 300 only gone. 

* ^f ^ ^ ^ ^f ^ 

" Yours truly, 

" R. SOUTHEY." 



Mtat. 28. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



153 



CHAPTER IX. 

HIS MOTHER'S DEATH MELANCHOLY THOUGHTS 

RESIGNS HIS SECRETARYSHIP EDITION OF 

CHATTERTON'S WORKS THOUGHTS OF RESID- 
ING AT RICHMOND AT KESWICK WELL- 
KNOWN PERSONS MET IN LONDON NEGOTIATES 

FOR A HOUSE IN WALES CHRONICLE OF THE 

CID REVIEW OF THALABA IN THE " EDIN- 
BURGH" NEGOTIATION FOR HOUSE BROKEN 

OFF WANT OF MORE BOOKS ALARM OF WAR 

EDINBURGH REVIEW HAYLEY's LIFE OF 

COWPER RECOLLECTIONS OF BRIXTON —- 

EARLY DIFFICULTIES AMADIS OF GAUL THE 

ATLANTIC A GOOD LETTER-CARRIER HOME 

POLITICS SCOTTISH BORDER BALLADS CUM- 
BERLAND'S PLAYS PLAN FOR A BIBLIOTHECA 

BRITANNICA.— 1802, 1803. 

So passed the close of the year. The com- 
nencement of a new one was saddened by his 
mother's last illness. She had joined them in 
London, and a few weeks only elapsed before 
very alarming symptoms appeared. The best 
advice availed not; she sank rapidly, and was 
released on the 5th of January, 1802, being in 
the fiftieth year of her age. My father was 
deeply affected at her death ; for though in child- 
hood he had experienced but little of her care 
and attention, having been so early, as it were, 
adopted by his aunt, he had had the happiness 
of adding much to her comfort and support dur- 
ing her later years. " In her whole illness," he 
writes to his brother Henry, "she displayed a 
calmness, a suppression of complaint, a tender- 
ness toward those around her, quite accordant 
with her whole life. It is a heavy loss. I did 
not know how severe the blow was till it came."* 

The following letter communicates the tidings 
of her death to his friend Mr. Wynn ; and, though 
presenting a painful picture, is yet one of those 
which let in so much light upon the character 
of the writer, that the reader will not wish it to 
have been withheld. 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Saturday, Jan. 9, 1802. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" You will not be surprised to learn that I 
have lost my mother. Early on Tuesday morn- 
ing there came on that difficulty of breathing 
which betokened death. Till then all had been 
easy ; for the most part she had slept, and, when 
waking, underwent no pain but that wretched 
sense of utter weakness ; but then there was the 
struggle and sound in the throat, and the dead- 
ly appearance of the eyes, that had lost all their 
tranquillity. She asked for laudanum : I drop- 
ped some, but with so unsteady a hand that I 
knew not how much ; she saw the color of the 
water, and cried, with a stronger voice than I 
had heard during her illness, ' That's nothing, 
Robert ! thirty drops — six-and-thirty !' 

" It relieved her. She would not suffer me 
to remain by her bedside ; that fearful kindness 



Jan. 6, 1802. 



toward me had, throughout, distinguished her. 
' Go down, my dear ; I shall sleep presently !' 
She knew, and I knew, what that sleep would 
be. However, I bless God the last minutes were 
as easy as death can be : she breathed without 
effort — breath after breath weaker, till all was 
over. I was not then in the room ; but, going 
up to bring down Edith, I could not but look at 
her to see if she was indeed gone : it was against 
my wish and will, but I did look. 

" We had been suffering for twelve hours, and 
the moment of her release was welcome. Like 
one whose limb has just been amputated, he feels 
the immediate ceasing of acute suffering ; the 
pain of the wound soon begins, and the sense of 
the loss continues through life. I calmed and 
curbed myself, and forced myself to employ- 
ment ; but at night there was no sound of feet 
in her bed-room, to which I had been used to list- 
en, and in the morning it was not my first busi- 
ness to see her. I had used to carry her her 
food, for I could persuade her better than any 
one else to the effort of swallowing it. 

" Thank God, it is all over ! Elmsley called 
on me, and offered me money if I needed it : it 
was a kindness that I shall remembexi. Corry 
had paid me a second quarter, however. 

" I have now lost all the friends of my infancy 
and childhood. The whole recollections of my 
first ten years are connected with the dead. 
There lives no one who can share them with 
me. It is losing so much of one's existence. I 
have not been yielding to, or rather indulging, 
grief; that would have been folly. I have read, 
written, talked : Bedford has been often with 
me, and kindly. 

" When I saw her after death, Wynn, the 
whole appearance was so much that of utter 
death, that the first feeling was as if there could 
have been no world for the dead. The feeling 
was very strong, and it required thought and 
reasoning to recover my former certainty, that 
as surely we must live hereafter as all here is 
not the creation of folly or of chance. 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 

The next few months passed by without the 
occurrence of any circumstance worthy of rec- 
ord, his official " duties," which appear to have 
been more nominal than real, being only varied 
by a short visit to Mr. William Taylor at Nor- 
wich. His spirits had not recovered the shock 
they received from his mother's death ; and it 
was plain that, however easy and profitable was 
the appointment he held, it was not sufficiently 
suited to him to induce him long to retain it, al- 
though it afforded him a large share of time for 
his literary pursuits. Of the present course of 
these the following letter will give sufficient in- 
formation : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"London, March 30, 1802. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" I had wondered at your silence, which Cor 



154 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 28. 



rv's servant made longer than it else had been, 
brinorinor me vour letter only yesterday. * 
****** TheSouth- 
ey Gazette is happily barren of intelligence, un- 
less you will hear with interest that I yesterday 
bought the Scriptores Rerum Hispanicarum, af- 
ter a long search ; that the day before, my boots 
came home from the cobbler's; that the gold 



drink water, and drink wine, and eat, and get 
well, and grow into good spirits, and write me a 
letter. Robert Southey." 

In this letter my father speaks of passing his 
holidays in Bristol. A very short time, howev- 
er, only elapsed before he emancipated himself 
altogether from the trammels of his official du- 



come out ; and that I have torn my best panta- 
loons. So life is passing on, and the growth of 
my History satisfies me that it is not passing al- 



leaf which Carlisle stuffed into my tooth is all ties. Mr. Corry, it seems, having little or no 

employment for him as secretary, wished him to 
undertake the tuition of his son ; but as this was 
neither "in the bond," nor at all suited to my 
together unprofitably. One acquaintance drops • father's habits and inclinations, he resigned his 
in to-dav, another to-morrow ; the friends whom i appointment, losing thereby, to use his own 
I have here look in often, and I have rather too words, ' ; a foolish office and a good salary." I 
much society than too little. Yet I am not quite may add, however, that this circumstance only 
the comfortable man I should wish to be ; the , somewhat hastened his resignation, for a situa- 
lamentable rambling to which I am doomed, for j tion which was " all pay and no work" was by no 
God knows how long, prevents my striking root j means suited either to his taste or his conscience. 
any where — and we are the better as well as He now took up his abode once more in Bris- 
the happier for local attachment. Now do I ■ tol. "Here." he writes to Mr. Coleridge, "I 
look round, and can fix upon no spot which I I have meantime a comfortable home, and books 
like better than another, except for its mere nat- ' enough to employ as much time as I can find for 
ural advantages. 'Tis a res damnabilis. Bed- them ; my table is covered with folios, and mv 
lord, to have no family ties that one cares about. History advances steadily, and to my own mind 



And so much for the Azure Fiends, whom I 
shall now take the liberty of turning out of the 
room. I am busy at the Museum, copying un- 
published poems of Chatterton, the which forth- 



well. No other employment pleases me half so 
much : nevertheless, to other employment I am 
compelled by the most cogent of all reasons. I 
have a job in hand for Longman and Rees, which 



with go to press. Soon I go with Edith to pass will bring me in <£60, a possibility of c£40, and 
two or three days at Cheshunt : and, by the close a chance of a further ^630 ; this is an abridg- 
of next month. I make my bow and away for my ment of Amadis of Gaul into three duodecimos, 
holidays to Bristol, that I may be as near Dan- j with an essay — anonymously and secretly : if 
vers and his mother as possible : my strongest . it sell, they will probably proceed through the 



family -like feeling seems to have grown there 

""* * * * * * * 

I wish I were at Bath with you ; 'twould do me 
good all over to have one walk over Combe 
Down. I have often walked there, before we 
were both upon the world. * * * 

* * * * Oh ! that I could catch 
Old Time, and give him warm water, and anti- 



whole library of romance. 
* * * In poetry I have, of late, done 
very little, some fourscore lines the outside ; still 
I feel myself strong enough to open a campaign, 
and this must probably be done to find beds, 
chairs, and tables for my house when I get one."* 
But the various works here alluded to are not 
the only ones upon which my father had been 



monial powder, and ipecacuanha, till he brought j lately engaged. A native of Bristol himself, he 
up again the last nine years ! Not that I want had always taken a strong interest in Chatter- 
them all ; but I do wish there was a house at ton's writings and history : 
Bath wherein I had a home-feeling, and that it ....«• The marvelous boy, 

were possible ever again to feel as I have felt That sleepless soul that perish d in his pride :"t 

returning from school along the Bristol road, so much so, that the neglect of his relatives, who 
Eheufugaccs, Posthume, Posthume ! The years J were in distressed circumstances, forms the sub- 
may go j but I wish so many good things did not jeet of some indignant stanzas in one of his earli- 
go with them, the pleasures, and the feelings, j est unpublished poetical compositions ; and, dur- 
and the ties of youth. Blessings on the Moors, ing his last residence in Bristol, his sympathies 
and the Spaniards, and the Portuguese, and the had been especially enlisted by Mr. Cottle in be- 
saints ! I yet feel an active and lively interest half of Mrs. Newton, Chatterton's sister. 



in my pursuits. I have made some progress in 
what promises to be a good chapter about the 
Moorish period ; and I have finished the first six 
reigns, and am now more than half way through 
a noble black-letter chronicle of Alonzo the Xlth. 
to collate with the seventh. The Life of the Cid 
will be a fit frame for a picture of the manners 
of his time, and a curious picture it will be : 
putting all that is important in my text, and all 
that is quaint in my notes. I shall make a good 
book. 

"Ride. Grosvenor. and walk, and bathe, and 



Some time previously, Sir Herbert Croft had 
obtained possession from Mrs. Newton of all her 
brother's letters and MSS., under promise of 
speedily returning them ; instead of which, some 
months afterward, he incorporated and published 
them in a pamphlet entitled "Love and Mad- 
ness." At the use thus surreptitiously made of 
her brother's writings, Mrs. Newton more than 
once remonstrated ; but, beyond the sun of <£l 0, 
she could obtain no redress. Mr. Cottle and 



July 25, I80a 



t \Vor\lswerth. 



tEtat. 28. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



155 



my father now took the matter up, and the for- 
mer wrote to Sir H. Croft, pointing out to him 
Mrs. Newton's reasonable claim, and urging him, 
by a. timely concession, to prevent that publicity 
which otherwise would follow. He received no 
answer ; and my father then determined to print 
by subscription all Chatterton's works, including 
those ascribed to Rowley, for the benefit of Mrs. 
Newton and her daughter. He accordingly sent 
proposals to the " Monthly Magazine," in which 
he detailed the whole case between Mrs. New- 
ton and Sir Herbert Croft, and published their re- 
spective letters. The public sympathized rightly 
on the occasion, for a handsome subscription fol- 
lowed. Sir Herbert Croft was residing in Den- 
mark at the time these proposals were published, 
and he replied to my father's statement by a 
pamphlet full of much personal abuse. 

It was now arranged that a new edition of 
Chatterton's works should be jointly edited by 
Mr. Cottle and my father, the former undertak- 
ing the consideration of the authenticity of Row- 
ley, the latter the general arrangement of the 
work. It was published, in three vols, octavo, 
at the latter end of the present year (1802), and 
the editors had the satisfaction of paying over 
to Mrs. Newton and her daughter upward of 
c£300, a sum which was the means of rescuing 
them from great poverty in their latter days. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Kingsdown, July 25, 1802. 
" Grosvenor, I do not like the accounts which 
reach me of your health. Elmsley says you 
look ill ; your friend Smith tells me the same 
tale ; and I know you are not going the way to 
amendment. Instead of that office and regular 
business, you ought to be in the country, with 
no other business than to amuse yourself: a 
longer stay at Bath would have benefited you. 
If the waters were really of use to you, you 
ought to give them a longer trial. * * 

W 1 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ * Ir 

As for ' It can't be,' and ' I must be at the of- 
fice,' and such like phrases, when a man is seri- 
ously ill they mean nothing.* 

" Tom is with me, and has been here about a 
fortnight, and kept me in as wholesome a state 
of idleness as I wish you to enjoy. 

" Since the last semi-letter I wrote, my state 
affairs have been settled, and my unsecretaryfi- 
cation completed — a good sinecure gone ; but, 
instead of thinking the loss unlucky, I only think 
how lucky it was I ever had it. A light heart 
and a thin pair of breeches — you know the song ; 
and it applies, for, breeches being the generic 
name, pantaloons are included in all their modi- 
fications, and I sit at the present writing in a 
pair of loose jean trowsers without lining. 

" So many virtues were discovered in me when 
I was Mr. Secretary, that I suppose nothing short 
of sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion will 



* " Have you time to die, sir?" was the home question 
of a London physician to a patient, a lawyer in full prac- 
tice, who was making similar excuses for not taking his 
prescription of rest and freedom from anxious thought; 
and it admitted but of one reply. 



be found possible reasons for my loss of office. 
The old devil will be said to have entered, hav- 
ing taken with him seven other evil spirits, and 
the last state of that man (meaning me) will be 
worse than the first. 

" But I hope I am coming to live near London 
— not in its filth. If John May can find me a 
good snug house about Richmond, there I will 
go, and write my History, and work away mer- 
rily ; and I will drink wine when I can afford it, 
and when I can not, strong beer shall be the nec- 
tar — nothing like stingo ! and if that were to 
fail too, laudanum is cheap : the Turks have 
found that out; and while there are poppies, no 
man need go to bed sober for want of his most 
gracious majesty's picture. And there will be 
a spare bed at my Domus — mark you that, Gros- 
venor Bedford ! and Tom's cot into the bargain ; 
and, from June till October, always a cold pie in 
the cupboard; and I have already got a kitten 
and a dog in remainder — but that is a contin- 
gency ; and you know there is the contingency 
of another house animal, whom I already feel 
disposed to call whelp and dog, and all those 
vocables of vituperation by which a man loves to 
call those he loves best. 

" Eblis's angels sometimes go up to peep at 
the table of fate, and then get knocked on the 
head with stars, as we see ; only foolish people, 
such as we are, mistake them for shooting stars. 
I should like one look at the table, just to see 
what will happen before the end of the year — 
not to the world in general, nor to Europe, nor 
to Napoleon, nor to King George, but to the 
center to which these great men and these great 
things are very remote radii — to my own micro- 
cosm — hang the impudence of that mock-mod- 
esty phrase ! — 'tis a megalocosm, and a megisto- 
cosm, and a megistatocosm too to me ; and I 
care more about it than about all the old uni- 
verse, with Mr. Herschel's new little planets to 
boot. Vale, vale, mi sodales. R. S." 

To S. T Coleridge, Esq. 

"Bristol, Aug. 4, 1802. 
" In reply to your letter, there are so many 
things to be said that I know not where to be- 
gin. First and foremost, then, about Keswick, 
and the pros and cons for domesticating there. 
To live cheap — to save the crushing expense of 
furnishing a house ; sound, good, mercantile mo- 
tives ! Then come the ghosts of old Skiddaw 
and Great Robinson — the whole eye-wantonness 
of lakes and mountains, and a host of other feel- 
ings, which eight years have modified and mold- 
ed, but which have rooted like oaks, the stronger 
for their shaking. But then your horrid lati- 
tude ! and incessant rains ! # # # 
and I myself one of your green-house plants, 
pining for want of sun. For Edith, her mind's 
eyes are squinting about it; she wants to go, 
and she is afraid for my health. * * # 
Some time hence I must return to Portugal, to 
complete and correct my materials and outlines : 
whenever that may be, there will be a hindc ranee 
and a loss in disposing of furniture, supposing I 



156 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 28. 



had it. Now I am supposing that this I oiould 
find at Keswick, and this preponderance would 
fall like a ton weight in the scale. 

As to your Essays, &c, &c, you spawn plans 
like a herring ; I only wish as many of the seed 
were to vivify in proportion. * * * 

### *#*=*# 

Your Essays on Cotemporaries I am not much 
afraid of the imprudence of, because I have no 
expectation that they will ever be written ; but 
if you were to write, the scheme projected upon 
the old poets would be a better scheme, because 
more certain of sale, and in the execution noth- 
ing invidious. Besides, your sentence would fall 
with greater weight upon the dead : however 
impartial you may be, those who do not read 
your books will think your opinion the result of 
your personal attachments, and that very belief 
will prevent numbers from reading it. Again, 
there are some of these living poets to whom you 
could not fail of giving serious pain — Hayley, in 
particular ; and every thing about that man is 
good except his poetry. Bloomfield I saw in 
London, and an interesting man he is — even 
more than you would expect. I have renewed 
his Poems with the express object of serving 
him ; because, if his fame keeps up to another 
volume, he will have made money enough *o sup- 
port him comfortably in the country; but in a 
work of criticism, how could you bring him to 
the touchstone ? and to lessen his reputation is 
to mar his fortune. 

'"We shall probably agree altogether some 
day upon Wordsworth's Lyrical Poems. Does 
he not associate more feeling with particular 
phrases, and you also with him, than those 
phrases can convey to any one else? This I 
suspect. Who would part with a ring of a dead 
friend's hair? and yet a jeweler will give for it 
only the value of the gold : and so must words 
pass for their current value. 

" I saw a number of notorious people after you 
left London. Mrs. Inchbald — an odd woman, 
but I like her. Campbell * * who 
spoke of old Scotch ballads with contempt ! 
Fuseli * * Flaxman, whose touch 
is better than his feeling. Bowles * * 

Walter Whiter, who wanted to convert me to 
believe in Rowley. Perkins, the Tractorist,* a 
demure-looking rogue. Dr. Busby — oh ! what 
a Dr. Busby ! — the great musician ! the greater 
than Handel ! who is to be the husband of St. 
Cecilia in his seraph state, # # =* 

and he set at me with a dead compliment ! 
Lastly, Barry, the painter : poor fellow ! he is 
too mad and too miserable to laugh at. 

'• Heber sent certain volumes of Thomas 
Aquinas to your London lodgings, where perad- 
venture they still remain. I have one volume 
of the old Jockey, containing quaint things about 
angels, and one of Scotus Erigena : but if there 



This alludes to Perkins's magnetic Tractors. 



be any pearls in those dunghills, you must be the 
cock to scratch them out — that is not my dung- 
hill. What think you of thirteen folios of Fran- 
ciscan history? I am grown a great Jesuit- 
ophilist, and begin to think that they were the 
most enlightened personages that ever conde- 
scended to look after this ' little snug farm of the 
earth.' Loyola himself was a mere friar f 
but the missionaries were made of admirable 
stuff. There are some important questions aris- 
ing out of this subject. The Jesuits have not 
only succeeded in preaching Christianity where 
our Methodists, &c, fail, but where all the other 
orders of their own church have failed also : they 
had the same success every where, in Japan as 
in Brazil. # =*=&## * 

My love to Sara, if so it must be # # 

however, as it is the casting out of a Spiritus 
Asper — which is an evil spirit — for the omen's 
sake. Amen ! Tell me some more, as Moses 
says, about Keswick, for I am in a humor to be 
persuaded — and if I may keep a jackass there 
for Edith ! I have a wolf-skin great-coat, so hot 
that it is impossible to wear it here. Now, is 
not that a reason for going where it may bo 
useful ? Vale. R. S." 

The following month, September, was mark 
ed by the birth of his first child, a daughter, 
named after her paternal grandmother, Mar- 
garet; and, ardently as he had always wished 
for children, the blessing was most joyfully and 
thankfully welcomed. But the hopes thus raised 
were doomed in this case to be soon blasted. 

My father was now becoming weary of being 
a wanderer upon the face of the earth, and hav- 
ing now a nursery as well as a library to re- 
move, a permanent residence was becoming al- 
most a matter of necessity. His thoughts, as we 
have seen, had at one time turned toward set- 
tling at Richmond, and latterly more strongly 
toward Cumberland ; but for a while he gave up 
this scheme, attracted by the greater convenien- 
ces of Wales, and he now entered into treaty 
for a house in Glamorganshire, in the Vale of 
Neath, " one of the loveliest spots," he thought 
it, in Great Britain. " There," he says, " I 
mean to remain, and work steadily at my His- 
tory till it be necessary for me to go to Portu- 
gal, to correct what I shall have done, and hunt 
out new materials. This will be two years 
hence ; and if the place answer my wishes, I 
shall not forsake it then, but return there as to 
a permanent residence. One of the motives for 
fixing there is the facility afforded of acquiring 
the Welsh language."* 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Nov. 28, 1802. 
"Dear Grosvexor, 

I thought you would know from Wynn that 
I trespass on my eyes only for short letters, or 
from Rickman, to whom my friend Danvers will 
have carried the latest news of me this day. If 



* To William Taylor, Esq., Nov. 21, 1802. 



iETAT. 29. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



157 



those unhappy eyes had been well, you would, 
ere this, have received Kchama. They have 
been better, and are again worse, in spite of 
lapis calaminaris, goulard, Cayenne pepper, and 
the surgeon's lance ; but they will soon be well, 
so I believe and trust. You have seen my Cid, 
and have not seen what I wrote to Wynn about 
its manner. Every where possible the story is 
told in the very phrase of the original chronicles, 
which are almost the oldest works in the Castil- 
ian language. The language, in itself poetical, 
becomes more poetical by necessary compres- 
sion ; if it smack of romance, so does the story : 
in the notes, the certain will be distinguished 
from the doubtful passages quoted, and refer- 
ences to author and page uniformly given. Thus 
much of this, which is no specimen of my his- 
torical style : indeed, I do not think uniformity 
of style desirable ; it should rise and fall with 
the subject, and adapt itself to the matter. 
Moreover, in my own judgment, a little pecul- 
iarity of style is desirable, because it nails down 
the matter to the memory. You remember the 
facts of Livy ; but you remember the very 
phrases of Tacitus and Sallust, and the phrase 
reminds you of the matter when it would else 
have been forgotten. This may be pushed, like 
every thing, too far, 'and become ridiculous ; but 
the principle is true. 

" As a different specimen, I wish you could 
see a life of St. Francisco, a section upon Mo- 
hammedanism, and a chapter upon the Moorish 
period. Oh, these eyes ! these eyes ! to have 
my brain in labor, and this spell to prevent de- 
livery like a cross-legged Juno ! Farewell till 
to-morrow ; I must sleep, and laze, and play 
whist till bed-time. 

"*##*## Snakes 
have been pets in England : is it not Cowley 
who has a poem upon one ? 

' Take heed, fair Eve, you do not make 
Another tempter of the snake.' 

They ought to be tamed and taken into our serv- 
ice, for snakes eat mice, and can get into their 
holes after them ; and, in our country, the ven- 
omous species is so rare, that we should think 
them beautiful animals were it not for the rec- 
ollection of the Old Serpent. When I am housed 
and homed (as I shall be, or hope to be, in the 
next spring ; not that the negotiation is over yet, 
but I expect it will end well, and that I shall 
have a house in the loveliest part of South Wales, 
in a vale between high mountains ; and an ony- 
mous house too, Grosvenor, and one that is down 
in the map of Glamorganshire, and its name is 
Maes Gwyn ; and so much for that, and there's 
an end of my parenthesis), then do I purpose to 
enter into a grand confederacy with certain of 
the animal world : every body has a dog, and 
most people have a cat ; but I will have, more- 
over, an otter, and teach him to fish, for there is 
salmon in the River Neath (and I should like a 
hawk, but that is only a vain hope, and a gull 
or an osprey to fish in the sea), and I will have 
a snake if Edith will let me, and I will have a 
toad to catch flies, and it shall be made murder 



to kill a spider in my domains : then, Grosvenor, 
when you come to visit me — N.B., you will ar- 
rive per mail between five and six in the morn- 
ing at Neath ; ergo, you will find me at break- 
fast about seven — you will see puss on the one 
side, and the otter on the other, both looking for 
bread and milk, and Margery in her little great 
chair, and the toad upon the tea-table, and the 
snake twisting up the leg of the table to look for 
his share. These two pages make a letter of 
decent length from such a poor blind Cupid as 
"Robert Southey." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Dec. 22, 1802. 

" Vidi the Review of Edinburgh. The first 
part is designed evidently as an answer to Words- 
worth's Preface to the second edition of the Lyr- 
ical Ballads ; and, however relevant to me, quoad 
Robert Southey, is certainly utterly irrelevant to 
Thalaba. In their account of the story they 
make some blunders of negligence : they ask 
how Thalaba knew that he was to be the De- 
stroyer, forgetting that the Spirit told him so in 
the text ; they say that the inscription of the lo- 
cust's forehead teaches him to read the ring, 
which is not the case ; and that Mohareb tries 
to kill him at last, though his own life would be 
destroyed at the same time, without noticing 
that that very ' though' enters into the passage, 
and the reason why is given. I added all the 
notes for the cause which they suspect : they 
would have accused me of plagiarism where 
they could have remembered the original hint ; 
but they affirm that all is thus borrowed — with- 
out examining, when all that belongs to anoth- 
er is subtracted, what quantity of capital re- 
mains. This is dishonest, for there is no hint 
to be found elsewhere for the best parts of the 
poem, and the most striking incidents of the 
story. 

" The general question concerning my system 
and taste is one point at issue, the meter another. 
These gentlemen who say that the meter of the 
Greek choruses is difficult to understand at a first 
reading, have, perhaps, made it out at last, else 
I should plead the choruses as precedent, and the 
odes of Stolberg in German, and the Ossian of 
Cesarotti in Italian ; but this has been done in 
the M. Magazine's review of Thalaba. For the 
question of taste, I shall enter into it when I 
preface Madoc. I believe we are both classics 
in our taste ; but mine is of the Greek, theirs of 
the Latin school. I am for the plainness of He- 
siod and Homer, they for the richness and orna- 
ments of Virgil. They want periwigs placed 
upon bald ideas. A narrative poem must have 
its connecting parts : it can not be all interest 
and incident, no more than a picture all light, a 
tragedy all pathos. # ' # - # The 
review altogether is a good one, and will be bet- 
ter than any London one, because London re- 
viewers always know something of the authors 
who appear before them, and this inevitably af- 
fects the judgment. I, myself, get the worth- 
less poems of some good-natured person whom I 



158 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 29. 



know. I am aware of what review-phrases go 
for, and contrive to give that person no pain, and 
deal out such milk-and-water praise as will do 
no harm : to speak of smooth versification, and 
moral tendency, &c, &c, will take in some to 
buy the book, while it serves as an emollient 
mixture for the patient. I have rarely scratched 
without giving a plaster for it, except, indeed, 
where a fellow puts a string of titles to his name, 

or such an offender as appears, and then 

my inquisitorship, instead of actually burning 
him, only ties a few crackers to his tail. 

" But when any Scotchman's book shall come 
to be reviewed, then see what the Edinburgh 
critics will say. # # # Their 

philosophy appears in their belief in Hindoo 
chronology ! and when they abuse Parr's style, 
it is rather a knock at the dead lion, old Johnson. 
A first number has great advantages ; the re- 
viewers say their say upon all subjects, and lay 
down the law : that contains the Institutes ; by- 
and-by they can only comment. 



" God bless 



R. S.' 



In the mean time, my father's pleasant antici- 
pations of living in Wales were suddenly all frus- 
trated ; for, just as the treaty was on the point 
of being concluded, it occurred to him that some 
small additions were wanting in the kitchen de- 
partment, and this request the landlord so stoutly 
resisted, that the negotiation was altogether bro- 
ken off in consequence. 

Upon this slight occurrence, he used to say, 
hinged many of the outward circumstances of his 
future life ; and much and deeply as he after- 
ward became attached to the lakes and mount- 
ains of Cumberland, he would often speak with 
something like regret of Maes Gwyn and the 
Vale of Neath. 

Meanwhile his literary labors were proceeding 
much in their usual course, notwithstanding the 
complaint in his eyes. "I am reviewing for 
Longman," he says at this time ; " reviewing for 
Hamilton ; translating, perhaps about again to 
versify for the Morning Post : drudge — drudge 
' — drudge. Do you know Quarks' s emblem of 
the soul that tries to fly, but is chained by the 
leg to earth ? For myself I could do easily, but 
not easily for others, and there are more claims 
than one upon me."* 

From some cause or other, his correspondence 
seems somewhat to have diminished at this time ; 
the few letters, however, that I am able to select 
relating to this period are not devoid of interest. 



the historian feels daily and hourly the want of 
materials. I believe I must visit London for the 
1 sake of the Museum, but not till the spring be far 
advanced, and warm enough to write with toler- 
able comfort in their reading-room. My History 
of Monachism can not be complete without the 
Benedictine History of Mabillon. There is an- 
other book in the Museum which must be noticed 
literally or put in a note — the Book of the Con- 
formities of St. Francis and Jesus Christ ! I have 
thirteen folios of Franciscan history in the house, 
and yet want the main one, Wadding's Seraphic 
Annual, which contains the original bulls. 

" Of the Beguines I have, as yet, found neither 
traces nor tidings, except that I have seen the 
name certainly among the heretic list; but my 
monastic knowledge is very far from complete. 
I know only the outline for the two centuries be- 
tween Francisco and Luther, and nothing but 
Jesuit history from that period. 

" Do not suspect me of querulousness. Labor 
is my amusement, and nothing makes me growl 
but that the kind of labor can not be wholly my 
own choice — that I must lay aside old chronicles, 
and review modern poems ; instead of composing 
from a full head, that I must write like a school- 
boy upon some idle theme on which nothing can 
be said or ought to be said. I believe the best 
thing will be as you hope, for, if I live and do 
well, my History shall be done, and that will be 
a fortune to a man economical from habit, and 
moderate in his wants and wishes from feeling 
and principle. 

" Coleridge is with me at present : he talks of 
going abroad, for, poor fellow, he suffers terribly 
from this climate. You bid me come with the 
swallows to London ! I wish I could go with 
the swallows in their winterly migration. * 

* # # # # 



To John Hickman, Esq. 



" My dear Rickman, 
u * # # # 



'Jan. 30, 1803. 



" Yours affectionately, 



R. S. 



1 am rich in books, considered as plain and poor 
Robert Southey, and in foreign books considered 
as an Englishman ; but, for my glutton appetite 
and healthy digestion, my stock, is but small, and 

* To William Taylor, Esq., January 23, 1803. 



To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" Bristol, March 14, 1803. 
"Dear Coleridge, 
" It is nearly a week now since Danvers awl 
I returned from Row T nham, and now the burden 
will soon fall off my shoulders, and I shall feel 
as light as old Christian when he had passed the 
directing post : forty guineas' worth of reviewing 
has been hard work. * * * * 

# #####*# 

The very unexpected and extraordinary alarm 
brought by yesterday's papers may in some de- 
gree affect my movements, for it has made Tom 
write to offer his services ; and if the country 
arm, of course he will be employed. But quid 
Diabolus is all this about ? Stuart writes well 
upon the subject, yet I think he overlooks some 
circumstances in Bonaparte's conduct which just- 
ify some delay in yielding Alexandria and Mal- 
ta : that report of Sebastiani's was almost a dec- 
laration that France would take Egypt as soon 
as we left it. You were a clearer-sighted poli- 
tician than I. If war there must be, the St. Do- 
mingo business will have been the cause, though 
not the pretext, and that rascal will set the poor 



Mt\t. 29. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



159 



negroes cutting English throats instead of French 
h ones. It is true, country is of less consequence 
than color there, and these black gentlemen can 
not be very wrong if the throat be a white one ; 
but it would be vexatious if the followers of 
Toussaint should be made the tools of Bona- 
parte. 

" Meantime, what becomes of your scheme 
of traveling ? If France goes to war, Spain 
must do the same, even if the loss of Trinidad 
did not make them inclined to it. You must not 
think of the Western Islands or the Canaries ; 
they are prisons from whence it is very difficult 
to escape, and where you would be cut off from 
all regular intercourse with England ; besides, 
the Canaries will be hostile ports. In the West 
Indies you ought not to trust your complexion. 
When the tower of Siloam fell, it did not give 
all honest people warning to stand from under. 
How is the climate of Hungary ? Your German 
would carry you there, and help you there till 
you learned a Sclavonic language ; and you 
might take home a profitable account of a coun- 
try and a people little known. If it should be 
too cold a winter residence, you might pass the 
summer there, and reach Constantinople or the 
better parts of Asia Minor in the winter. This 
looks like a tempting scheme on paper, and will 
be more tempting if you look at the map ; but, 
for all such schemes, a companion is almost nec- 
essary. 

" The Edinburgh Review will not keep its 
ground. It consists of pamphlets instead of crit- 
ical accounts. There is the quantity of a three 
shilling pamphlet in one article upon the Balance 
of Power, in which the brimstone-fingered son 
of oatmeal says that wars now are carried on by 
the sacrifice of a few useless millions and more 
useless lives, and by a few sailors fighting harm- 
lessly upon the barren ocean : these are his very 
words. # # # # He thinks 
there can be no harm done unless an army were 
to come and eat up all the sheep's trotters in 
Edinburgh. If they buy many books at Gun- 
ville,* let them buy the Engleish metrical ro- 
mancees published by Ritson : it is, indeed, a 
treasure of true old poetry : the expense of pub- 
lication is defrayed by Ellis. Ritson is the odd- 
est, but most honest of all our antiquarians, and 
he abuses Percy and Pinkerton with less mercy 
than justice. With somewhat more modesty 
than Mister Pinkerton, as he calls him, he has 
mended the spelling of our language, and, with- 
out the authority of an act of Parliament, chang- 
ed the name of the very country he lives in into 
Engleland. The beauty of the common stanza 
will surprise you. 

" Cowper's Life is the most pick-pocket work, 
for its shape and price, and author and pub- 
lisher, that ever appeared. It relates very little 
of the man himself. This sort of delicacy seems 
quite groundless toward a man who has left no 
relations or connections who could be hurt by the 
most explicit biographical detail. His letters 

* Tho seat of Mr. Wedgewood. 



are not what one does expect, and yet what one 
ought to expect, for Cowper was not a strong- 
minded man even in his best moments. The 
very few opinions that he gave upon authors are 
quite ludicrous ; he calls Mr. Park 

. . . . ' that comical spark, 
Who wrote to ask me for a Joan of Arc' 

' One of our best hands' in poetry. Poor wretch- 
ed man ! the Methodists among whom he lived 
made him ten times madder than he could else 
have been. ####=*# 
" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Bristol, April 3, 1803. 
" I have been thinking of Brixton, Grosvenor, 
for these many days past, when more painful 
thoughts would give me leave. An old lady, 
whom I loved greatly, and have for the last eight 
years regarded with something like a filial ven- 
eration, has been carried off by this influenza. 
She was mother to Danvers, with whom I have 
so long been on terms of the closest intimacy. 

* * * * Your ejection from 
Brixton has very long been in my head as one 
of the evil things to happen in 1803, though it 
was not predicted in Moore's Almanac. How- 
ever, I am glad to hear you have got a house, 

* * # and still more, that it is an 
old house. I love old houses best, for the sake 
of the odd closets, and cupboards, and good thick 
walls that don't let the wind blow in, and little 
out-of-the-way polyangular rooms with great 
beams running across the ceiling — old heart of 
oak, that has outlasted half a score generations ; 
and chimney-pieces with the date of the year 
carved above them, and huge fire-places that 
warmed the shins of Englishmen before the 
house of Hanover came over. The most delight- 
ful associations that ever made me feel, and think, 
and fall a dreaming, are excited by old buildings 
— not absolute ruins, but in a state of decline. 
Even the clipped yews interest me ; and if I 
found one in any garden that should become mine, 
in the shape of a peacock, I should be as proud 
to keep his tail well spread as the man who first 
carved him. In truth, I am more disposed to 
connect myself by sympathy with the ages which 
are past, and by hope with those that are to come, 
than to vex and irritate myself by any lively in- 
terest about the existing generation. 

"Your letter was unusually interesting, and 
dwells upon my mind. I could, and perhaps 
will, some day, write an eclogue upon leaving 
an old place of residence. What you say of 
yourself impresses upon me still more deeply the 
conviction that the want of a favorite pursuit is 
your greatest source of discomfort and discon 
tent. It is the pleasure of pursuit that makes 
every man happy, whether the merchant, or the 
sportsman, or the collector, the philobibl, or the 
reader -o-bibl, and maker-o-bibl like me : pursuit 
at once supplies employment and hope. This is 
what I have often preached to you. but perhaps 
I never told you what benefit I myself have dp- 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 29. 



160 

rived from resolute employment. When Joan of 
Arc was in the press, I had as many legitimate 
causes for unhappiness as any man need have — 
uncertainty for the future, and immediate want, 
in the literal and plain meaning of the word. I 
often walked the streets at dinner-time for want 
of a dinner, when I had not eighteen pence for 
the ordinary, nor bread and cheese at my lodg- 
ings. But do not suppose that I thought of my 
dinner when I was walking — my head was full 
of what I was composing. When I lay down at 
night, I was planning my poem ; and when I 
rose up in the morning, the poem was the first 
thought to which I was awake. The scanty 
profits of that poem I was then anticipating in 
my lodging-house bills for tea, bread and butter, 
and those little &cs., which amount to a formi- 
dable sum when a man has no resources ; but that 
poem, faulty as it is, has given me a Baxter's 
shove into my right place in the world. 

" So much for the practical effects of Epic- 
tetus, to whom I hold myself indebted for much 
amendment of character. Now — when I am not 
comparatively, but positively, a happy man. wish- 
ing little, and wanting nothing — my delight is 
the certainty that, while I have health and eye- 
sight, I can never want a pursuit to interest. Sub- 
ject after subject is chalked out. In hand I have 
Kehama, Madoc, and a voluminous history ; and 
I have planned more poems and more histories ; 
so that, whenever I am removed to another state 
of existence, there will be some valde lacryma- 
bile hiatus in some of my posthumous works. 

" We have all been ill with La Gripe. But 
the death of my excellent old friend is a real 
grief, and one that will long be felt : the pain 
of amputation is nothing ; it is the loss of the 
limb that is the evil. She influenced my every- 
day thought, and one of my pleasures was to af- 
ford her any of the little amusements which age 
and infirmities can enjoy. ^ # # # 
## ###### 

When do I go to London ? If I can avoid it, not 
so soon as I had thought. The journey, and 
some unavoidable weariness in tramping over 
that overgrown metropolis, half terrifies me ; 
and then the thought of certain pleasures, such 
as seeing Rickman, and Duppa, and Wynn, and 
Grosvenor Bedford, and going to the old book- 
shops, half tempts me. I am working very hard 
to fetch up my lee-way ; that is, I am making 
up for time lost during my ophthalmia. Fifty- 
four more pages of Amadis, and a preface — no 
more to do — huzza ! land ! land ! 

i: God bless you! R. S." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

"Bristol, April 22, 1S03. 
" My dear Ton, 
"Huzza! huzza! huzza! Tbe bottle is a 
good post, and the Atlantic delivers letters ac- 
cording to direction. 

•"Yours of May 23, 1802 . Lat. 33° 46' N., 
Lon. 64° 27' W., 



was found by Messrs. Calmer and Seymour, of 
St. Salvador's, Dec. 18, 1802, on the N.W. of 

that island Lat. 23° 30' N., 

Lon. 73° 30' W., 
very civilly inclosed by some Mr. Aley Pratt, Feb. 
10, sent per Betsey Cains, Capt. Wilmott, and 
has this day reached me from Ramsgate, to my 
very great surprise and satisfaction. You had 
sealed it so clumsily that some of the writing 
was torn, and the salt water had got at it, so 
that the letter is in a ruinous state ; but it shall 
be preserved as the greatest curiosity in my col- 
lection. I shall send the account to Stuart. 

" I did heartily regret that you were not here. 
We would have drawn a cork in honor of Messrs. 
Calmer and Seymour, and Aley Pratt, who, by 
keeping the letter two months, really seem to 
have been sensible that the letter was of value. 

, When I consider the quadrillion of chances against 
such a circumstance, it seems like a dream — the 
middle of the Atlantic, thrown in there ! cast on 
a corner of St. Salvador's, and now here, at No. 
12 St. James's Place, Kingsdown, Bristol — hunt- 

; ing me through the ocean to the Bahamas, and 

' then to this very individual spot. Oh, that the 
bottle had kept a log-book ! If the Bottle-con- 
jurer had been in it, now ! 

" I think this letter decisive of a current . 

I chance winds would never have carried it 60(? 

! miles in less than seven months ; and, if I recol 
lect right, by theory there ought to be a current 

\ in that direction. Supposing the bottle to have 
been found the very day it landed, it must have 
sailed at the rate, of three knots in a day ana 

I night : it was picked up 209 days after the post 
set off. More letters should be thrown over- 
board about the same latitude ; and then, when 
we have charts of all the currents, some dozen 
centuries hence, that particular one shall be call- 
ed Southey's Current. # # # # 
The news is all pacific, and I fully expect you 
will be paid off ere long. All goes on as usual 
here. Margaret screams as loud as the parrot ; 
that talent she inherited. # * # 
" God bless you ! R. Southey." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M. S. Galatea. 

"Bristol, May 30, 1803. 
" Why, Tom ! you must be mad — stark, star- 
ing mad — jumping mad — horn mad, to be lying 
in port all this time ! For plain or stark mad- 
ness I should prescribe a simple strait waistcoat ; 
staring madness may be alleviated by the use of 
green spectacles ; for jumping madness I have 
found a remedy in a custom used by the Siamese : 
when they take prisoners, they burn their feet 
to prevent them from running away ; horn mad- 
ness is, indeed, beyond my skill ; for that, Doc- 
tor's Commons is the place. I am vexed and 
provoked for you to see prizes brought in under 
your nose. ##=*##=* 
=**# ##*#* 

My books have had an increase since you left. 
I have bought a huge lot of Cody, tempted by 
the price — books of voyages and travels, and the 
Asiatic Researches. The Annual Review is not 



^Etat. 29. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



161 



yet published. Araadis still goes on slowly, but 

draws near an end Do you see — 

and if you have seen the Morning Post, you will 
have seen — that a poern upon Amadis is adver- 
tised? This is curious enough. It seems by 
the advertisement that it only takes in the first 
book. If the author have either any civility or 
any brains, he will send me a copy ; the which 
" am not so desirous of as I should be, as it will 
cost me twenty shillings to send him one in re- 
turn. However, I shall like to see his book : it 
may make a beautiful poem, and it looks well 
that he has stopped at the first book, and avoided 
the length of story ; but, unless he be a very 
good poet indeed, I should prefer the plain dress 
of romance. 

' ; I have been very hard at history, and have 
almost finished, since your departure, that thick 
folio chronicle which you may remember I was 
about skin-deep in, and which has supplied me 
with matter for half a volume. This war ter- 
rifies and puzzles me about Portugal. I think 
of going over alone this next winter, while I 
can. I have fifteen quartos on the way from 
Lisbon; and, zounds! if they should be taken! 
Next month I shall go to Lon- 
don. The hard exercise of walking the streets 
will do me good. My picture in the Exhibi- 
tion* pleases every body, I hear : I wish you had 
seen it. 

'• • -V' •& <& •Jfc -^ =& 3k 

TV* *7V "A* ■7V' -7T "7v" "7\* 

Remember my advice about all Dutch captains 
in your cruise : go always to the bottom in your 
examination; tin cases will sound if they be kick- 
ed, and paper will rustle ; to you it may be the 
winning a prize : the loss is but a kick, and that 
the Dutchman gains. Do you know that I actu- 
ally must learn Dutch ! that I can not complete 
the East Indian part of my history without it. 
Good-by. R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

"June 9, 1803. 

" I have just gone through the Scottish Border 
Ballads. Walter Scott himself is a man of great 
talent and genius ; but, wherever he patches an 
old poem, it is always with new bricks. Of the 
modern ballads, his own fragment is the only good 
one, and that is very good. I am sorry to see 
Leyden's good for so little. Sir Agrethorn is 
fiat, foolish, Matthewish, Gregoryish, Lewisish. 
I have been obliged to coin vituperative adjec- 
tives on purpose, the language not having terms 
enough of adequate abuse. I suppose the word 
Flodden Field entitles it to a place here, but the 
scene might as well have been laid in El Dorado, 
or Tothill Fields, or the country of Prester John, 
for any thing like costume which it possesses. 
It is odd enough that almost every passage which 
Scott has quoted from Froissart should be among 
the extracts which I had made. 

" In all these modern ballads there is a mod- 
ernism of thought and language-turns to me very 
perceptible and very unpleasant, the more so for 

* This picture was by Opie. 



its mixture with antique words — polished steel 
and rusty iron ! This is the case in all Scott's 
ballads. His Eve of St. John's is a better bal- 
lad in story than any of mine, but it has this 
fault. Elmsley once asked me to versify that on 
the Glenfinlas — to try the difference of style ; 
but I declined it, as waste labor and an invidi- 
ous task. Matthew G. Lewis, Esq., M.P., sins 
more grievously in this way; he is not enough 
versed in old English to avoid it : Scott and Ley- 
den are, and ought to have written more purely. 
I think, if you will look at Q. Orraca, you will 
perceive that, without being a canto from our 
old ballads, it has quite the ballad character of 
language. 

" Scott, it seems, adopts the same system of 
meter with me, and varies his tune in the same 
stanza from iambic to anapaestic ad libitum. In 
spite of all the trouble that has been taken to 
torture Chaucer into heroic meter, I have no 
doubt whatever that he wrote upon this system, 
common to all the ballad writers. Coleridge 
agrees with me»upon this. The proof is, that, 
read him thus, and he becomes every where har- 
monious ; but expletive syllables, en's, and y's, 
and e's, only make him halt upon ten lame toes. 
I am now daily drinking at that pure well of En- 
glish undefiled, to get historical manners, and to 
learn English and poetry. 

" His volume of the Border Songs is more 
amusing for its prefaces and notes than its po- 
etry. The ballads themselves were written in 
a very unfavorable age and country ; the costume 
less picturesque than chivalry, the manners more 
barbarous. I shall be very glad to see the Sir 
Tristram which Scott is editing : the old Corn- 
ish knight has been one of my favorite heroes 
for fifteen years. Those Romances that Ritson 
published are fine studies for a poet. This I am 
afraid will have more Scotch in it than will be 
pleasant. I never read Scotch poetry without 
rejoicing that we have not Welsh-English into 
the bargain, and a written brogue. 

Rickman tells me there will be no army sent to 
Portugal ; that it is understood the French may 
overrun it at pleasure, and that then we lay open 
Brazil and Spanish America. If, indeed, the 
Prince of Brazil could be persuaded to go over 
there, and fix the seat of his government in a 
colony fifty times as large, and five hundred fold 
more valuable than the mother country, England 
would have a trade opened to it far more than 
equivalent to the loss of the Portuguese and 
Spanish ports. But if he remains under the pro- 
tection of France, and is compelled to take a part 
against England, any expedition to Brazil must 
be for mere plunder. Conquest is quite impos- 
sible. 

" Most likely I shall go up to town in about a 
week or ten days. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"June 12,1803. 
' : Why, Grosvenor, that is an idle squcamish- 
ness of yours, fhat asking a previous leave to 



162 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



&TAT. 29. 



speak. Where my conscience becomes second 
to your challenge, the offense shall be amended ; 
where we differ, mine is the voice potential. 
But, in truth, I will tell you that I am out of hu- 
mor with Kehama, for half a hundred reasons : 
historical composition is a source of greater, and 
quieter, and more continuous pleasure ; and that 
poem sometimes comes into my head with a — 
shall I sit down to it ? and this is so easily turned 
out again, that the want of inclination would 
make me half suspect a growing want of power, 
if some rhymes and poemets did not now and 
then come out and convince me to the contrary. 

* * * Abuse away ad libitum. 

" If Cumberland must have a Greek name, 
there is but one that fits him — Aristophanes — 
and that for the worst part of his character. If 
his plays had any honest principle in them, in- 
stead of that eternal substitution of honor for 
honesty, of a shadow for a substance — if his nov- 
els were not more profligate in their tendency 
than Matthew Lewis : s unhappy book — if the pe- 
rusal of his Calvary were not % cross heavy 
enough for any man to bear who has ever read 
ten lines of Milton — if the man were innocent 
of all these things, he ought never to be forgiven 
for his attempt to blast the character of Socra- 
tes. Right or wrong, no matter ; the name had 
been canonized, and, God knows ! wisdom and 
virtue have not so many saints that they can 
spare an altar to his clumsy pick-ax. I am no 
blind bigot to the Greeks, but I will take the 
words of Plato and greater Xenophon against 
Richard Cumberland, Esq. 

The Grenvilles are in the right, but they got 
right by sticking in the wrong : they turned their 
faces westward in the morning, and swore the 
sun was there ; and they have stood still and 
sworn on, till, sure enough, there the sun is. 
But they stand upon the strong ground now, and 
have the argument all hollow ; yet what is to 
come of it, and what do they want — their coun- 
try asks that question. War ? They have it : 
every man in the country says Amen, and they 
whose politics are most democratic say Amen 
most loudly and most sincerely. In spite of their 
speeches, I can not wish them in ; and, when 
change of ministry is talked of, can not but feel, 
with Fox, that, little as I may like them, ten to 
one I shall like their successors worse, and sure 
I am that worse war ministers than the last can 
not curse this country. # # # # 

These men behaved so well upon Despard's busi- 
ness, and have shown such a respect to the liber- 
ties and feelings of this countn T , that they have 
fully won my good will. I believe they will 
make a sad piecemeal patchwork administration. 

* * * It does seem that, by some 
fatality, the best talents of the kingdom are for- 
ever to be excluded from its government. Fox 
has not done well — not what I could have wish- 
ed ; but yet I reverence that man so truly, that 
whenever he appears to me to have erred. I more 
than half suspect my own judgment. 



" I am promised access to the king's library 
by Heber ; and, indeed, it is a matter of consider- 
able consequence that I should obtain it. Morn- 
ing, noon, and night, I do nothing but read 
chronicles, and collect from them ; and I have 
traveled at a great rate since the burden of trans- 
lating and reviewing has been got rid of ; but 
this will not last long ; I must think by-and-by 
of some other job-work, and turn to labor again, 
that I may earn another holiday. 

" I call Margaret, by way of avoiding all com- 
monplace phraseology of endearment, a worthy 
child and a most excellent character. She loves 
me better than any one except her mother. Her 
eyes are as quick as thought ; she is all life and 
spirit, and as happy as the day is long ; but that 
little brain of hers is never at rest, and it is pain- 
ful to see how dreams disturb her. A Dios ! 

"R. S." 

Soon after the date of the letter, my father paid 
a short visit to London, the chief purpose of 
which was to negotiate with Messrs. Longman 
and Rees respecting ' ; the management of a Bib- 
( liotheca Britannica upon a very extensive scale, 
to be arranged chronologically, and made a read- 
able book by biography, criticism, and connect- 
ing chapters, to be published like the Cyclopaedia 
in parts, each volume 800 quarto pages." " The 
full and absolute choice of all associates, and the 
distribution of the whole," to be in his hands. 
And, in order to be near the publisher, as well 
as for the convenience of communicating with the 
majority of those whom he hoped to associate 
with him in the work — of whom the chief were 
Mr. Sharon Turner, Mr. Rickman, Captain Bur- 
ney, Mr. Carlisle,* Mr. William Taylor, Mr. 
Coleridge, Mr. Duppa, and Mr. Owen — he pur- 
posed removing very shortly to Richmond, where, 
indeed, he had already obtained the refusal of a 
house. 

Upon concluding his agreement with Messrs. 
Longman and Rees, he seems to have communi- 
cated at once with Mr. Coleridge, whose letter 
in reply the reader will not be displeased to have 
laid before him, containing, as it does, the mag- 
nificent plan of a work almost too vast to have 
been conceived by any other person. Alas ! that 
the plans of such a mind should have been but 
splendid dreams. 

S. T. Coleridge to R. Southey. 

" Keswick, July, 1803. 
i: My dear Southey, 
"# * # # * =* # 

I write now to propose a scheme, or, rather, a 
rude outline of a scheme, of your grand work. 
What harm can a proposal do ? If it be no pain 
to you to reject it, it will be none to me to have 
it rejected. I would have the work entitled 
Bibliotheca Britannica, or a History of British 
Literature, bibliographical, biographical, and 
critical. The two last volumes I would have to 
be a chronological catalogue of all noticeable or 

* Afterward Sir Anthony Carlisle. 



JEtat. 29. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



163 



extant books ; the others, be the number six or 
eight, to consist entirely of separate treatises, 
each giving a critical biblio-biographical history 
of some one subject. I will, with great pleas- 
ure, join you in learning Welsh and Erse ; and 
you, I, Turner, and Owen, might dedicate our- 
selves for the first half year to a complete his- 
tory of all Welsh, Saxon, and Erse books that 
are not translations, that are the native growth 
of Britain. If the Spanish neutrality continues, 
I will go in October or November to Biscay, and 
throw light on the Basque. 

" Let the next volume contain the history of 
English poetry and poets, in which I would in- 
clude all prose truly poetical. The first half of 
the second volume should be dedicated to great 
single names, Chaucer and Spenser, Shakspeare, 
Milton, and Taylor, Dryden and Pope ; the 
poetry of witty logic — Swift, Fielding, Richard- 
son, Sterne : I write par hazard, but I mean to 
say all great names as have either formed epochs 
in our taste, or such, at least, as are representa- 
tive : and the great object to be in each instance 
to determine, first, the true merits and demerits 
of the books ; secondly, what of these belong to 
the age — what to the author quasi peculium. 
The second half of the second volume should be 
a history of poetry and romances, every where 
interspersed with biography, but more flowing, 
more consecutive, more bibliographical, chrono- 
logical, and complete. The third volume I 
would have dedicated to English prose, con- 
sidered as to style, as to eloquence, as to general 
impressiveness ; a history of styles and manners, 
their causes, their birth-places and parentage, 
their analysis. # # # =fc 

" These three volumes would be so generally 
interesting, so exceedingly entertaining, that you 
might bid fair for a sale of the work at large. 
Then let the fourth volume take up the history 
of metaphysics, theology, medicine, alchemy, 
common, canon, and Roman law, from Alfred to 
Henry VII. ; in other words, a history of the 
dark ages in Great Britain. The fifth volume 
— carry on metaphysics and ethics to the pres 
ent day in the first half; the second half, com. 
prise the theology of all the Reformers. In the 
fourth volume there would be a grand article on 
the philosophy of the theology of the Roman 
Catholic religion. In this (fifth volume), under 
different names — Hooker, Baxter, Biddle, and 
Fox — the spirit of the theology of all the other 
parts of Christianity. The sixth and seventh 
volumes must comprise all the articles you can 
get, on all the separate arts and sciences that 
have been treated of in books since the Reforma 
tion ; and, by this time, the book, if it answered 
at all, would have gained so high a reputation 
that you need not fear having whom you liked 
to write the different articles — medicine, sur 
gery, chemistry, &c., &c, navigation, travelers 
voyagers, &c, &c If I go into Scotland, shall 
I engage Walter Scott to write the history of 
Scottish poets ? Tell, me, however, what you 
think of the plan. It would have one prodigious 
advantage : whatever accident stopped the work, 



would only prevent the future good, not mar the 
past ; each volume would be a great and valua- 
ble work per se. Then each volume would 
awaken a new interest, a new set of readers, 
who would buy the past volumes of course ; then 
it would allow you ample time and opportunities 
for the slavery of the catalogue volumes, which 
should be, at the same time, an index to the 
work, which would be, in very truth, a pandect 
of knowledge, alive and swarming with human 
life, feeling, incident. By-the-by, what a strange 
abuse has been made of the word encyclopaedia ! 
It signifies, properly, grammar, logic, rhetoric, 
and ethics and metaphysics, which last, explain- 
ing the ultimate principles of grammar — log., 
rhet., and eth. — formed a circle of knowledge. 
* * * To call a huge unconnected 
miscellany of the omne scibile, in an arrangement 
determined by the accident of initial letters, an 
encyclopaedia, is the impudent ignorance of your 
Presbyterian book-makers. Good-night ! 
" God bless you ! S. T. S." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

"Bristol, Aug. 3, 1803. 

"Dear Coleridge, 

" I meant to have written sooner ; but those 

little units of interruption and preventions, which 

sum up to as ugly an aggregate as the items in 

a lawyer's bill, have come in the way. * * 

Your plan is too good, too gigantic, quite beyond 
my powers. If you had my tolerable state of 
health, and that love of steady and productive 
employment which is now grown into a neces- 
sary habit with me — if you were to execute and 
would execute it, it would be, beyond all doubt, 
the most valuable work of any age or any coun- 
try ; but I can not fill up such an outline. No 
man can better feel where he fails than I do ; 
and to rely upon you for whole quartos ! Dear 
Coleridge, the smile that comes with that thought 
is a very melancholy one ; and if Edith saw me 
now, she would think my eyes were weak again, 
when, in truth, the humor that covers them 
springs from another cause. 

" For my own comfort, and credit, and peace 
of mind, I must have a plan which I know my- 
self strong enough to execute. I can take au- 
thor by author as they come in their series, and 
give his life and an account of his works quite 
as well as ever it has yet been done. I can 
write connecting paragraphs and chapters short- 
ly and pertinently, in my way ; and in this way 
the labor of all my associates can be more easily 
arranged. #*#### 
* * And, after all, this is really nearer the 
actual design of what I purport by a Bibliotheca 
than yours would be — a book of reference, a 
work in which it may be seen what has been 
written upon every subject in the British lan- 
guage : this has elsewhere been done in the dic- 
tionary form ; whatever we get better than that 
form, ponemus lucro. 

"The Welsh part, however, should be kept 
completely distinct, and form a volume, or half 



164 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



-aE tat. 30. 



a volume, by itself ; and this must be delayed 
till the last in publication, whatever it be in or- 
der, because it can not be done till the whole of 
the Archaeology is printed, and by that time I 
will learn the language, and so, perhaps, will 
you. George Ellis is about it ; I think that, 
with the help of Turner and Owen, and poor 
Williams, we could then do every thing that 
ought to be done. 

"The first part, then, to be published is the 
Saxon : this Turner will execute, and to this 
you and William Taylor may probably both be 
able to add something from your stores of north- 
ern knowledge. The Saxon books all come in 
sequence chronologically ; then the mode of ar- 
rangement should be by centuries, and the writ- 
ers classed as poets, historians, &c, by centu- 
ries, or by reigns, which is better. * * 

Upon this plan the Schoolmen will come in the 
first volume. 

" The historical part of the theology, and the 
bibliographical, I shall probably execute myself, 
and you will do the philosophy. By-the-by, I 
have lately found the book of John Perrott the 
Quaker, who went to convert the pope, contain- 
ing all his epistles to the Romans, &c, written in 
the Inquisition at Rome ; for they allowed him the 
privilege of writing, most likely because his stark 
madness amused them. This fellow (who turned 
rogue at last, wore a sword, and persecuted the 
Quakers in America to make them swear) made 
a schism in the society against George Fox, in- 
sisting that hats should be kept on in meeting 
during speaking (has not this prevailed ?) , and that 
the Friends should not shave. His book is the 
most frantic I ever saw — quite Gilbertish ; and 
the man acted up to it. - .•-* # * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



CHAPTER X. 

DEATH OF HIS LITTLE GIRL ARRIVAL AT KES- 
WICK POSTPONEMENT OF THE BIBLIOTHECA 

BRITANNICA STAGNATION OF TRADE MADOC 

SCENERY OF THE LAKES HISTORY OF PORT- 
UGAL HASLITT'S PICTURES OF MR. COLERIDGE 

AND MR. WORDSWORTH WANTS INFORMATION 

CONCERNING THE WEST INDIES LITERARY OC- 
CUPATIONS AND PLANS THE ANNUAL REVIEW 

POLITICS THE YELLOW FEVER NEW THE- 
ORY OF SUCH DISEASES DESCRIPTION OF SCEN- 
ERY REFLECTED IN KESWICK LAKE SPECIMENS 

OF ENGLISH POETS PROJECTED COURSE OF 

LIFE AT KESWICK VISIT FROM MR. CLARKSON 

HABITS OF MIND MADOC MR. COLERIDGE 

AND MR. GODWIN DIRECTIONS TO MR. BED- 
FORD ABOUT SPECIMENS REGRET AT MR. 

COLERIDGE LEAVING ENGLAND MODERN CRIT- 
ICS — mr. Coleridge's powers of mind — let- 
ter TO MR. BEDFORD ON HABITS OF PROCRAS- 
TINATION LITERARY EMPLOYMENTS SPECI- 
MENS OF ENGLISH POETS GOES TO LONDON 

LETTERS FROM THENCE RETURN SPANISH 



BOOKS THE MABINCGION SIR H. DAVY MR. 

SOTHEBY WILLIAM OWEN, ETC. CHANGE OF 

ADMINISTRATION PROGRESS OF HISTORICAL 

LABORS. 1804. 

Such were my father's plans at the com- 
mencement of the month — to take up his abode 
at Richmond, and to devote himself almost whol- 
ly to this great work ; and, had nothing inter- 
fered to prevent this scheme being carried into 
effect, his future life would probably have taken, 
in some respects, a very different course. He 
was now, as it were, about to cast anchor (as 
he used himself to phrase it), and, as it proved 
even against probabilities, the place where he 
now fixed himself was to be his permanent 
abode. But the Bibliotheca Britannica was not 
to be the turning point of his life, nor were the 
banks of the Thames and the fair and fertile 
scenes of Richmond to inspire his verse. Public 
troubles and private griefs combined to disar- 
range his present plans and to influence his fu- 
ture ones. The little girl whose birth had been 
so joyfully hailed barely a twelvemonth before, 
of whom he was "foolishly fond" beyond the 
common love of fathers for mere infants, who 
had hitherto shown " no sign of disease save a 
somewhat unnatural quickness and liveliness," 
now suddenly began to manifest unequivocal 
tokens of the presence of one of those diseases 
most fatal to children (and often worse than fa 
tal, as permanently affecting the intellect), "hy- 
drocephalus" produced by teething ; and, after 
happily a brief period of suffering, she was laid 
to her early rest, and the fond parents were 
again childless. 

Bristol was now a place only recalling pain 
ful sensations, and Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge be- 
ing still resident at Keswick, my father and moth- 
er hastened down thither. 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

" Greta Hall, Keswick, Sept. 8, 1802. 
" Dear Tom, 
" We arrived yesterday. Yours reached me 
to-day. I was glad to hear from you ; a first 
letter after such a loss is always expected with 
some sort of fear — it is the pulling off the band- 
age that has been put upon a green wound. 

* ^r tt ^ * ^ ^P 

" Edith was very ill at Bristol. On the way 
we stayed five days with Miss Barker, in Staf- 
fordshire — one of the people in the world whom 
I like. To escape from Bristol was a relief. 
The place was haunted, and it is my wish never 
to see it again. Here my spirits suffer from the 
sight of little Sara,* who is about her size. How- 
ever, God knows that I do not repine, and that 
in my very soul I feel that his will is best. These 
things do one good : they loosen, one by one, the 
roots that rivet us to earth ; they fix and confirm 
our faith, till the thought of death becomes so 
inseparably connected with the hope of meeting 
those whom we have lost, that death itself is no 
longer considered as an evil. 

* Mr. Coleridge's only daughter. 



Mtat. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



165 



" Did I tell you that,- in this universal panic I " We look to the Morning Post, with daily 
and palsy, Longman has requested me to delay disappointment, for news of the Galatea. Stu- 
the Bibliotheea ? This is a relief to me. I feel art has sold the paper, having thus realized 

While his advice and influence up 



freer and easier. In consequence, I do not go 
to Richmond, but remain here, where I can live 
for half the expense. My design is to finish and 
print Madoc, that by the profits I may be enabled 
to go to Portugal. But my plans have been so 
often blasted that I look upon every thing as 
quite vague and uncertain. This only you may 
know, that while I am well I am actively em- 
ployed ; and that now, not being happy enough 
for the quiet half-hours of idleness, I must work 
with double dispatch. 

" I hope you will see the Annual Review. 
There are some admirable things by William 
Taylor in it ; my own part is very respectable, 
and one article, I hear, is by Harry. I shall 
probably do more in the next volume. You could 
have helped me in the maritime books. Do you 
know Harry is an ensign in the Norwich Volun- 
teers ? 

" Edward has written to me ; he was to go on 
board the following day. I could not at that 
time see to his fitting out as I should have done ; 
but, when once fairly quit of her,* the boy shall 
not want as far as my means will go. It is you 
and I who have fared the worst ; the other two 
will have fewer difficulties to cope with, yet per- 
haps they will not go on so well. Men are the 
better for having suffered ; of that every year's 
experience more and more convinces me. 

" Edith suffers deeply and silently. She is 
kept awake at night by recollections, and I am 
harassed by dreams of the poor child's illness 
and recovery ; but this will wear away. Would 
that you could see these lakes and mountains! as. for good spirits, be sure I have the outward 



c£25,000. 

holds it, little difference will be perceived ; but 
whenever that be withdrawn. I prophesy a slow 
decline and downfall. How comes on the Span- 
ish? You will find it useful before the war is 
over, I fear — -fear, because the Spaniards are a 
good and honorable people ; and, in spite of the 
plunder which will fall to the share of the sail- 
ors, I can not but wish they may be spared from 
suffering in a war to which they assuredly are 
averse. 

" God bless you, Tom. You must inquire ot 
Danvers for Joe ;* he will look after him, and 
drop a card occasionally at his door. Poor fel- 
low, I was sorry to leave him : 'twas a heart- 
breaking day, that of our departure. Can't you 
contrive to chase some French frigate through 
the race of Holyhead up to the Isle of Man, en- 
gage her there, and bring her into Whitehaven ? 
Edith's love. R. S." 

To Lieut. Southcy, H.M.S. Galatea. 

" Keswick, Oct 29, 1803. 
" Dear Tom, 
" Your letter did not reach me till yesterday, 
eight days after its date, so that, though this be 
the earliest reply, perhaps it may not arrive at 
Cork till after your departure. This place is 
better suited for me than you imagine : it tempts 
me to take far more exercise than I ever took 
elsewhere, for we have the loveliest scenes pos- 
sible close at hand ; and I have, therefore, sel- 
dom or never felt myself in stronger health. And 



How wonderful they are ! how awful in their 
beauty. All the poet-part of me will be fed and 
fostered here. I feel already in tune, and shall 
proceed to my work with such a feeling of pow- 
er as old Samson had when he laid hold of the 
pillars of the Temple of Dagon. The Morning 
Post will somewhat interrupt me. Stuart has 
paid me so well for doing little, that in honesty 
I must work hard for him. Edith will copy you 
some of my rhymes. 

" Amadis is most abominably printed ; never 
book had more printer's blunders: how it sells 
is not in my power to say — in all likelihood, bad- 
ly ; for all trade is suspended, to a degree scarce- 
ly credible. I heard some authentic instances 
at Bristol. Hall, the grocer, used to have tea 
and sugar weighed out in pounds and half pounds, 
&c, on a Saturday night, for his country cus- 
tomers. Thirty years' established business en- 
abled him to proportion the quantity to this reg- 
ular demand almost to a nicety. He has had as 
much as twenty pounds 1 worth uncalled for. 
Mrs. Morgan, on a Saturday, used to take, upon 
the average, <£30 in her shop ; she now does not 
take <£5. But this will wear away. I am quite 
provoked at the folly of any man who can feel a 
moment's fear for this country at this time. 



* Miss Tyler. 



and visible sign, however it may be for the in- 
ward and spiritual grace. 

" My reviewing, more than ordinarily pro- 
crastinated, stands still. I began Clarke's book, 
and, having vented my gall there, laid the others 
all by till the first of November, that I might be 
free till then for work more agreeable. My 
mam work has been Madoc. I am now arrived 
at the old fifth book, and at the twelfth of the 
booklings into which it is now divided. I mean 
to call them neither books, cantos, nor any thing- 
else, but simply 1, 2, 3, &c, entitling each part 
from its peculiar action : thus, 1 . The Return ; 
2. Cadwallon ; 3. The Voyage ; 4. Lincoya ; 5. 
The War; 6. The Battle; 7. The Peace; 8. 
Emma; 9. Mathraval; 10. The Gorsedd, i. e., 
the Meeting of the Bards; 11. Dinevawr; 12. 
Bards — and so on. The eleven divisions finish- 
ed, which bring it down to the end of the old 
fourth book, contain 2536 lines — an increase, on 
the whole, of 731 ; but, of the whole, not one 
line in five stands as originally written. About 
9000 lines will be the extent; but the further I 
proceed, the less alteration will be needed. When 
I turn the half way, I shall then say to my friends, 
' Now get me subscribers, and I will publish 
Madoc' In what is done there is some of mv 



A favorite terrier. 



166 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 30. 



best workman hip. I shall get by it less money 
than fame, and less fame than envy, but the envy 
will be only life-long ; and when that is gone and 
the money spent — you know the old rhyme. 

" It seems we are to have war with poor Port- 
ugal. If this be the case, my uncle must of 
course settle in England. This would be very 
pleasant to me, were it not so deeply and root- 
edly my own desire to settle in Portugal ; but, 
adonde nao he remedio, entao paciencia, as I learn- 
ed from the Portuguese. This war has affected 
me in every possible shape : in the King George 
packet I lost a whole cargo of books, for which 
I had been a year and a half waiting, and my 
uncle searching. 

" I must go to work for money ; and that also 
frets me. This hand-to-mouth work is very 
disheartening, and interferes cruelly with better 
things — more important they can not be called, 
for the bread and cheese is the business of the 
first necessity. But from my History I do ex- 
pect permanent profit, and such a perpetual in- 
terest as shall relieve me. I shall write the vol- 
ume of letters which you have heard me talk of 
— an omnium gatherum of the odd things I have 
seen in England. 

" Whenever you are at a decent distance, and 
can get leave of absence, do come. Get to Liv- • 
erpool by water, or, still better, to Whitehaven. 
You will be thorougly delighted with the coun- 
try. The mountains, on Thursday evening, be- 
fore the sun was quite down, or the moon bright, 
were all of one dead-blue color ; their rifts, and 
rocks, and swells, and scars had all disappeared ; 
the surface was perfectly uniform ; nothing but 
the outline distinct ; and this even surface of dead 
blue, from its unnatural uniformity, made them, 
though not transparent, appear transvious — as 
though they were of some soft or cloudy texture 
through which you could have passed. I never 
saw any appearance so perfectly unreal. Some- 
times a blazing sunset seems to steep them through 
and through with red light ; or it is a cloudy morn- 
ing, and the sunshine slants down through a rift 
in the clouds, and the pillar of light makes the 
spot whereon it falls so emerald green, that it 
looks like a little field of Paradise. At night 
you lose the mountains, and the wind so stirs up 
the lake that it looks like the sea by moonlight. 
Tust behind the house rises a fine mountain, by 
name Latrigg : it joins Skiddaw. We walked 
up yesterday — a winding path of three quarters 
of an hour, and then rode down on our own bur- 
ros, in seven minutes. Jesu- Maria- Joze ! that 
was a noble ride ! but I will have a saddle made 
for my burro next time. The path of our slide 
is still to be seen from the garden — so near is it. 
One of these days I will descend Skiddaw in the 
same manner, and so immortalize myself. 

" There is a carpenter here, James Lawson by 
name, who is become my Juniper* in the board- 
making way. He has made me a pair, of wal- 
nut, the large size, and of a reddish wood, from 
Demerara the small, and is about to ffet me some 



* A carpenter at Bristol 



yew. This, as you may suppose, is a consola- 
tion to me, and it requires all Edith's powers oi 
prudential admonition to dissuade me from hav- 
ing a little table with a drawer in it. His father* 
asked Derwent yesterday who made him ? D. 
James Lawson. Father : And what did he make 
you of? D. : The stuff he makes wood of. When 
Derwent had got on thus far in his system of 
Derwentogony, his imagination went on, and he 
added, ' He sawed me off, and I did not like it. 
" We began to wonder uneasily that there was 
no news of you. Edith's love. God bless you ! 

"R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, Keswick, Nov. 10, 1803 
"Dear Grosvenor, 

" You will have guessed why I have not writ- 
ten : to say any thing about a painful subject is 
painful ; I do not love to write concerning what 
I never mention. I am very well, very cheerful, 
and very actively employed ; and yet, with : 
this, hceret Uteri. * * * * * 

" You asked me some questions about the Bib- 
liotheca. Longman wrote to me to postpone it, 
he being infected with the universal panic. I 
was no ways averse to the delay of the scheme, 
the discontinuance being optional with me. In 
truth, I have plans enough without it, and begin 
to think that my day's work is already sufficiently 
cut out for me. I am preparing Madoc for pub- 
lication, and have so far advanced in the correc- 
tion as to resolve upon trying my fortune at a 
subscription. I will print it for a guinea, in one 
quarto, if possible at that price 5 if not, in three 
small volumes. I will not print my intention till 
the success of a subscription has been tried pri- 
vately — that is, without being published — be- 
cause, if it fails, I can better go to a bookseller. 
If you can procure me some names, do ; but 
never make yourself uncomfortable by asking. 
Of course, no money till the delivery of the book. 

"It is now fifteen years since the subject first 
came into my occiput, and I believe Wynn was 
made acquainted with it almost at the time. It 
has been so much the subject of my thoughts and 
dreams, that in completing it, in sending off what 
has been so peculiarly and solely my own, there 
is a sort of awfulness and feeling, as if one of the 
purposes of my existence will then be accom- 
plished. * * * * * * 

" I am growing old, Bedford — not so much by 
the family Bible, as by all external and outward 
symptoms : the gray hairs have made their ap- 
pearance ; my eyes are wearing out ; my shoes, 
the very cut of my father's, at which I used to 
laugh ; my limbs not so supple as they were at 
Brixton in '93 ; my tongue not so glib ; my heart 
quieter ; my hopes, thoughts, and feelings, all of 
the complexion of a sunny autumn evening. I 
have a sort of presage that I shall live to finish 
Madoc and my History. God grant it, and that 
then my work will be done. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



Mr. Coleridge. 



^TAT. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



167 



To John Rickman^ Esq. 

"Nov. 18, 1803. 
"Dear Rickman, 
"I am manufacturing a piece of Paternoster 
Row goods, value three guineas, out of Captain 
Burney's book ; and not very easy work, it be- 
ing always more difficult to dilate praise than 
censure : however, by help of Barros, I have 
been able to collate accounts with him in the 
great voyage of Magelhaens (for he has mis- 
named him), and so to eke out my pages by ad- 
ditions. About the other worthy, Sir Francis, I 
have invented a quaint rhyme, which I shall in- 
sert as ancient, and modestly wonder that, as the 
author has a genuine love for all quaint things, 
it. should have escaped his researches : 

1 Oh Nature, to Old England true, 

Continue these mistakes ; 
Give us for our kings such queens, 
And for our Dux such Drakes.' 

My History goes on well ; I am full sail in the 
Asiatic Channel, and have found out some odd 
things. The Christians of St. Thomas worshiped 
the Virgin Mary, which throws back that super- 
stition to an earlier date than is generally allowed 
it. The astrolabe, the quadrant, the compass, 
were found in the East, quomodo diabolus ? Mar- 
tin Behaim invented the sea astrolabe at Lisbon, 
by express direction of Joam II., and behold ! 
within ten or a dozen years Vasco da Gama finds 
it in India. 

"They had gunpowder there — espingards, 
what shall I call them ? — and cannon ; but the 
Portuguese owed their success to the great su- 
periority of their artillery : in fact, the main im- 
provements in sea artillery were invented by Jo- 
am II. himself. But the great intercourse be- 
tween India and the Old World is most remark- 
able in the first voyage of Gama : he met with 
a Moor of Fez, a Moor of Tunis, a Venetian and 
a Polish Jew. The world was not so ignorant as 
has been supposed ; individuals possessed knowl- 
edge which there were no motives for communi- 
cating. No sooner was it known that K. Joam 
II. would reward people for intelligence respect- 
ing the East, than two of his own Jew subjects 
came, and told him they had been there. The 
commercial spirit of the Moors is truly astonish- 
ing : Dutchmen or East India directors could not 
be more jealous of their monopolies. The little 
kingdoms which Gama found resemble Homer's 
Phseacia. Every city had its monarch, and he 
was the great merchant ; his brothers were cap- 
tains of ships. Spice, spice, was what the Euro- 
peans wanted ; and for what could they require 
it in such quantities and at such a cost ? Spiced 
wines go but a little way in answering this. 
The Hindoos, too, wanted coral from the Portu- 
guese — odd fellows ! when it grows in their own 
seas. I believe the Portuguese conquests to have 
been the chief cause that barbarized the Moham- 
medans ; their spreading commerce would else 
have raised up a commercial interest, out of which 
an enlightened policy might have grown. The 
Koran was a master-piece of policy, attributing 



sanctity to its language. Arabic thus became a 
sort of Free-mason's passport for every believer 
— a bond of fraternity. # # # * 
" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Richard Duppa, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, Keswick, Dec. 14, 1803. 
" Dear Duppa, 

"I have not had the heart to write to you, 
though the long silence has lain like a load upon 
my conscience. When we parted I had as much 
present happiness as man could wish, and was 
full of all cheerful hopes : however, no man, if 
he be good for any thing, but is the better for 
suffering. It has long been my habit to look for' 
the good that is to be found in every thing, and 
that alchemy is worth more than the grand se- 
cret of all the adepts. 

"I had almost completed my arrangements 
for removing to Richmond at Christmas, and 
here we are at the uttermost end of the north, 
and here for some time we shall probably re- 
main — how long, God knows. I am steady in 
my pursuits, for they depend upon myself; but 
my plans and fortunes, being of the rd ovk kf 
7][uv, are more mutable : they are fairly afloat, 
and the winds are more powerful than the steers- 
man. Longman caught the alarm — the Bona- 
parte ague or English influenza — after I left 
town, and sent to me to postpone my Bibliotheca, 
at the very time when I wished the engagement 
off my mind, not being in a state of mind to con- 
template it with courage. He shall now wait 
my convenience, and I shall probably finish off my 
own works of choice here, where, living cheaper, 
I have more leisure. My History is in a state 
of rapid progression. The last time I saw Mr. 

in town he gave me a draft for fifty pounds 

as his subscription, he said, to this work. I tell 
you this because you know him, and, therefore, 
not to tell you would make me feel ungrateful 
for an act of uncommon liberality, done in the 
handsomest way possible. I little thought, at 
the time, how soon an unhappy circumstance 
would render the sum needful. This work I am 
alternating and relieving by putting Madoc to 
the press, and my annual job of reviewing inter- 
rupts both for a while ; but, happily, this job 
comes, like Christmas, but once a year, and I 
have almost killed off my cotemporaries. 

" Haslitt, whom you saw at Paris, has been 
here — a man of real genius. He has made a 
very fine picture of Coleridge for Sir George 
Beaumont, which is said to be in Titian's man- 
ner. He has also painted Wordsworth, but so 
dismally, though Wordsworth's face is his idea 
of physiognomical perfection, that one of his 
friends, on seeing it, exclaimed, ' At the gallows 
— deeply affected by his deserved fate — yet de- 
termined to die like a man ;' and if you saw the 
picture, you would admire the criticism. We 
have a neighbor here who also knows you — Wil- 
kinson, a clergyman, who draws, if not with 
much genius, with great industry and most use- 
ful fidelity. I have learned a good deal by ex- 
amining his collection of etchings. 



168 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 30. 



" Holcroft, I hear, has discovered, to his own 
exceeding delight, prophetic portraits of himself 
and Coleridge among the damned in your Mi- 
chael Angelo. I have found out a more flatter- 
ing antetype of Coleridge's face in Duns Scotus. 
Come vou yourself and judge of the resemblances. 
Coleridge and our lakes and mountains are worth 
a longer journey. Autumn is the best season to 
see the country, but spring, and even winter, is 
better than summer, for in settled fine weather 
there are none of those goings on in heaven 
which at other times give these scenes such an 
endless variety. * * * You will 
find this house a good station for viewing the 
lakes ; it is, in fact, situated on perhaps the very 
finest single spot in the whole lake country, and 
we can show you things which the tourists never 
hear of. ####=£# 

# ####### 

" Edith desires to be remembered to you : she 
is but in indifferent health. I myself am as well 
as I ever was. The weather has been, and is, 
very severe, but it has not as yet hurt me : how- 
ever, it must be owned the white bears have the 
advantage of us in England, and still more the 
dormice. If their torpor could be introduced 
into the human system, it would be a most rare 
invention. I should roll myself up at the end of 
October, and give orders to be waked by the 
chimney-sweeper on May-day. 

" God bless you. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" R." SOUTHEY." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

"Dec. 17, 1803. 
: ' Dear Tom, 

" The news in your letter has vexed me, and, 
after my manner, set me upon discovering all the 
consolations that can be extracted from it. First 
and foremost, that if you go as convoy, you will 
not be stationed there ; and, therefore, to sail at 
this season into warm weather is no such bad 
thing. If you go to Jamaica you will find a 
whole lot of letters, unless they have been burn- 
ed at the post-office. As you will keep a keen 
look-out for all imaginable things, I need give 
you only one commission, which is, that you do 
use your best endeavors to bring home a few live 
land-crabs for me, that I may endeavor to rear a 
breed in England. 

"Do not send off Henry, because it will be 
lost at the custom-house. Keep it till you your- 
self come to England, and can safely get it 
ashore : 'tis a good book for a long voyage ; 
very dull, but full of matter, and trustworthy as 
far as the author's information goes. 

'* My review of Miss Baillie was for the Crit- 
ical ; that in the Annual I suspect to be by Mrs. 
Barb-mid, who wrote the review of Chateau- 
briand's Beauties of Christianity, and that in- 
famous account of Lamb's Play, for infamous it 
is. Harry's only article is Soulavie's Memoirs, 
and I have never seen the book since this was 
told me. The rules you lay down will always 
point out Wm. Taylor. 



" I think it possible, Tom, that you might col- 
lect some interesting information from the ne- 
groes, by inquiries of any who may wait upon 
you, if they be at all intelligent, concerning their 
own country ; principally, what their supersti- 
tions are : as, Whom do they worship ? Do 
they ever see apparitions *? Where do the dead 
go ? What are their burial, their birth, their 
marriage ceremonies ? What their charms or 
remedies for sickness ? What the power of their 
priests ; and how the priests are chosen, wheth- 
er from among the people, or if a separate breed, 
as the Levites and Bramins ? You will easily 
see with what other questions these might be fol- 
lowed up ; and by noting down the country of the 
negro, with what information he gave, it seems 
to me very likely that a very valuable account 
of their manners and feelings might be collected. 
Ask, also, if they know any thing of Timbuctoo, 
the city which is sought after with so much cu- 
riosity as being the center of the internal com- 
merce of Africa. This is the way to collect 
facts respecting the native Africans and their 
country. I would engage, in twelve months, 
were I in the West Indies, to get materials foi 
a volume that should contain more real import 
ances than all travelers have yet brought heme. 
Ask, also, what beasts are in their country. 
They will not know English names for them, 
but can describe them so that you will know 
them : the unicorn is believed to exist by me as 
well as by many others — you will not mistake 
the rhinoceros for one. Inquire, also, for a land 
crocodile, who grows to the length of six, eight 
or ten feet, having a tongue slit like a snake's : 
my Portuguese speak of such animals in South 
Africa ; they may exist in the western prov- 
inces. 

"You would have been very useful to me if 
3 7 ou had been at the table when I was reviewing 
Clarke's book, and Captain Burney's. Indeed, I 
often want a sailor to help me out. In the proc- 
ess of my History some curious facts respecting 
early navigation have come to light. I find the 
needle and the quadrant used in the Indian Seas 
before any European vessel had ever reached 
them ; and, what surprises me more, the same 
knowledge of soundings in our own seas in 1400 
as at present, which is very strange, for that 
practice implies a long series of registered ex- 
periences. The more I read, the more do I 
find the necessity of going to old authors for in- 
formation, and the sad ignorance and dishonesty 
of our boasted historians. If God do but give 
me life, and health, and eyesight, I will show 
how history should be written, and exhibit sueh 
a specimen of indefatigable honesty as the world 
has never yet seen. I could make some his- 
torical triads, after the manner of my old Welsh 
friends, of which the first might run thus : The 
three requisites for an historian — industry, judg- 
ment, genius ; the patience to investigate, the 
discrimination to select, the power to infer and 
to enliven. 

" Edith's love. God bless you ! 

' ; R. Southey." 



Mtat. 30. 



ROBERT SOI. 1HEY. 



169 



To John Rkkman, Esq. 

"Dec. 23, 1803. 
" Dear Rickman, 

I am about a curious review of the Mission at 
Otaheite. Capt. Burney will find his friends 
rather roughly handled, for I look upon them as 
the most degraded of the human species. * 
* * * * They have induced me 
to think it probable that the Spaniards did less 
evil in Hispaniola than we suppose. Cole- 
ridge's scheme to mend them is by extirpating 
the bread-fruit from their island, and making 
them iive by the sweat of their brows. It al- 
ways grieves me when I think you are no friend 
to colonization. My hopes fly further than yours ; 
I want English knowledge and the English lan- 
guage diffused to the east, and west, and the 
south. 

" Can you get for me the evidence upon the 
Slave Trade as printed for the House of Com- 
mons ? I want to collect all materials for spec- 
ulating upon the negroes. That they are a fall- 
en people is certain, because, being savages, 
they have among them the forms of civilization. 
It is remarkable that, in all our discoveries, we 
have never discovered any people in a state of 
progression except the Mexicans and Peruvians. 
That the Otaheitans are a degraded race, is 
proved by their mythology, which is physical al- 
legory — ergo, the work of people who thought 
of physics. I am very desirous to know wheth- 
er the negro priests and jugglers be a caste, or 
if any man may enter into the fraternity ; and if 
they have a sacred language. We must con- 
tinue to grope in darkness about early history 
till some strong-headed man shall read the hiero 
glyphics for us. Much might yet be done by 
comparison of languages : some hundred words 
of the most common objects — sun, moon, and 
stars, the parts of the body, the personal pro- 
nouns, the auxiliary verbs, &c. — if these were 
collected, as occasion could be found, from every 
different tribe, such languages as have been dif- 
fluent we should certainly be able to trace to 
their source. In New Holland, language is said 
to be confluent, every tribe, and almost every 
family, having its own ; but that island is an odd 
place — coral above water, and coal ; new birds, 
beasts, and plants ; and such a breed of sav- 
ages ! It looks like a new country, if one could 
tell where the animals came from. 

" Do you know that the Dodo is actually ex- 
tinct, having been, beyond doubt, too stupid to 
take care of himself. # # # # 
There is no hope of recovering the species, un- 
less you could get your friend to sit upon 

a gander's egg. God bless you. 

"R. S." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

"Dec. 31, 1803. 
" Dear Tom, 
"I have just received yours, and regret that 
I did not write sooner, upon a reasonable calcu- 
lation that convoys are even more uncertain than 
M 



packets. A letter, per bottle, I see by the news • 
papers, thrown in on the way to the West In- 
dies, if I recollect right, in latitude 47°, has 
found its way to the Isle of Sky, having traveled 
five miles per day against prevalent winds ; 
therefore a current is certain. I will send into 
town for the paper, and send you the particulars 
in this or my next. Do not spare bottles in your 
passage ; and be sure that I have a letter from 
the Western Isles. 

" For God's sake adapt your mode of living to 
the climate you are going to, and abstain almost 
wholly from wine and spirits. General Peche, 
an East Indian officer here, with whom we dined 
on Christmas day, told me that, in India, the of- 
ficers who were looking out for preferment, as a 
majority, &c., and who kept lists of all above 
them, always marked those who drank any spirits 
in a morning with an X, and reckoned them for 
nothing. 'One day,' said he, 'when we were 

about to march at daybreak, I and Captain 

were in my tent, and we saw a German of our 
regiment, so I said we'd try him ; we called to 
him, said it was a cold morning, and asked him 
if he would drink a glass to warm him. I got 
him a full beaker of brandy and water, and, 
egad! he drank it off. When he was gone, I 
said, ' Well, what d'ye think ; we may cross him, 
mayn't we ? Oh yes, said he, cross him by all 
means. And the German did not live twelve 
months.' Spice is the stimulus given by nature 
to hot countries, and, eaten in whatever quanti- 
ties, can do no harm. But the natives of all hot 
countries invariably abstain from spirits as dead- 
ly. Eat fruits plentifully, provided they do not 
produce flux ; animal food sparingly in the hot 
season : fish will be better than meat. Do not 
venture to walk or ride in the heat of the sun ; 
and do not be ashamed of a parasol : it has saved 
many a man's life. I am sure all this is very 
physical and philosophical sense. But I will de- 
sire King, who knows the West Indies, to write 
out to you a letter of medical advice. This is 
certain, that bilious people fare worst, and nerv- 
ous people, for fear predisposes for disease : from 
these causes you are safe. 

" Edith will go on with Madoc for you, and a 
letter full shall go off for Barbadoes this week. 
My last set you upon a wide field of inquiry. I 
know not what can be added, unless you should 
be at St. Vincent's, where the Caribs would be 
well worthy attention, making the same queries 
of and to them as to the negroes. Of course, 
there are no Spanish books except at the Span- 
ish islands. Oh ! that I were at Mexico for a 
hunt there ! Could you bring home a live alli- 
gator ? a little one, of course, from his hatching 
to six feet long : it would make both me and 
Carlisle quite happy, for he should have him 
And pray, pray, some live land-crabs, that they 
may breed ; and any other monsters. Birds lose 
their beauty ; and I would not be accessory to 
the death of a humming-bird, for the sake of 
keeping his corp?° in a cabinet ; but with croco- 
diles, sharks, and land-crabs it is fair play — you 
catch them, or they you. Your own eyes will 



170 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 30. 



do all that I can direct them. How unfortunate 
that neither of us can draw ! I want drawings 
of the trees. 

" Thompson, the friend of Burns, whose cor- 
respondence with hirn about songs fills the whole 
fourth volume, has applied to me to write him 
verses for Welsh airs : of course I have declined 
it, telling him that I could as soon sing his songs 
as write them, and referring him to Harry, whom 
he knows, for an estimate of that simile of dis- 
qualification. Still I am at reviewing ; but ten 
days will lighten me of that burden, and then 
huzza for history, and huzza for Ma,doc, for I 
shall be a free man again ! , I have bought Pin- 
kerton's Geography, after all, for the love of the 
maps, having none : it is a useful book, and will 
save me trouble. 

" We shall not think of holding any part of St. 
Domingo. What has been done can only have 
been for the sake of what plunder was to be 
found, and perhaps, also, to save the French 
army from the fate which they so justly de- 
served. God forbid that ever English hand be 
raised against the negroes in that island ! Poor 
wretches ! I regard them as I do the hurricane 
and the pestilence, blind instruments of righteous 
retribution and divine justice ; and sure I am that 
whatever hand be lifted against them will be 
withered. Of Spanish politics I can say noth- 
ing, nor give even a surmise. Here, at home, 
we have the old story of invasion, upon which 
the types naturally l'ange themselves into a very 
alarming and loyal leading paragraph. Let him 
come, say I ; it will be a fine thing for the bell- 
ringers and the tallow-chandlers. 

" I trust this will reach you before your de- 
parture. Write immediately on your arrival, 
and afterward by every packet, for any omission 
will make me uneasy. I will not be remiss on 
my part. 

" God bless you ! Edith's love. A happy 
new year, and many returns! R. S. :5 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, Keswick, Jan. 9, 1804. 

" Infailix homo ! infailix homo I said a Ger- 
man to Coleridge, who did not understand for 
whom he was inquiring by the name of Twctwr 
Twd; infailix homo ! suspensus a patibulo I With- 
out any patibulary reflection, infailix homo is 
the soul of exclamation that your letter prompts. 
Zounds ! if Giardini were in your inside, what 
an admirable solo he might play upon guts that 
must, by this time, have been fretted to fiddle- 
strings ! I verily believe that your gripes must 
be organic, and not, as in all other men, bag- 
pipical. 

" The plain English of all this is, that your 
metaphysics, as you call them, are to your 
mind what a regular course of drastic physic 
would be to your body — very disagreeable, and 
very weakening ■ that, being neither a man of 
business, nor of fashion, nor of letters, you 
want object and occupation in the world ; and 
that, if you would study Arabic, Welsh, or 
Chinese, or resolve to trai slate Tristram Shan- 



dy into Hebrew, you would soon be a happy 
man. 

Here we live as regularly as clock-work — in- 
deed, more regularly than our own clocks, which 
go all paces. The old Barber has been at work 
for some days. I take Horace's liberty to per- 
sonify the sky, and then simply barbarize the 
prosopopoeia, 

" Of the only three visitable families within 
reach, one is fled for the winter, and the others 
flying. Kimporte, our dog Dapper remains, and 
he is as intimate with me as heart could wish. 
I want my books, and nothing else ; for, blessed 
be God ! I grow day by day more independent 
of society, and feel neither a want nor a wish for 
it. Every thing at present looks, from the win- 
dow, like the confectioners' shops at this season 
in London ; and Skiddaw is the hugest of twelfth 
cakes ; but when I go down by the lake-side, it 
would puzzle all my comparison-compounding 
fancy to tell you what it looks like there : the 
million or trillion forms of beauty soon baffle all 
description. 

" Coleridge is gone for Devonshire, and I was 
going to say I am alone, but that the sight of 
Shakspeare, and Spenser, and Milton, and the 
Bible on my table, and Castanheda, and Barros, 
and Osorio at my elbow, tell me I am in the best 
of all possible company. Do not think of getting 
any subscribers for Madoc. I am convinced the 
plan of publishing it by subscription was foolish, 
and shall doubtless convince those who induced 
me to think of it. Have you seen the Critical 
Reviewal of Thalaba? I wish to see it, for it 
comes not only from one of my best friends, but 
from one of the most learned, most able, and 
most excellent men within the circle of my knowl- 
edge. =* #**=** * 
My brother Harry is at Edinburgh, distinguish- 
ing himself as a disputant in the Medical Socie- 
ty. Poor Tom is going for the West Indies ! 
What are our dunces sending troops there for ? 
I could find in my heart to set at them ; for, to 
tell you the truth, a set-to at the Methodists in 
this Review has put me in a very pamphleteer- 
ing mood. 



God bless 



you 



R. S.' 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

"January 20, 1804. 
" Dear Rickman, 
"* * # # # * * 

Arthur Aikin writes me that 1200 of the Annual 
Review have sold of 2000 that were printed, 
and that the demand continues unabated. He is 
in high spirits at its success, and wishes me to 
come to London — looking upon me, I suppose, 
as one of his staff-officers — as, in fact, William 
Taylor and I constitute his main strength. It is 
clear enough that, if I regarded pen-and-ink-man- 
ship solely as a trade, I might soon give in an 
income of double the present amount ; but I am 
looking forward to something better, and will 
not be tempted from the pursuit in which I have 



JE.TAT. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



171 



so long and so steadily persevered. * * 

This vile reviewing still bird-limes me. I do it 
slower than any thing else — yawning over tire- 
some work ; and parcel comes down after par- 
cel, so that I have already twice whooped before 
I was out of the wood. Yesterday Malthus re- 
ceived, I trust, a mortal wound from my hand ; 
to-day I am at the Asiatic Researches. God- 
win's Life of Chaucer is on the road to me : by»- 
the-by, the philosopher came in for a hard rap 
over the knuckles with Mr. Malthus. These 
things keep me from better employment, but 
they whet the desire for it, and I shall return to 
my Portuguese society with double zest. 

" In the Dark Ages, medicine was in the hands 
of the Jews. Why was this ? Am I right in 
supposing it was because they traveled, and 
brought with them the wisdom and experience, 
as well as folly of the East ? Christians could 
not travel safely ; but Hebrew, like Arabic, was 
a passport, for synagogues and mosques were 
every where. A decree of the Lateran Coun- 
cil, that the sacrament should be first prescribed 
to the sick, seems leveled against Jew physi- 
cians. 

" Have you read the Institutes of Menu, trans- 
lated by Sir W. Jones ? I should be very glad 
to see your corollaries from that boo!;. Hindos- 
tan, indeed the whole of civilized Asia, puzzles 
me, and provokes me that we should have so few 
documents to reason from. As far as their his- 
tory can be unraveled from fable, nothing is dis- 
coverable but the war of sects, not of religions ; 
and how so ridiculous a religion should have 
been so blended with astronomy, how allegory 
should put on so ugly a mask, is a puzzle. 

I am well, but have an ominous dimness of sight 
at times, which makes me think of Tobin ; that 
would, indeed, be a sore visitation ! but I will 
feed while the summer lasts, that my paws may 
be fat enough to last licking through the dark 
winter, if it must come. 

" Vale ! R. S." 

To Messrs. Longman and Rees. 

" Jan. 26, 1804. 
" Dear Sirs, 

" If Mr. 's little tale (which reached me 

last night) be long enough for publication, I 
should think it possesses sufficient interest to be 
salable. The author is, in my judgment, a man 
of very considerable, and, indeed, extraordinary 

talents. This he has probably written 

hastily, and, I fear, upon the spur of want. 

" Having myself sought after information re- 
specting the countries on the Mississippi, I can 
say that the descriptions and natural history are, 
as far as my knowledge goes, accurate, and 
therefore it is fair to presume that such circum- 
stances as were new to me are equally true to 
nature. 

" I know nothing of but from his Trav- 
els; from that he appears to be a self-taught 
man, who has all his life-long been struggling 
with difficulties ; and the book left upon me a 



melancholy impression, that, however much ad- 
versit}^ had quickened his talents, it had injured 
his moral feelings. Pride and vanity are only 
defensive vices in a poor and neglected man of 
talents, and being defensive, they cease to be 
vices. Something of the same palliation may be 
pleaded for an evident libertinism of heart and 
thought which is every where too manifest in his 
book : in this he resembles Smollett and Defoe, 
which last truly great man he resembles also in 
better things. 

" Should you execute your design of the Col- 
lection of Voyages and Travels, which I hope and 
trust you will, this man might be made exceed- 
ingly useful to you. Being himself a sailor, and 
having seen and observed many countries, you 
will rarely find one so well qualified to digest 
many travels into one full account. I had begun 
a letter to you upon the subject of the Collection 
some months ago, but laid it aside when the 
alarm of invasion seemed to suspend all literary, 
and, indeed, all other speculation. Should you 
resume the scheme, I will willingly send you an 
outline of what seems to me to be the most ad- 
visable plan. 

It has occurred to me that I could make a good 
companion to Ellis's very excellent book, under 
the title of Specimens of the Modern English 
Poetry, beginning exactly where he leaves off, 
and following exactly his plan — coming down to 
the present time, and making death the time 
where to stop. Two volumes would comprise 
it, perhaps. Let me know if you like the scheme : 
it would require more trouble and more search 
than you will be at first aware of, but, with El- 
lis's work, it would form such a series of arranged 
selections as no other country can boast. I could 
do it well, and should do it willingly. If it should 
be taken by the public as a supplement, it would 
be a good speculation. Should } T ou see Cole- 
ridge, show him this. I would, of course, affix 
my name." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Galatea. 
" Keswick, Jan. 31, 1804. 
" Dear Tom, 
" From this uttermost end of the north it will 
not be easy, or indeed possible, to send any thing 
to the West Indies, except what will go in the 
compass of a letter, else you should have the 
Iris's* bundled up for you. # # # 

My plan for Madoc stands, then, at present, that 
Longman shall risk all expenses, and -share the 
eventual profits ; printing it in quarto, and with 
engravings, for I am sure the book will sell the 
better for being made expensive. * * 

Having now cleared off all my Annual Review- 
ing (oh, Tom, such a batch ! almost as much as 
last year's rabble), I am now, for a while, at full 
leisure, atid of course direct it principally to Ma- 
doc, that it may be off my hands, for I should not 
be willing to leave the world till I have left that 
in a fair state behind me. I am now finishing 

* A Norwich newspaper, edited by Mr. William Taylor. 



172 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat.30. 



the 14th section. * * * * # 
They tell me that Walter Scott has reviewed 
Amadis in the Edinburgh Review ; to what pur- 
port I know not, but probably a favorable one, if 
it be his doing, for he is a man whose taste ac- 
cords with mine, and who, though we have never 
seen each other, knows that I respect him, as he, 
on his part, respects me. The same friendly of- 
fice has been performed in the Critical at last for 
Thalaba, by William Taylor : this, too, I have 
not seen. 

" As for politics, Tom, we that live among the 
mountains, as the old woman said, do never hear 
a word of news. This talk of war with Spain I 
do not believe, and I am at last come round to 
the opinion that no invasion is intended, but that 
the sole object of Bonaparte is to exhaust our 
finances. Booby ! not remembering that a na- 
tional bankruptcy, while it ruins individuals, makes 
the state rich. ^ # # # # 

How long the present Duncery may go on, God 
knows ; I am no enemy to them, for they mean 
well, but in this broil with the Volunteers they 
are wrong, and dangerously wrong as regards 
their own popularity. I wish every Volunteer 
would lay down his arms, being fully persuaded 
that in case of necessity he would take them up 
again ; but this attempt to increase the system 
of patronage, by depriving them of their cove- 
nanted right of electing their own officers, is ras- 
cally and abominable. The elections universally 
made show that the choice always falls upon 
men who have either the claim of property, char- 
acter, or talents. Of more permanent political 
importance will be a circumstance of which there 
is no talk of at all. Inquiries are making into 
the actual state of the poor in England ; an office 
has been established for the purpose, and the 
superintendence, by Rickman's recommendation, 
assigned to Poole, Coleridge's friend, of whom 
you must have heard me speak — a man of extra- 
ordinary powers, more akin in mind to Rickman 
than any man I know. This is a very gratify- 
ing circumstance to me, to see so many persons, 
with whom I became acquainted before the world 
did, rising in the world to their proper stations. 

* ^ ^ ^ W TV 

''God bless you! R. S." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Amelia. 

"Feb. 11,1804. 
"Dear Tom, 
"It is not possible that my letters can give 
you more pleasure than yours give me. You 
have always reason to suppose that all is well 
with me when you hear nothing to the contrary. 
I am only exposed to the common accidents of 
life, but you are in the way of battle and slaugh- 
ter, pestilence and hurricanes, and every letter 
that arrives from you relieves me from a certain 
kind of apprehension. * * • # # 

As this letter was not finished at a heat, it has 
lain two or three weeks ; to own the truth fair- 
ly, I had such a fear about me of the yellow fe- 
ver, because you mentioned indisposition on the. 
night preceding the date of your last, that I had 



not heart to go on with it. Once I received a 
letter from a poor fellow three months after he 
was dead : it excited a most painful feeling ; and 
it is little less unpleasant to address one to a per- 
son whom you fear may not be among the living ; 
however, yours of Dec. 4 has just come to hand. 
You do not tell me whether the fever is out of the 
ship; but I conclude it must almost have done 
its work, and will go out like a fire when it no 
longer finds any thing it can destroy. I have a 
sort of theory about such diseases which I do 
not understand myself, but somebody or other 
will, some of these days. They are so far anal- 
ogous to vegetables as that they take root, grow, 
ripen, and decay. Those which are eruptive, 
blossom and seed ; for the pustule of the small- 
pox, &c, is, to all intents and purposes, the flower 
of the disease, or the fructification by which it is 
perpetuated. Now these diseases, like vegeta- 
bles, choose their own soil : some plants like clay, 
others sand, others chalk ; so the yellow fever 
will not take root in a negro, nor the yaws in a 
white man. There is a hint for a new theory ; 
you will see the truth of the analogy at once, and 
I can no more explain it than you can, but so it 
is. #####*# 
We have been dreadfully shocked here by the 
fate of Wordsworth's brother, captain of the 
Abergavenny East Indiaman, which has just been 
lost in Portland Bay — almost as shocking as the 
Halsewell— 300 lives. * * * * 
Bonaparte wants peace ; a continental war is a 
far more probable event. What will become of 
Portugal, Heaven knows ; and till that be decid- 
ed, I can as little tell what will become of me. 
Meantime, I shall continue to work hard and to 
economize. =*#### 
" God bless you ! 

" Yours very affectionately, R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, Feb. 16, 1804. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" I have seen a sight more dreamy and won- 
derful than any scenery that fancy ever yet de- 
vised for Faery Land. We had walked down to 
the lake side : it was a delightful day, the sun 
shining, and a few white clouds hanging motion- 
less in the sky. The opposite shore of Derwent- 
water consists of one long mountain, which 

suddenly terminates in an arch, thus , and 

through that opening you see a long valley be- 
tween mountains, and bounded by mountain be- 
yond mountain ; to the right of the arch the 
heights are more varied and of greater elevation. 
Now, as there was not a breath of air stirring, 
the surface of the lake was so perfectly still that 
it became one great mirror, and all its waters 
disappeared ; the whole line of shore was rep- 
resented as vividly and steadily as it existed in 
its actual being — the arch, the vale within, the 
single houses far within the vale, the smoke from 
their chimneys, the furthest hills, and the shadow 
and substance joined at their bases so indivisibly, 
that you could make no separation even in youi 
judgment. As I stood on the shore, heaven and 



/Etat. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



173 



the clouds seemed lying under me. I was look- 
ing down into the sky, and the whole range of 
mountains, having one line of summits under my 
feet, and another above me, seemed to be sus- 
pended between the firmaments. Shut your eyes 
and dream of a scene so unnatural and so beau- 
tiful. What I have said is most strictly and 
scrupulously true ; but it was one of those happy 
moments that can seldom occur, for the least 
breath stirring would have shaken the whole vi- 
sion, and at once unrealized it. I have before 
seen a partial appearance, but never before did, 
and perhaps never again may, lose sight of the 
lake entirely, for it literally seemed like an abyss 
of sky before me ; not fog and clouds from a 
mountain, but the blue heaven spotted with a few 
fleecy pillows of cloud, that looked placed there 
for angels to rest upon them. 

"I am treating with my bookseller to publish 
a supplementary or companion work to Ellis's 
Specimens, beginning where he leaves off, and 
coming down to the present time, exclusive of 
the living poets, so that my work, with his, should 
contain a brief notice of all the English poets, 
good, bad, and indifferent, with specimens of each, 
except the dramatic writers. If this take place, 
it will cost me a journey to London, and a month's 
hard work there ; the main part can be done here. 
You know Ellis's book, of course, and if you do 
not, Nicholl can show it you (who, by-the-by, will 
go to the devil for charging half a guinea a vol- 
ume for it, unless he can send Ellis instead). 
Now, if I should make this work, of which there 
is little doubt, you may, if so disposed, give me 
an opportunity of acknowledging my obligations 
for assistance to my friend Mr. G. C. Bedford in 
the preface, and perhaps find some amusement 
in the task. So tell me your lordship's pleasure, 
and I will prescribe to you what to do for me ; 
and if you shall rouse yourself to any interest in 
the pursuit, it may prove really a good prescrip- 
tion. By doing something to assist me, you may 
learn to love some pursuit for yourself. 

" With what can Isaac Reid have filled his one- 
and-twenty volumes? Comments upon Shaks- 
peare seem to keep pace with the National 
Debt, and will at last become equally insuffer- 
able and out of fashion ; yet I should like to see 
his book, and would buy it if I could. There 
must he a mass of English learning heaped to- 
gether, and his Biog. Dramatica is so good a 
work that I do not think old age can have made 
him make a bad one ; besides, this must have 
been the work or amusement of his life. * * 

" I live almost as recluse a life as my neigh- 
bor, the Bassenthwaite Toad, whose history you 
have seen in the newspapers ; only if he finds it 
dull I do not, for I have books, and Port wine, 
and a view from my window. I feel as much 
pleasure in having finished my reviewing as ever 
I did at school when my Bible exercise was done, 
and what sort of pleasure that was you may judge 
by being told that one of the worst dreams that 
ever comes athwart my brain is that I have those 
Latin verses to make. I very often have this 
dream, and it usually ends in a resolution to be 



' my own master, and not make verses, and not 
stay any longer at school, because I am too old. 
It is odd that school never conies pleasantly in 
I my dreams : it is always either thus, or with a 
, notion that I can not find my book to go on with. 
. I never dream of Oxford ; perhaps my stay was 
! not long enough to make an impression suffi- 
ciently deep. 

" God bless you ! 

"Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To Lieut. Soulhey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

."Keswick, Friday, Feb. 17, 1804. 
" Dear Tom, 

" When I remember how many letters I wrote 
to you on your last West Indies station, and that 
you never received one of the number, it seems 
as if this, too, was to be sent upon a forlorn 
hope. However, I will now number what I 
send, that you may see if any be missing, and 
make inquiry for them. 

"I have wanted you to help me in weighing 
anchor for Madoc, and for want of you have 
been obliged to throw into shade what else 
should have been brought out in strong light. 
Had you been at my elbow, he should have set 
sail in a very seaman-like manner ; if this reach- 
es you, it may yet be in time for you to tell me 
what I should say to express that the sails are 
all ready for sailing next day. I am afraid bent 
is not the word, and have only put it in just to 
keep the place, designing to omit it and clap 
some general phrase in, unless you can help me 
out in time. The whole first part of the poem 
is now finished ; that is, as far as Madoc's re- 
turn to America, 3600 lines ; the remaining part 
will be longer. As my guide once told me in 
Portugal, we have got half way, for we have 
come two short leagues, and have two long ones 
to go ; and upon his calculation I am half through 
the poem. 

" Of my own goings on I know not that there 
is any thing which can be said. Imagine me in 
this great study of mine from breakfast till din- 
ner, from dinner till tea, and from tea till sup- 
per, in my old black coat, my corduroys altern- 
ately with the long worsted pantaloons and gait- 
ers in one, and the green shade, and sitting at 
my desk, and you have my picture and my his- 
tory. I play with Dapper, the dog, down stairs, 
who loves me as well as ever Cupid did, and the 
cat, up stairs, plays with me ; for puss, finding 
my room the quietest in the house, has thought 
proper to share it with me. Our weather has 
been so wet that I have not got out of doors for 
a walk once in a month. Now and then I go 
down to the river, which runs at the bottom of 
the orchard, and throw stones till my arms ache, 
and then saunter back again. James Lawson, 
the carpenter, serves me for a Juniper : he has 
made boards for my papers, and a screen, like 
those in the frame, with a little shelf to hold my 
ivory knife, &c, and is now making a little table 
for Edith, of which I shall probably make the 
most use. I rouse the house to breakfast ever) 
morning, and qualify myself for a boatswain's 



174 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 30. 



place by this practice ; and thus one day pass- 
es like "another, and never did the days appear 
to pass so fast. Summer will make a differ- 
ence. Our neighbor, General Peche, will re- 
turn in May ; Harry, also, will come in May. 
Sir George and Lady Beaumont are expected to 
visit Mrs. Coleridge. Danvers is to come in 
the autumn. The Smiths of Bownham (who 
gave me Hayley's Life of Cowper) will proba- 
bly visit the lakes this year, and most likely 
Duppa will stroll down to see me and the mount- 
ains. I am very well — never better. Edith tol- 
erable. God bless you ! If you do not hence- 
forward receive a letter by every packet, the 
fault will not be mine. R. S." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, Feb. 19, 1804. 
"Parson-son,* the Piscis Piscium sive Piscis- 
simus, left us to-day. # # # # 

He is piping hot from Bristol, and brimful of ad- 
miration for Beddoes, who, indeed, seems to have 
done so much for Mrs. C. that there are good 
hopes of her speedy recovery. He is in high 
spirits about the Slave Trade, for the West In- 
dia merchants will not consent to its suspension 
for five years, to prevent the importation of 
hands into the newly-conquered islands ; and 
what from that jealousy, and from the blessed 
success of the St. Domingo negroes, I believe 
•. we may hope to see the traffic abolished. * 

" If I were a single man and a Frenchman, I 
would go as a missionary to St. Domingo, where 
a world of good might be done in that way : the 
climate may be defied by any man in a high 
state of mental excitement. I know not wheth- 
er I sent you some curious facts respecting viva- 
ciousness, but I have met with enough to lead 
to important physiological conclusions, and, in 
particular, to explain the sufficiently common 
fact of sick persons fixing the hour of their death, 
and living exactly to that time : the simple so- 
lution is, that they would else have died sooner. 
In proceeding with my History, I continually 
find something that leads to interesting specula- 
tion : it would, perhaps, be better if there were 
always some one at hand to whom I could com- 
municate these discoveries, and who should help 
me to hunt down the game when started ; not 
that I feel any wish for such society, but still it 
would at times be useful. It is a very odd, but 
a marked characteristic of my mind — the very 
nose in the face of my intellect — that it is either 
utterly idle or uselessly active without its tools. 
I never enter into any regular train of thought 
unless the pen be in my hand ; they then flow as 
fast as did the water from the rock in Horeb. 
but without that wand the source is dry. At 
these times conversation would be useful. How- 
ever, I am going on well — never better. The 
old cerebrum was never in higher activity. I 
find daily more and more reason to wonder at 
the miserable ignorance of English historians, 



Mr, Clarkson. 



and to grieve with a sort of despondency at see- 
ing how much that has been laid up among the 
stores of knowledge has been neglected and ut- 
terly forgotten. 

" Madoc goes on well ; the whole detail of the 
alteration is satisfactorily completed, and I shall 
have it ready for the press by midsummer. I 
wish it could have been well examined first by 
you and William Taylor; however, it will be 
well purged and purified in the last transcrip- 
tion, and shall go into the world, ncft such as will 
obtain general approbation now, but such as may 
content most men to read. I am not quite sure 
whether the story will not tempt me to have a 
cross in the title-page, and take for my motto, 
In hoc signo. # # * =& 

"If Mafcpoc Avdpo-rroc agrees with me about 
the Specimens, it will oblige me to go to Lon- 
don. Perhaps we may contrive to meet. * 

" I am sorry, sir, to perceive by your letter that 
there is a scarcity of writing-paper in London ; 
perhaps, the next time you write, Mr. Rickman 
or Mr. Poole* will have the goodness to accom 
modate you with a larger sheet, that you may 
have the goodness to accommodate me with a 
longer letter ; and if, sir, it be owing to the 
weakness of your sight that you write so large a 
hand, and in lines so far apart, there is a very 
excellent optician, who lives at Charing Cross, 
where you may be supplied with the best spec- 
tacles, exactly of the number which may suit 
your complaint. 

"I am, sir, your obedient humble servant, 
"Robert Southey." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" Feb., 1804. 
" I am not sorry that you gave Godwin a 
dressing, and should not be sorry if he were oc- 
casionally to remember it with the comfortable 
reflection 'in vino Veritas /' for, in plain truth, 
already it does vex me to see you so lavish of the 
outward and visible signs of friendship, and to 
know that a set of fellows whom you do not care 
for and ought not to care for, boast every where 
of your intimacy, and with good reason, to the 
best of their understanding. You have accus- 
tomed yourself to talk affectionately and write 
affectionately to your friends, till the expressions 
of affection flow by habit in your conversation 
and in your letters, and pass for more than they 
are worth ; the worst of all this is, that your let- 
ters will one day rise up in judgment against you 
(for be sure that hundreds which you have for- 
gotten are hoarded up for some Curl or Philips 
of the next generation), and you will be convict- 
ed of a double dealing, which, though you do not 
design, you certainly do practice. And now that 
I am writing affectionately more mco, I will let 
out a little more. You say in yours to Sara that 
you love and honor me. Upon my soul I believe 
you ; but if I did not thoroughly believe it before, 
your saying so is the thing of all things that 



* Of Nether Stoway, Somersetshire ; at that time ofi- 
cially employed in superintending an inquiry into the state 
of the poor in England and Wales. 



Mtat. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



175 



would make me open ray eyes and look about 
me to see if I were not deceived. Perhaps I am 
too intolerant to these kind of phrases ; but, in- 
deed, when they are true, they may be excused, 
and when they are not, there is no excuse for 
them. 

" was always looking for such things, 

but he was a foul feeder, and my moral stomach 
loathes any thing like froth. There is a some- 
thing outlandish in saying them, more akin to 
a French embrace than an English shake by 
the hand, and I would have you leave off saying 
them to those whom you actually do love, that if 
this should not break off, the habit of applying 
them to indifferent persons, the disuse may at 
least make a difference. Your feelings go naked ; 
I cover mine with a bear-skin : I will not say 
that you harden yours by your mode, but I am 
sure that mine are the warmer for their clothing. 

* * * It is possible, or probable, 
that I err as much as you in an opposite extreme, 
and may make enemies where you would make 
friends ; but there is a danger that you may 
sometimes excite dislike in persons of whose ap- 
probation you would yourself be desirous. You 
know me well enough to know in 'what temper 
this has been written, and to know that it has 
been some exertion; for the same habit which 
makes me prefer sitting silent to offering contra- 
diction, makes me often withhold censure when ; 
perhaps, in strictness of moral duty, it ought to 
be applied. The medicine might have been 
sweetened, perhaps ; but, dear Coleridge, take 
the simple bitters, and leave the sweetmeats by 
themselves. 

" That ugly-nosed Godwin has led me to this. 
I dare say he deserved all you gave him ; in fact, 
I have never forgiven him his abuse of William 
Taylor, and do now regret, with some compunc- 
tion, that in my reviewal of his Chaucer I struck 
out certain passages of well-deserved severity * 

* * Two days of S. T. C.'s time given 

to . Another Antonio ! If we are to give 

account for every idle hour, what will you say 
to this lamentable waste ? Or do you expect to 
have them allowed to you in your purgatory 
score ? * * * If he had not 

married again, I would have still have had some 
bowels of compassion for him ; but to take another 
wife with the picture of Mary Woolstonecroft in 
nis house ! Agh ! I am never ashamed of let- 
ting out my dislikes, however, and what is a good 
thing, never afraid; so let him abuse me, and 
we'll be at war. 

" I wish you had called on Longman. That 
man has a kind, heart of his own, and I wish you 
to think so : the letter he sent me was a proof 
of it. Go to one of his Saturday evenings : you 
will see a coxcomb or two, and a dull fellow or 
two; but you will perhaps meet Turner and 
Duppa, and Duppa is worth knowing. Make 
yourself known to him in my name, and tell him 
how glad I should be to show him the lakes. I 
have some hope, from Rickman's letter, that you 
may see William Taylor in town : that would 
give me great pleasure, for I am very desirous 



that you should meet. For universal knowledge 
I believe he stands quite unrivaled : his conver- 
sation is a perpetual spring of living water ; and 
then, in every relation of life, so excellent is he 
that I know not any man who, in the circle of 
his friends, is so entirely and deservedly be 
loved." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

■ March 8, 1804. 

"I have not the Spanish Gil Bias. Such a 
book exists, but, if I remember rightly, with the 
suspicious phrase restored to the Spaniards, 
which may imply a retranslation of what they 
say is translated. Yet it is very likely that the 
story is originally Spanish, and, indeed, if the 
Spaniards claim it, I am ready to believe them, 
they being true men, and Le Sage's being a 
Frenchman strong reason for suspecting him to 
be a thief; however, if he has stolen, there can 
be no doubt that he has tinkered old metal into 
a better shape, and I should think your time ill 
employed in Englishing what every body reads in 
French. 

" And now let me tell you what to do for me, 
and how to do it.* 

" Take half a quatrain, or a whole one doubled ; 
write, as a title, the name of the poet in ques- 
tion ; then, under that, the time or place of his 
birth, when discoverable, and the time of his 
death. After that, a brief notice of his life and 
works to the average length of a Westminster 
theme, as much shorter as his demerits deserve, 
as much longer as apt anecdotes or the humor 
of pointed and rememberable criticism may tempt 
your pen. ###*#* 
Now for a list of those whom I can turn over to 
your care at once : 

" Henderson — this you will do con amore. 

" Garrick— Tom D'Urfey— Tom Browne. 

"Cary, the author of Chrononhotonthologu.s 
— see if his namby-pamby be of suitable brevity ; 
the Biographia and a Biog. Dictionary will be 
sufficient guides. Lady M. W. Montague, Ste- 
phen Duck — kill off these, and put them by till 
I see you ; and kill them off, the faster the better, 
that you may fall upon more ; for so much labor 
as you do, so much am I saved, which is very good 
for both of us, says Dr. Southey. 

" Great news at Keswick : a firing heard off 
the Isle of Man at four o'clock in the morning 
yesterday ! The French are a coming, a coming, 
a coming — and what care we ? We, who have 
eighteen volunteers, and an apothecary at their 
head ! Did I ever tell you of De Paddy, one of 
the 'United,' who was sent to serve on board 
Tom's ship last war ? The first day of his serv- 
ice, he had to carry the plum pudding for the 
dinner of his mess, and the Patrician had never 
seen a plum pudding before ; he came holding it 
up in triumph, and exclaimed, in perfect ecstasy, 
' Och ! your sowls ! look here ! if dis be war, 
may it never be paice !' * * * * 

" No time for more ; farewell ! 

"R. Southey." 



See p. 173. 



176 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



5!tat. 30. 



To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

» Greta Hall, March 12, 1804. 

" Your going abroad appeared to me so doubt- 
ful, or, indeed, so improbable an event, that the 
certainty comes on me like a surprise, and I feel 
at once what a separation the sea makes. When 
we get beyond the reach of mail coaches, then, 
indeed, distance becomes a thing perceptible. I 
shall often think, Coleridge. Quanto minus est 
cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse ! God 
grant you a speedy passage, a speedy recovery, 
and a speedy return ! I will write regularly 
and often ; but I know by Danvers how irregu- 
larly letters arrive, and at how tedious a time 
after their date. Look in old Knolles before you 
go, and read the Siege of Malta : it will make 
you feel that you are going to visit sacred ground. 
I can hardly think of that glorious defense with- 
out tears. * * * * * * 

" You would rejoice with me were you now 
at Keswick, at the tidings that a box of books is 
safely harbored in the Mersey, so that for the 
next fortnight I shall be more interested in the 
news of Fletcher* than of Bonaparte. It con- 1 
tains some duplicates of the lost cargo ; among ■ 
them, the collection of the oldest Spanish poems, 
in which is a metrical romance upon the Cid. 
I shall sometimes want you for a Gothic etymolo- ! 
gy. Talk of the happiness of getting a great . 
prize in the lottery ! What is that to the open- i 
Log a box of books ! The joy upon lifting up 
the cover must be something like what we shall 
feel when Peter the Porter opens the door up 
stairs, ?nd says. Please to walk in. sir. That I : 
shall ne\er be paid for my labor according to 
the current value of time and labor, is tolerably 
certain ; but if any one should offer me 6610,000 ( 
to forego that labor, I should bid him and his ; 
money go to the devil, for twice the sum could ! 
not purchase me half the enjoyment. It will be j 
a great delight to me in the next world to take 
a fly and visit these old worthies, who are my ' 
only society here, and to tell them what excel- 
lent company I found them here at the lakes of • 
Cumberland two centuries after they had been ' 
dead and turned to dust. In plain truth, I exist 
more among the dead than the living, and think 
more about them, and, perhaps, feel more about 
them. ####=*## 
Moses has quite a passion for drawing, strong 
enough to be useful were he a little older. When 
I visit London I will set him up in drawing- 
books. He was made quite happy yesterday by j 
two drawings of Charles Fox, which happened ' 
to be in my desk, and to be just fit for him. The 
dissected map of England gives him his fill of de- ! 
light, and he now knows the situation of all the 
counties in England as well as any one in the 
house, or, indeed, in the kingdom. I have prom- 
ised him Asia : it is a pity that Africa and Ameri- 
ca are so badly divided as to be almost useless, [ 
for this is an excellent way of learning geogra- 
phy, and I know by experience that what is so ! 
learned is never forgotten. * # # 



The name of a Keswick carrier. 



You would be amused to see the truly Catholic 
horror he feels at the Jews, because they do not 
eat pork and ham, on which account he declares 
he never will be an old clothes man. Sara is as 
fond of me as Dapper is, which is saying a good 
deal. As for Johnny Wordsworth, I expect to 
see him walk over very shortly : he is like the 
sons of the Anakim. No M. Post yesterday, 
none to-day — vexatious after the last French 
news. I should not suppose Moreau guilty ; he 
is too cautious a general to be so imprudent a 
man. # # # # 

<; God bless you ! R. S." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

■ Greta Hall, March 14, 1804. 

" Your departure hangs upon me with some- 
thing the same effect that the heavy atmosphere 
presses upon you — an unpleasant thought, that 
works like yeast, and makes me feel the animal 
functions going on. As for the manner of your 
going, you will be, on the whole, better off than 
in a king's ship. Now you are }-our own mas- 
ter ; there you would have been a guest, and, of 
course, compelled to tolerate the worst of all 
possible society, except that of soldier-officers. 

" I had hopes of seeing you in London ; for 
almost as soon as Edith is safe in bed, if safe she 
be (for my life has been so made up of sudden 
changes that I never even mentally look to what 
is to happen without that if, and the optative 
utinam) — as soon, I say, as that takes place, 1 
shall hurry to town, principally to put to press 
this book of Specimens, which can only be fin- 
ished there, for you will stare at the catalogue 
of dead authors whom I shall have to resurrec- 
tionize. This will be a very curious and useful 
book of mine : how much the worse it will be 
for your voyage to Malta, few but myself will 
feel. If it sells, I shall probably make a sup- 
plementary volume to Ellis's, to include the 
good pieces which he has overlooked, for he has 
not selected well, and, perhaps, to analyze the 
epics and didactics, which nobody reads. Had 
I conceived that you would think of transcribing 
any part of Madoc, you should have been spared 
the trouble ; but, in writing to you, it has al- 
ways appeared to me better to write than to 
copy, the mere babble having the recommenda- 
tion that it is exclusively your own, and created 
for you, and in this the feeling of exclusive prop- 
erty goes for something. The poem shall be 
sent out to you, if there be a chance of its reach- 
ing you ; but will you not have left Malta by 
the time a book to be published about New 
Year's Day can arrive there ? 

" Had you been with me, I should have talked 
with you about a preface : as it is, it will be best 
simply to state, and as briefly as possible, what 
I have aimed at in my style, and wherein, in my 
own judgment, I have succeeded or failed. Long- 
man has announced it, in his Cyclopaedic List, 
under the title of an epic poem, which I assur- 
edly shall not affix to it myself: the name, of 
which I was once over-fond, has nauseated me, 
and, moreover, should seem to render me ame- 



JEtat. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



177 



nable to certain laws which I do not acknowl- 
edge. 

''If I were at Malta, the siege of that illus- 
trious Island should have a poem, and a good 
one too ; and you ought to think about it, for of 
all sieges that ever have been or ever will be, it 
was the most glorious, and called forth the no- 
blest heroism. Look after some modern Greek 
books ; in particular, the poem from which the 
Teseide of Boccaccio and the Knight's Tale are 
derived : if, indeed, it be not a translation from 
the Italian. Could you lay hand on some of 
these old books, and on old Italian poetry, by 
selling them at Leigh and Sotheby's you might 
Imost pay your travels. 

" More manuscripts of Davis come down to- 
day. I have run through his Life of Chatterton, 
which is flimsy and worthless. I shall not ad- 
vise Longman to print it, and shall warn the 
writer to expunge an insult to you and to my- 
self, which is not to be paid for by his praise. 
We formed a just estimate of the man's moral 
stamina, most certainly, and as for man-mend- 
ing, I have no hopes of it. The proverb of the 
silk purse and the sow's ear comprises my phi- 
losophy upon that subject. 

" I write rapidly and unthinkingly, to be in 
time for the post. Why have you not made 
Lamb declare war upon Mrs. Bare-bald ? He 
should singe her flaxen wig with squibs, and tie 
crackers to her 'petticoats till she leaped about 
like a parched pea for very torture. There is 
not a man in the world who could so well re- 
venge himself. The Annual Review (that is, 
the first vol.) came down in my parcel to-day. 
My articles are wickedly misprinted, and, in 
many instances, made completely nonsensical. 
If I could write Latin even as I could once, per- 
haps I should talk to Longman of publishing a 
collection of the best modern Latin poets : they 
were dulli canes many of them, but a poor fel- 
low who has spent years and years in doing his 
best to be remembered, does deserve well enough 
of posterity to be reprinted once in every millen- 
nium, and, in fact, there are enough good ones 
to form a collection of some extent. 

" God bless you ! prays your old friend and 
brother, R. Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 30, 1804. 
"My dear Rickman, 
" Turner wrote to me and complained heav- 
ily of Scotch criticism, which he seems to feel 
too much. Such things only provoke me to in- 
terject Fool ! and Booby ! seasoned with the 
par^iple damnatory ; but as for being vexed at 
a review — I should as soon be fevered by a flea- 
bite ! I sent him back a letter of encourage- 
ment and stimulant praise, for these rascals had 
so affected him as to slacken his industry. I 
look upon the invention of reviews to be the 
worst injury which literature has received since 
its revival. People formerly took up a book to 
learn from it, and with a feeling of respectful 
thankfulness to the man who had spent years in 



acquiring that knowledge, which he communi- 
cates to them in a few hours; now they only 
look for faults. Every body is a critic ; that is, 
every reader imagines himself superior to the 
author, and reads his book that he may censure 
it, not that he may improve by it. * * 

"You are in great measure right about x Cole- 
ridge ; he is worse in body than you seem to be- 
lieve ; but the main cause lies in his own man- 
agement of himself, or, rather, want of manage- 
ment. His mind is in a perfect St. Vitus's dance 
— eternal activity without action. At times he 
feels mortified that he should have done so little ; 
but this feeling never produces any exertion. I 
will begin to-morrow, he says, and thus he has 
been all his life-long letting to-day slip. He has 
had no heavy calamities in life, and so contrives 
to be miserable about trifles. Poor fellow ! there 
is no one thing which gives me so much pain as 
the witnessing such a waste of unequaled power. 
I knew one man resembling him, save that with 
equal genius he was actually a vicious man. 

" If that man had common prudence, he must 
have been the first man in this country, from his 
natural and social advantages, and as such, we 
who knew him and loved him at school used to 
anticipate him. I learned more from his conver- 
sation than any other man ever taught me, be- 
cause the rain fell when the young plant was 
just germinating and wanted it most ; and I learn- 
ed more morality by his example than any thing 
else could have taught me, for I saw him wither 
away. He is dead and buried at the Cape of 
Good Hope, and has left behind him noil jg to 
keep his memory alive. A few individuals only 
remember him with a sort of horror and affec- 
tion, which just serves to make them melancholy 
whenever they think of him or mention his name. 
This will not be the case with Coleridge ; the 
disjecta membra will be found if he does not die 
early ; but, having so much to do, so many er- 
rors to w T eed out of the world which he is capa- 
ble of eradicating, if he does not die without doing 
his work, it would half break my heart, for no 
human being has had more talents allotted. 

" Wordsworth will do better, and leave behind 
him a name unique in his way. He will rank 
among the very first poets, and probably pos- 
sesses a mass of merits superior to all, except 
only Shakspeare. This is doing much, yet would 
he be a happier man if he did more. 

" I am made very happy by a re-enforcement 
of folios from Lisbon, and I shall feel some re- 
luctance in leaving them, and breaking off work 
to go for London to a more trifling employment; 
however, my History is to be considered as the 
capital laid by — the savings of industry ; and you 
would think me entitled to all the praise indus- 
try can merit, were you to see the pile of pa- 
pers. * 



" Vale ! 



R. S. 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, March 31, 1804. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" * * * I am bound for London, 



173 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 30. 



chiefly to complete these Specimens and put them 
to press. Alas ! for your unhappy habit of pro- 
crastination ! 'Don't delay,' }'ou write in your 
postscript, and this in answer to a letter which 
had lain above a fortnight in your desk ! Here 
it happens to be of no moment ; but you tell me 
the habit has produced and is producing worse 
consequences. I would give you advice if it 
could be of use ; but thare is no curing those 
who choose to be diseased. A good man and a 
wise man may at times be angry with the world, 
at times grieved for it ; but be sure no man was 
ever discontented with the world if he did his 
duty in it. If a man of education who has health, 
eyes, hands, and leisure, wants an object, it is 
only because God Almighty has bestowed all 
those blessings upon a man who does not deserve 
them. Dear Grosvenor, I wish you may feel 
half the pain in reading this that I do in writing 
it. ####=* # 

" There! 

"And what shall I say after this? for this 
oitter pill will put your mouth out of taste for 
whatever insipidities I might have had to offer ; 
only the metaphor reminds me of a scheme of 
mine, which is to improve cookery by chemic- 
al tuning, making every dish prepare the palate 
for that which is to come next ; and this reminds 
me that I have discovered most poignant and 
good galvanism in drinking water out of an iron 
cup : how far this may improve fermented liquors 
remains to be experimented. The next time 
you see a pump with an iron ladle thereunto ap- 
pended, stop, though it be on Cornhill, and drink 
and try. 

" I am very happy, having this week received 
the oldest poem in the Castilian language, and 
the oldest code of Gothic laws, and a re-enforce- 
ment of folios besides, containing the history of 
Portugal from the Creation down to 1400 A.D. 



God bless 



you 



Yours very affectionately, 



R. S. 



To John Hickman, Esq. 

"March, 1804. 
' : Dear Rickmax, 
"# # # # # ## 

I have more in hand than Bonaparte or Marquis 
Wellesley — digesting Gothic law, gleaning moral ! 
history from monkish legends, and conquering In- i 
dia, or rather Asia, with Albuquerque ; filling up j 
the chinks of the day by hunting in Jesuit chron- j 
icles, and compiling Collectanea Hispanica et j 
Gothica. Meantime Madoc sleeps, and my lucre j 
of gain compilation* goes on at night, when I 
am fairly obliged to lay history aside, because it j 
perplexes me in my dreams. 'Tis a vile thing 
to be pestered in sleep with all the books I have 
been reading in the day jostled together. God 
bless you ! R. S. : ' 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"April 23, 1804. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" I thought to have seen vou before this time, 



* Specimens of English Poet3. 



and am daily, indeed hourly, in anticipation of 
being able to say when I set out. You know 
that I design to take up with me the first part of 
Madoc, and leave it with the printer. Now have 
I been thinking that your worship would, perhaps, 
be not unwilling to stand man-midwife upon the 
occasion, and be appointed grand plenipotentiary 
over commas, semicolons, and periods. My books 
have all suffered by misprinting. In fact, there 
is a lurking hope at the bottom of this request, 
that when you have once been brought into a 
habit of dealing with the devil on my account, 
you may be induced to deal with him on your 
own. 

"I shall bring up with me as much toward 
the Specimens as can be supplied by Anderson's 
Collection, Cibber's Lives, and an imperfect se- 
ries of the European Magazine. The names 
omitted in these may, beyond all doubt, be sup- 
plied from the obituary in the Gentleman's Mag- 
azine, alias the Oldwomania, a work which I 
have begun to take in here at Keswick, to en- 
lighten a Portuguese student among the mount- 
ains, and which does amuse me by its exquisite 
inanity, and the glorious and intense stupidity of 
its correspondents ; it is, in truth, a disgrace to 
the age and the country. My list of names is 
already long enough to prove that there will be 
some difficulty in getting at all the volumes req- 
uisite, not that it is or can be a matter of con- 
science to read through all the dull poetry of 
every rhymester. The language of vituperation 
or criticism has not yet been so systematized as 
to afford terms for every shade of distinction. I 
had an idea of applying the botanical nomencla- 
ture to novels, and dividing them into monogynia, 
monandria, cryptogamia, &c, but for poems the 
pun will not hold good. 

" 'Tis a long way to London ! I wish I were 
on my way, and then shall I wish myself amved, 
and then be wishing myself back again ; for com- 
plete rest, absolute, unprospective, rooted rest, 
is the great object of my desires. Near London 
must be my final settlement, unless any happy 
and unforeseen fortune should enable me to move 
to the south, and thus take a longer lease of life ; 
in fact, if I could afford the money sacrifice, I 
would willingly make the other, and keep my 
History unpublished all my life, that I might pass 
it in Portugal. Society, connections, native lan- 
guage — all these are weighty things ; but what 
are they to the permanent and perpetual exhil- 
aration of a climate that not merely prolongs life, 
but gives you double the life while it lasts ? I 
have actually felt a positive pleasure in breathing 
there; and even here, in this magnificent spot, 
the recollection of the Tagus, and the Serra de 
Ossa ; of Coimbra, and its cypresses, and orange 
groves, and olives, its hills and mountains, its 
venerable buildings, and its dear river; of the 
Vale of Algarve, the little islands of beauty amid 
the desert of Alentejo, and, above all, of Cintra, 
the most blessed spot in the habitable globe, will 
almost bring tears into my eyes. 
' : Vale! 

R. S." 



^TAT. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



179 



To Mis. Southey. 

"Palace Yard, May 10, 1804. 
" My dear Edith, 

" Safe, sound, and rested sufficiently — this is 
the best information ; and if you can send me as 
complete an ' all's well' in return, heartily glad 
shall I be to receive it. 

" On Friday I dined with * * At 

six that evening got into the coach ; slept at War- 
rington ; breakfasted at Stowe ; dined at Birming- 
ham ; slept at Stratford-upon-Avon : in the dark 
we reached that place, so that I could not see 
Shakspeare's grave, but I will return that road 
on purpose. At five, on Sunday morning, we ar- 
rived in Oxford, and I walked through it at that 
quiet and delightful hour, and thought of the past 
and the present. We did not reach London till 
after five last evening, so that I was forty-eight 
hours in the coach. I landed at the White Horse 
Cellar : no coach was to be procured, and I stood 
in all the glory of my filth beside my trunk, at 
the Cellar door, in my spencer of the cut of 1798 
(for so long is it since it was made), and my dirty 
trowsers, while an old fellow hunted out a porter 
for me. For about five minutes I waited ; the 
whole mob of Park loungers and Kensington Gar- 
den buckery, male and female, were passing by 
in all their finery, and all looked askance on me. 
Well, off I set at last, and soon found my spencer 
was the wonderful part of my appearance. I 
stopped at the top of St. James's Street, just be- 
fore a group, who all turned round to admire me, 
pulled it off, and gave it to my dirty porter, and 
exhibited as genteel a black coat as ever Joe 
Aikin made. #*###* 
They have inserted my account of Malthus in- 
stead of William Taylor's, for which, as you know, 
I am sorry, and also preferred my account of poor 
Ritson's romance to one which Walter Scott vol- 
unteered. Scott, it seems, has shown his civil- 
ity by reviewing Amadis here and in the Edin- 
burgh, which I had rather he had left alone ; for, 
though very civil, and in the right style of civil- 
ity, he yet denies my conclusion respecting the 
author, without alleging one argument, or shadow 
of argument, against the positive evidence ad- 
duced. # # # Bard Williams is 
in town, so I shall shake one honest man by the 
hand whom I did not expect to see. 

" God bless you ! 

"Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 

To Mrs. Southey. 

" London, May 16, 1804. 
• " My dear Edith, 

" A. Aikin had need send me certain compli- 
mentary sugar-plums : he has cut out some of 
my bitterest and best sentences, and hf£s""r eject- 
ed my reviewal of his father's Letters on the 
English Poets, to make room for something as 
Bare-bald* as the book itself. However, no 
wonder; there must be a commander-in-chief, 
and the Annual Review has at least as good, or 
better, than either army, navy, or government 
in England. 



See page 177. 



" You should have seen my interview with 
Hyde. I was Eve, he the tempter : could I re- 
sist Hyde's eloquence ? A coat, you know, was 
predetermined ; but my waistcoat was shameful. 
I yielded ; and yielded also to a calico under- 
waistcoat, to give the genteel fullness which was 
requisite. This was not all. Hyde pressed me 
further : delicate patterns for pantaloons — they 
make gaiters of the same ; it would not soil, and 
it would wash. I yielded, and am to-morrow to 
be completely hyded in coat, waistcoat, under- 
waistcoat, pantaloons, and gaiters, and shall go 

forth, like , conquering and to conquer. If 

Mrs. should see me! and in my new hat 

— for I have a new hat — and my new gloves. 

Joze ! I will show myself to Johnny Cock- 
bain* for the benefit of the North. Davy talks 
of going to the lakes with Sir G. Beaumont, 
probably, and, in that case, soon. Elmsley talks 
of going in the autumn, and wishes me to ac- 
company him to Edinburgh. Wynn wants me 
in Wales, and would fetch me. I can not be in 
two places at once, and must not be cut in half, 
for to Solomon's decision I have an objection. * 
### ##### 

1 shall desire A. Aikin, my commander, to ship 
me down a huge cargo, that I may get at least 
fifty pounds for next year, and look to that for a 
supply in April. In the foreign one which he 
proposes, I will not take any active part : it will 
take more time, and yield less money in propor- 
tion. The whole article upon Peter Bayley is 
in, in all its strength. # * # * 
I perfectly long to be at home again, and home 
I will be at the month's end, God willing, for 
business shall not stand in my way. I will do 
all that is possible next week and the beginning 
of the following, and then lay such a load upon 
Dapple's back as he never trudged under before. 
He shall work, a lazy, long-eared animal, he 
shall work, or the printer's devil shall tease him 
out of his very soul.f * * # # 

" Dear Edith, how weaiy I am ! God bless 
you! R S" 

To Mrs. Southey. 

" London, Maj', 1804. 

The Thames is ebbing fast before the window, 
and a beautiful sight it is, dear Edith; but I 
wish I were upon the banks of the Greta ! I 
will not remain an hour longer than can be help- 
ed. You have no notion of the intolerable fatigue 
it is to walk all day and not get to bed till after 
midnight. * * * * * * 
I have lost a grand triumph over you, Edith. 
Had you seen me in my Hyde when I tried it, 
you would never have sent me to a London hyde- 
maker again. The sleeves are actually as large 
as the thighs of my pantaloons, and cuffs to them 
like what old men wear in a comedy. I am 
sure, if I were a country farmer, and caught such 

* A Keswick tailor. 

t These kind intentions refer to the Specimens of the 
English poets, and were directed toward Mr. Bedford, who 
had long borne very patiently the flattering appellation 
here given him. 



180 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 30. 



a barebones as myself in such a black sack, I 
would stick him up for a scarecrow. 

"I saw Longman yesterday, who was very 
glad to see me. I am trying to make him pub- 
lish a collection of the scarce old English poets, 
which will be the fittest thing in the world for 
Lamb to manage, if he likes it ; or, perhaps, to 
manage with my co-operation. The Amadis 
sells not amiss ; the edition, they say, will go 
off. Thalaba goes off slowly, but is going. 
They got me W. Taylor's review, which is very 
characteristic of his style, talents, and good will 
for the author. I will bring down the number. 

" On Thursday Carlisle gives me a dinner. 
There must be one day for Turner ; and as for 
all my half a thousand acquaintances, they may 
ask till they are blind, for I won't go. I might 
live all the year here by being invited out as a 
show, but I will not show myself. I write you 
very unsatisfactory letters, dear Edith, but you 
know how like a bear with a sore head this place 
makes me ; and never was I more uncomforta- 
ble in it, though with a pleasanter house over 
my head than ever, and better company. 

" God bless you ! It. S." 

To John Richnan, Esq. 

"Keswick, June 6, 1802. 
" Dear Rickmax, 

" Here I am at length, at least all that remains 
of me — the skin and bones of Robert Southey. 
Being now at rest, and, moreover, egregiously 
hungry, the flesh which has been expended in 
stage-coaches and in London streets will soon be 
replaced. Dulce est actorum meminisse — labor- 
um will not so fully conclude the line as my mean- 
ing wishes. Labor enough I had ; but there are 
other things besides my labor in London to be 
remembered — more pleasurable in themselves, 
Dut not making such pleasurable recollections, 
because they are to be wished for again. 

" However, I found excellent society awaiting 
me at home : Florian de Ocampo and Ambrosio 
Novales — thirteen of the little quartos, bringing 
down Spanish history to the point where Pru- 
dencio de Sandoval takes it up. and where I also 
begin the full tide of my narration. Novales 
was the correspondent of Reserdius, into whose 
work you once looked, and was, like him, an ex- 
cellent Latinist, and a patient, cautious, martyr- 
murdering antiquary, an excellent weeder of lies 
wherever they were to be found. In company 
with these came the four folios of the Bibliotheca 
Hispanica : there is affixed a portrait of the late 
king, so exquisitely engraved and so exquisitely 
ugly, that 1 know not whether it be most honor- 
able to Spain to have advanced so far in the arts, 
or disgraceful to have exercised them upon such 
a fool's pate. I am sure Duppa would laugh at ! 
his Catholic majesty, but whether an interjection 
of admiration at that print, or the laugh (which 
is the next auxiliary part of speech to the ohs 
and ahs, interjections), will come first, is only to 
be decided by experiment. 



t; You will read the Mabinogion, concerning 
which I ought to have talked to you. In the 
last, that most odd and Arabian-like story of the 
Mouse, mention is made of a begging scholar, 
that helps to the date ; but where did the Kim- 
bri get the imagination that could produce such 
a tale ! That enchantment of the basin hanging 
by the chain from heaven is in the wildest spirit 
of the Arabian Nights. I am perfectly astonish- 
ed that such fictions should exist in Welsh : they 
throw no light on the origin of romance, every 
thing being utterly dissimilar to what we mean 
by that term ; but they do open a new world of 
fiction ; and if the date of their language be fix- 
ed about the twelfth or thirteenth century, I can 
not but think the mythological substance is of far 
earlier date, very probably brought from the 
East by some of the first settlers or conquerors. 
If William Owen will go on and publish them, I 
have hopes that the world will yet reward him 
for his labors. Let Sharon 1 * make his language 
grammatical, but not alter their idiom in the 
slightest point. I will advise him about this, 
being about to send him off a pat eel of old Ger- 
man or Theotistic books of Coleridge's, which 
will occasion a letter. * =* # 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

"June 11, 1804, Keswick. 
"Dear Coleridge, 

" The first news of you was from Lamb's let 
ter, which arrived when I was in London. ] 
saw, also, your letter to Stuart, and heard of one 
to Tobin, before I returned and found my own. 
Ere this you are at Malta. What an infectious 
thing is irregularity ! Merely because it was 
uncertain when a letter could set off, I have al- 
wa3 T s yielded to the immediate pressure of other 
employment ; whereas, had there been a day fix- 
ed for the mail, to have written would then have 
been a fixed business, and performed like an en- 
gagement. 

" All are well — Sara and Sariola, Moses and 
Justiculus, Edith and the Edithling. Mary is 
better. 

"I was worn to the very bone by fatigue in 
London — more walking in one day than I usual- 
ly take in a month ; more waste of breath in 
talking than serves for three months' consump- 
tion in the country ; add to this a most abomin- 
able cold, affecting chest, head, eyes, and nose. 
It was impossible to see half the persons whom 
I wished to see, and ought to have seen, without 
prolonging my stay to an inconvenient time, and 
an unreasonable length of absence from home. 
I called upon Sir Georgef unsuccessfully, and 
received a note that evening, saying he would 
be at home the following morning ; then I saw 
him, and his lady, and his pictures, and after- 
ward met him the same day at dinner at Davy's. 
As he immediately left town, this was all our in- 
tercourse, and as it is not likely that he will visit 
the lakes this year, probably will be all. 



Sharon Turner, Esq. 



t Sir George Beaumont 



jEtat. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



181 



"I went into the Exhibition merely to see 
your picture, which perfectly provoked me. 
kazlitt's does look as if you were on your trial, 
and certainly had stolen the horse ; but then you 
did it cleverly: it had been a deep, well-laid 
scheme, and it was no fault of yours that you 
had been detected. But this portrait by North- 
cote looks like a grinning idiot; and the worst 
is, that it is just like enough to pass for a good 
likeness with those who only know your features 
imperfectly. Dance's drawing has that merit at 
least, that nobody would ever suspect you of 
having been the original. Poole's business will 
last yet some weeks. As the Abstract is print- 
ed, I can give you the very important result : 
one in eight throughout Great Britain receives 
permanent parish pay;^ what is still more ex- 
traordinary and far more consolatory, one in nine 
is engaged in some benefit society — a prodigious 
proportion, if you remember that, in this compu- 
tation, few women enter, and no children. 

" I dined with Sotheby, and met there Henley, 
a man every way to my taste. Sotheby was 
very civil, and as his civility has not that smooth- 
ness so common among the vagabonds of fashion, 
[ took it in good part. He is what I should call 
a clever man. Other lions were Price, the pic- 
turesque man, and Davies Giddy, whose face 
ought to be perpetuated in marble for the honor 
of mathematics. Such a forehead I never saw. 

I also met Dr. at dinner, who, after a long 

silence, broke out into a discourse upon the prop- 
erties of the conjunction Quam. Except his 
quamical knowledge, which is as profound as 
you will imagine, he knows nothing but bibliog- 
raphy, or the science of title-pages, impresses, and 
dates. It was a relief to leave him, and find his 
brother, the captain, at Rickman's, smoking after 
supper, and letting out puffs at the one corner 
of his mouth and puns at the other. The cap- 
tain hath a son — begotten, according to Lamb, 
upon a mermaid ; and thus far is certain, that he 
is the queerest fish out of water. A paralytic 
affection in childhood has kept one side of his 
face stationary, w T hile the other has continued to 
grow, and the two sides form the most ridiculous 
whole you can imagine ; the boy, however, is a 
sharp lad, the inside not having suffered. 

"William Owen lent me three parts of the 
Mabinogion, most delightfully translated into so 
Welsh an idiom and syntax that such a transla- 
tion is as instructive (except for etymology) as an 
original. I was, and am, still utterly at a loss 
to devise by what possible means fictions so per- 
fectly like the Arabian Tales in character, and 
yet so indisputably of Cimbric growth, should 
have grown up in Wales. Instead of throwing 
light upon the origin of romance, as had been 
surmised, they offer a new problem, of almost 
impossible solution. Bard Williams communi- 
cated to me some fine arcana of bardic mytholo- 
gy, quite new to me and to the world, which you 
will find in Madoc. I have ventured to lend 
Turner your German Romances, which will be 



This seems almost incredible. 



very useful to him, and which will be replaced 
on your shelves before your return, and used, not 
abused,* during your absence. I also sent him 
the Indian Bible, because I found him at the In- 
dian grammar, for he is led into etymological re- 
searches. That is a right worthy and good man ; 
and, what rarely happens, I like his wife as well 
as I do him. Sir, all the literary journals of En- 
gland will not bring you more news than this 
poor sheet of Miss Crosthwaite's letter paper. I 
have proposed to Longman to publish a collec- 
tion of the scarcer and better old poets, begin- 
ning with Pierce Ploughman, and to print a few 
only at a high price, that they may sell as rari- 
ties. This he will determine upon in the autumn. 
If it be done, my name must stand to the pros- 
pectus, and Lamb shall take the job and the 
emolument, for whom, in fact, I invented it, be- 
ing a fit thing to be done, and he the fit man to 
do it. 

" The Annual Review succeeds beyond expec- 
tation : a second edition of the first volume is 
called for. Certain articles respecting the Meth- 
odists and Malthus are said to have contributed 
much to its reputation. By-the-by, that fellow 
has had the impudence to marry, after writing 
upon the miseries of population. In the third 
volume I shall fall upon the Society for the Sup- 
pression of Vice. 

" Thus far had I proceeded yesterday, design- 
ing to send off the full sheet by that night's post, 
when Wordsworth arrived, and occasioned one 
day's delay. I have left him talking to Moses, 
and mounted to my own room to finish. What 
news, j r ou will wish to ask, of Keswick ? The 
house remains in statu quo, except that the little 
parlor is painted, and papered with cartridge 
paper. Workmen to plaster this room could not 
be procured when Jackson sent for them, and so 
unplastered it is likely to remain another winter. 
A great improvement has been made by thinning 
the trees before the parlor window. Just enough 
of the lake can be seen through such a frame- 
work, and such a fretted canopy of foliage as to 
produce a most delightful scene, and utterly un- 
like any other view of the same subject. The 
lakers begin to make their appearance, though 
none have, as yet, reached us ; but Sharpe has 
announced his approach in a letter to W. We 
are in hourly expectation of Harry ; and in the 
course of the year I expect Duppa to be my guest, 
and probably Elmsley. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

" June 27, 1804, Keswick. 
" 'Tis a heartless thing, dear Tom, to write 
from this distance, and at this uncertainty, tho 
more so when I recollect how many letters of 
mine were sent to the West Indies when you 
were last there, which never reached you. Two 
packets, say the papers, have been taken ; and 



* This was a gentle hint to Mr. Coleridge, who valued 
books none the less for being somewhat ragged and dirty, 
and did not take the same scrupulous care as my fathdr 
to prevent their becoming so. 



182 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 30. 



if so, two of my epistles are now deeper down 
than your sounding-lines have ever fathomed — 
unless, indeed, some shark has swallowed and 
digested bags and bullets. We are uneasy at 
receiving no letter since that which announced 
your arrival at Barbadoes. I conceived you were 
at the Surinam expedition, and waited for the 
Gazette to-day with some unavoidable apprehen- 
sions. It has arrived, and I can find no trace of 
the Galatea, which, though so far satisfactory as 
that it proves you have not been killed by the 
Dutchman, leaves me, on the other hand, in doubt 
what has become of you and your ship. * * 

" About the changes in the Admiralty, I must 
tell you a good thing of W. T. in the Isis : he 
said it was grubbing up English oak, and plant- 
ing Scotch fir in its place, for the use of the na- 
vy. An excellent good thing ! If, however, I 
am not pleased that Lord Melville should be in, 
I am heartily glad that his predecessor is out, for 
no man ever proved himself so utterly unfit for 
the post. Our home politics are becoming very 
interesting, and must ultimately lead to the 
strongest administration ever seen in England. 
Pitt has played a foolish game in coming in 
alone : it has exasperated the prince, who is the 
rising sun to look to, and is playing for the re- 
gency. 

" The lakers and the fine weather have made 
their appearance together. As yet we have only 
seen Sharpe, whose name I know not if you will 
remember : he is an intimate of Tuffin, or Muffin, 
whose name you can not forget, and, like him, 
an excellent talker — knowing every body, re- 
membering every thing, and having strong tal- 
ents besides. Davy is somewhere on the road. 
He is recovering from the ill effects of fashiona- 
ble society, which had warped him. Rickman 
told me his mind was in a healthier tone than 
usual, and I was truly rejoiced to find it so. 
Wordsworth came over to see me on my return, 
and John Thelwall, the lecturer on elocution, 
dined with us on his travels. But the greatest 
event of Greta Hall is, that we have had a jack 
of two-and-twenty pounds, which we bought at 
threepence a pound. It was caught in the lake 
with a hook and line. We dressed it in pieces, 
like salmon, and it proved, without exception, 
one of the finest fish I had ever tasted ; so, if 
ever you catch such a one, be sure you boil it 
instead of roasting it in the usual way. I am in 
excellent good health, and have got rid of my 
sore eyes — for how long God knows. The dis- 
ease, it seems, came from Egypt, and is in some 
mysterious manner contagious, so that we have 
naturalized another curse. 

;; Madoc is in the printer's hands : Ballan- 
tyne, of Edinburgh, who printed the Minstrelsy 
of the Scottish Border — if you remember the 
book. Next week I expect the first proof. Do 
not be frightened to hear after this that I have 
not done a stroke further in correcting and filling 
up the MSS. since my return. Reviewing is 
coming round again : I have a parcel upon the 
road, and groan in spirit at the prospect ; not 
but of all trades it is the least irksome, and the 



most like my own favorite pursuits, which it 
certainly must, in a certain degree, assist, as 
well as, in point of time, retard. There is much 
of mine in the second volume,* and of my best ; 
some of which you will discover, and some per- 
haps not. A sixth of the whole is mine — pret- 
ty hard work. I get on bravely with my His- 
tory, and have above three quarto volumes done 
— quartos as they ought to be, of about 500 
honest pages each. It does me good to see wh&t 
a noble pile my boards make. 

" My dog Dapper is as fond of me as ever 
Cupid was : this is a well-bred hound of my land- 
lord's, who never fails to leap upon my back 
when I put my nose out of doors, and who, nev- 
er having ventured beyond his own field till I 
lately tempted him, is the most prodigious cow- 
ard you ever beheld. He almost knocked Edith 
down in running away from a pig ; but I like 
him, for he is a worthy dog, and frightens the 
sauntering lakers as much as the pig frightened 
him. 

" The Scotch reviewers are grown remark- 
ably civil to me, partly because Elmsley was, 
and partly because Walter Scott is, connected 
with them. My Amadis and the Chatterton 
have been noticed very respectfully there. I 
told you in my last that Amadis sold well — as 
much in one year as Thalaba in three ! But I 
feel, and my booksellers feel, that I am getting 
on in the world, and the publication of Madoc 
will set me still higher. 

" How goes on the Spanish ? keep to it by 
all means, for it is not an impossible nor an im- 
probable thing that you and I may one day meet 
in Portugal, and, if so, take a journey together. 
You will then find it useful, for it turns readily 
into Portuguese. My uncle and I keep up a 
pretty regular intercourse. I am trying to set 
his affairs here in order. A cargo of books, val- 
ue about eleven pounds, which were lost for 
twelve months, have been recovered, and I am 
feeding upon them. God bless you, Tom ! Lose 
no opportunity of writing. Edith's love. 

"R. S." 



CHAPTER XI. 

family details politics he wishes to edit 

sir philip sidxey's works — dr. vincent — 

the west indies spanish war wishes to 

go to portugal with sir john moore use 

of reviewing early poems, why written 

travels in abyssinia steel mirrors 

sir w. scott's new poem madoc the com- 
pass, when first used the diving bell 

uses of printing changes in the crit- 
ical review loss of the abergavenny 

endowment of the romish church in ire- 
land translation from the latin rea- 
sons for not going to london english 

poetry publication of madoc duty upon 

foreign books a great hardship story 



Of the Annual Review. 



^TAT. 30. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



183 



OF PELAYO THE BUTLER MADOC CRITICISED 

AND DEFENDED REVIEWING LITERARY RE- 
MARKS LORD SOMERVILLE SUGGESTION TO 

HIS BROTHER THOMAS TO COLLECT INFORMA- 
TION ABOUT THE WEST INDIES THE MORA- 
VIANS VISIT TO SCOTLAND AND TO SIR W. 

SCOTT AT ASHIESTIEL REVIEWALS OF MADOC 

ESFRIELLA'S LETTERS. 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

" Greta Hall, July 30, 1804. 
11 Dear Tom, 

" Your three letters have arrived all together 
this evening, and have relieved me from very 
considerable anxiety. Mine, I find, are con- 
signed to the Atlantic without bottles ; and 
three books of Madoc, which Edith copied in 
them, gone to edify the sharks — gentlemen who 
will digest them far more easily than the crit- 
ics. However, there must be yet some other 
vetters on the way, and I trust you will have 
learned before this can reach you that I have 
two Ediths in the family — the Edithling (who 
was born on the last of April) continuing to do 
well, only that I am myself somewhat alarmed 
at that premature activity of eye and spirits, and 
those sudden startings, which were in her poor 
sister the symptoms of a dreadful and deadly dis- 
ease. However, I am on my guard. * * 
* * * I did not mean to trust my af- 
fections again on so frail a foundation ; and yet 
the young one takes me from my desk, and makes 
me talk nonsense as fluently as you perhaps can 
imagine. 

" Both Edith and I are well; indeed, I have 
weathered a rude winter and a ruder spring 
bravely. Harry is here, and has been here 
about three weeks, and will remain till the end 
of October. He is a very excellent companion, 
and tempts me out into the air and the water 
when I should else be sitting at home. We 
have made our way well in the world, Tom, thus 
far, and, by God's help, we shall yet get on bet- 
ter. Make your fortune, and Joe may yet live 
to share its comforts, as he stands upon his maj- 
esty's books in my name, though degraded by 
the appellation of mongrel. Madoc is in a Scotch 
press : Ballantyne's, who printed the Minstrelsy 
of the Scottish Borders — a book which you may 
remember I bought at Bristol. 

" You ask of Amadis : it has been well re- 
viewed, both in the Annual and Edinburgh, by 
Walter Scott, who in both has been very civil to 
me. Of all my later publications, this has been 
the most successful, more than 500 of the 1000 
having sold within the year, so that there is a 
fair chance of the .£50 dependent upon the sale 
of the whole. Thalaba has been very admirably 
reviewed in the Critical by William Taylor ; but 
it does not sell, and will not for some years reach 
a second edition. Reviewing is coming round 
again ! one parcel arrived ! another on the road ! 
a third ready to start ! I grudge the time thus 
to be sold sorely ; but patience ! it is, after all, 
better than pleading in a stinking court of law, 
or being called up at midnight to a patient ; it 



is better than being a soldier or a sailor 5 better 
than calculating profits and loss on a counter 5 
better, in short, than any thing but independ- 
ence. * # # # 

" July is, indeed, a lovely month at the lakes, 
and so the lakers seem to think, for they swarm 
here. We have been much interrupted by vis- 
itors — among others, young Roscoe — and more 
are yet to come. These are not the only inter- 
ruptions : we have been, or rather are, manu- 
facturing black currant jam for my uncle, and 
black currant wine for ourselves — Harry and I 
chief workmen — pounding them in a wooden 
bowl with a great stone, as the acid acts upon a 
metal mortar. We have completed a great work 
in bridging the River Greta at the bottom of the 
orchard, by piling heaps of stones so as to step 
from one to another — many a hard hour's sport, 
half-knee deep in the water. Davy has been 
here — stark mad for angling. This is our his- 
tory — yours has been busier. As for news, the 
packet which conveys this will convey later in- 
telligence than it is in my power to Communi- 
cate. Sir Francis may, and probably will, lose 
his election, but it is evident he has not lost his 
popularity. Pitt will go blundering on till every 
body, by miserable experience, think him what 
I always did. * # # # When- 
soever the great change of ministry, to which 
we all look on with hope, takes place, I shall 
have friends in power able to serve me, and shall, 
in fact, without scruple, apply to Fox through 
one or two good channels : this may be very re- 
mote, and yet may be very near. When Madoc 
is published, I mean to send Fox a copy, with 
such a note as may be proper for me to address 
to such a man. # # # # 

" God bless you, Tom ! It grows late, and I 
have two proofs to correct for to-night's post. 
Once more, God bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieutenant Soulhey, H.M.S. Galatea. 

" Keswick, Sept. 12, 1804. 
" Dear Tom, 

" It is a heartless and hopeless thing to write 
letter after letter, when there seems so little prob- 
ability of their ever reaching you. How is it 
that all your letters seem to find me, and none 
of mine to find you ? I can not comprehend. I 
write, and write, and write, always directing 
Barbadoes or elsewhere, and suppose that, ac- 
cording to direction, they go any where else- 
where than to the Galatea. 

" My intention is, God willing, to remain here 
another year, and in the autumn of 1805 to go 
once more to Lisbon, and there remain one, two, 
or three years, till my History be well and effect- 
ually completed. Meantime, these are my em- 
ployments : to finish the correcting and printing 
of Madoc ; to get through my annual work of 
reviewing ; and bring my History as far onward 
as possible. In the press I have, 1. Metrical 
Tales and other Poems, being merely a corrected 
republication of my best pieces from the Anthol- 
ogy. 2. Specimens of the later English Poets, 
i. c, of all who have died from 1685 to 1800 . 



184 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 31. 



this is meant, as a supplement to George Ellis's 
Specimens of the Early Poets — a book which 
you may remember at Bristol : it will fill two 
vols, in crown octavo, the size of Ritson's En- 
gleish Romancees, if you recollect them. 3. 
Madoc. in quarto, whereof twenty-two sheets 
are printed ; one more finishes the first part. 

" Harry has been here since the beginning of 
July, and will yet remain about six weeks longer. 
We mountaineerify together, and bathe together, 
and go on the lake together, and have contrived 
to pass a delightful summer. I am learning 
Dutch, and wish you were here to profit by the 
lessons at the breakfast-table, and to mynheerify 
with me, as you like the language. My reason 
for attaining the language is, that as the Dutch 
conquered, or rather destroyed, the Portuguese 
empire in Asia, the history of the downfall of 
that empire is. of course, more fully related by 
Dutch than by Portuguese historians. 

" You ask for politics. I can tell you little. 
The idea of invasion still continues the same 
humbug and bugbear as when it was first bruited 
abroad, to gull the people on both sides of the 
water. Bonaparte dares not attempt it — would 
to God he did ! Defeat would be certain, and 
his ruin inevitable : as it is, he must lose repu- 
tation by threatening what he can not execute ; 
and I believe that the Bourbons will finally be 
restored. At home, politics look excellently 
well; the coalition of Fox and the Grenvilles 
has been equally honorable to all parties, and 
produced the best possible effects in rooting out 
the last remains of that political violence which 
many years so divided the country. The death 
of the king, or another fit of madness, which is 
very probable ; or his abdication, which most 
persons think would be very proper ; or the de- 
clining health of Pitt, or the actual strength of 
the opposition, are things of which every one is 
very likely to bring the coalition into power, and 
in that case neither you nor I should want friends. 
So live in hope, as you have good cause to do. 
Steer clear of the sharks and the land-crabs, and 
be sure that we shall both of us one day be as 
well off as we can wish. 

" The H 's are visiting Colonel Peachy, 

whose wife was also of Bishop Lydiard — a JNIiss 
Charter : both she and her sister knew you well 
by name. We are getting upon excellently good 
terms ; for they are very pleasant and truly wom- 
anly women, which is the best praise that can 
be bestowed upon a woman. Will you not laugh 
to hear that I have actually been employed all 
the morning in making arrangements for a sub- 
scription ball at Keswick ? I ! very I ! your 
brother, R. S. ! To what vile purposes may we 
come ! It was started by Harry and Miss Char- 
ter at the theater (for we have a strolling com- 
pany at an ale-house here), and he, and I, and 
General Peche have settled it ; and all Cumber- 
land will now envy the gayeties of Keswick. 
Mrs. General insisted upon my opening the ball 
with her. I advised her, as she was for per- 
forming impossibilities, to begin with turning the 
wind before she could 



shall sip my tea, and talk with the old folks some 
hour or so, and then steal home to write Madoc, 
drink my solitary glass of punch, and get to bed 
at a good Christian-like hour, as my father, and 
no doubt his father, did before me. Oh, Tom, 
that you were but here ! for, in truth, we lead 
as pleasant a life as heart of man could wish. I 
have not for years taken such constant exercise 
as this summer. Some friend or acquaintance 
or other is perpetually making his appearance, 
and out then I go to lackey them on the lake or 
over the mountains. I shall get a character for 
politeness ! 

" I have so far altered my original plan of the 
History as to resolve upon not introducing the 
life of St. Francisco, and the chapters therewith 
connected, but to reserve them for a separate 
history of Monachism, which will make a very 
interesting and amusing work : a good honest 
quarto may comprise it. My whole historical 
labors will then consist of three separate works : 

1. Hist, of Portugal — the European part, 3 vols. 

2. Hist, of the Portuguese Empire in Asia, 2 or 
3 vols. 3. Hist, of Brazil. 4. Hist, of the Jesuits 
in Japan. 5. Literary History of Spain and Port- 
ugal, 2 vols. 6. History of Monachism. In all, 
ten, eleven, or twelve quarto volumes ; and you 
can not easily imagine with what pleasure I look 
at all the labor before me. God give me life, 
health, eyesight, and as much leisure as even now 
I have, and done it shall be. God bless you ! 

"R. S." 

To Messrs. Longman and Rees. 

" Keswick, Nov. 11, 1804. 
" Dear Sirs, 

I should like to edit the works of Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, who is, in my judgment, one of the greatest 
men of all our countrymen. I would prefix a 
Life, an Essay on the Arcadia, his greatest work, 
and another on his Meters. It would make three 
octavo volumes : to the one there should be his 
portrait prefixed ; to the second a view of Pens- 
hurst, his birth-place and residence ; to the third, 
the print of his death, from Mortimer's well- 
known etching. Perhaps I overrate the extent 
of the work; for, if I recollect right, Burton's 
Anatomy, w T hich is such another folio, was repub- 
lished in two octavos. His name is so illustri- 
ous, that an edition of 500 w T ould certainly sell : 
the printer might begin in spring. I could write 
the Essays here. In the autumn I shall most 
likely be in London, and would then complete 
the Life, and the book might be published by 
Christmas of 1805. If you approve the scheme, 
it may be well to announce it, as we may very 
probably be forestalled, for this is the age of ed- 
itors. I design my name to appear, for it would 
be a pleasure and a pride to have my name con- 
nected with that of a man whom I so highly rev- 
erence. 

Mr. Longman promised me a visit in Septem- 
ber. I have not found him so punctual as he w r ill 
always find me. Believe me. yours truly, 

" Robert Southey." 



jEtat. 31. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



185 



To G. C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 1, 1804. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" Sir Roger l'Estrange is said, in Cibber's 
Lives, to have written a great number of poet- 
ical works, which are highly praised in an ex- 
tract from Winstanley. Ubi sunt ? God knows, 
among all the titles to his works, I do not see 
one which looks as if it belonged to a poem ; 
perhaps Hill or Heber may help you out ; but 
the sure store-house in all desperate cases will be 
the Museum. He has the credit of having writ- 
ten the famous song, ' Cease, rude Boreas,' when 
vn prison : this, however, is only a tradition, and 
ivants evidence sufficient for our purpose. There, 
sir, is a pussagorical answer to your pussechism. 
# # * # # If you are in the 

habit of calling on Vincent, you may do me a 
service by' inquiring whether a MS. of Giraldus 
Cambrensis, designated by Cave, in his Historia 
Litter aria, as the Codex Westmonast, be in the 
Dean and Chapter Library; for this MS. con- 
tains a map of Wales as subsisting in his time, 
and that being the time in which Madoc lived, 
such a map would form a very fit and very sin- 
gular addition to the book ; and if it be there I 
would wish you to make a formal application on 
my part for permission to have it copied and en- 
graved. These bodies corporate are never very 



should seem to proceed from personal dislike to- 
ward one whom he must be conscious that he 
has used unhandsomely, and to the utmost of his 
power attempted to injure. God knows I for- 
give him — ex imo corde. I am too well satisfied 
with my own lot, with my present pursuits, and 
the new and certain hopes which they present, 
not to feel thankful to all those who have in any 
way contributed to make me what I am. If he 
and I had been upon friendly terms, it might 
have interested him, who has touched upon Port- 
uguese history himself, to hear of my progress, 
and my knowledge might possibly have been of 
some assistance to him. I have no kindly feel- 
ings toward him. He made a merit of never 
having struck me, whereas that merit was mine 
for never having given him occasion so to do. 
It is my nature to be sufficiently susceptible of 
kindness, and I remember none from him. Here 
is a long rigmarole about nothing : the remem- 
brance of old times always makes me garrulous, 
and the failing is common to most men. * *= # 
" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieut. Southey, Barbadoes. 

" Keswick, Dec. 26, 1804. 
"Dear Tom, 
" I have made some use of your letters in the 
third Annual Review. M'Kinnan has published 
a Tour through the British West Indies — a de- 
cent book, but dull. In reviewing it, I eked out 
his account with yours, and contrasted his words 
upon the slave trade with a passage from your 
letters. In doing this, I could not help thinking 
what materials for a book you might bring home 
N 



if you would take the trouble ; as thus : describe 
the appearance of all the islands you touch at, 
from the sea — their towns, how situated, how 
built — what public buildings, what sort of houses 
— the inside of the houses, how furnished — what 
the mode of life of the towns-people, of the plant- 
er, in different ranks, and of the different Euro- 
pean settlers — in short, all you see and all you 
hear, looking about the more earnestly and ask- 
ing questions. Many anecdotes of this and the 
last war you have opportunities of collecting, 
particularly of Victor Hughes ; something also 
of St. Domingo, or Hayti, as it must now be call- 
ed, which I find means asperosa in Spanish, rugged. 
If you would bring home matter for a picture of 
the islands as they now are, I could delineate 
what they were from the old Spaniards, and there 
would be a very curious book between us. # 

" Hamilton is broke, whereby I shall lose from 
d£20 to d£30, which he owes me for critical w T ork, 
and which I shall never get ; rather hard upon 
one whose brains and eyesight have quite enou^i 
to do by choice, and are never overpaid for what 
they do by necessity. For meaner matter, my 
little girl is not pretty, but she is a sweet child, so 
excellently good-tempered — as joyous as a sky- 
lark in a fine morning, and so quick of eye, of 
action, and of intellect, that I have a sad feeling 
about me of the little chance there is of rearing 
her ; so don't think too much about her. 

"Whether this war with Spain will involve 
one with Portugal is what we are all speculating 
about at present. I think it very likely that 
Bonaparte will oblige the Portuguese to turn the 
English out — a great evil to me in particular ; 
though, should my uncle be driven to England, 
my settling will the sooner take place. At 
present I am as unsettled as ever, at a distance 
from my books, perpetually in want of them, 
wishing and wanting to be permanently fixed, 
and still prevented by the old cause. Make a 
capital prize, Tom, and lend me a couple of 
hundreds, and you shall see what a noble ap- 
pearance my books will make. N.B. — I have a 
good many that wait for your worship to letter 
them. This Spanish war may throw something 
in your way ; but I don't like the war, and think 
it is unjust and ungenerous to quarrel with an 
oppressed people because they have not strength 
to resist the French. You know I greatly esteem 
the Spaniards. As for France, I am willing to 
pay half my last guinea to support a contest for 
national honor against him ; but it began foolish- 
ly, and well will it be if we do not end it even 
more foolishly than we began. 

"God bless you! R. S." 

My father, as the reader is well aware, had 
long been desirous of again visiting Spain and 
Portugal, chiefly for the sake of obtaining still 
further materials for the two great historical 
works he was engaged upon — the History of 
Portugal and the History of Brazil. It seems 
that Mr. Bedford, through some of his Mends, 
had at this time an opportunity of furthering 
these views, and had inquired of my father what 



186 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 31. 



situation he felt himself equal to undertake. His 
reply explains the rest sufficiently, and the next let- 
ter shows that the scheme soon fell to the ground. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 20, 1805. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 

" .# * * * There is a civil 

office for the inspection of accounts, and I am 
adequate to be inspector ; so, if you can not learn 
that there be any thing more proper, let that 
be the thing asked — but consult Hickman. I 
have only proceeded on newspaper authority ; 
and, if the expedition be not going to Portugal, 
would not take the best office any where else. 
Actual work I expect, and have seen enough of 
the last army at Lisbon to know that commis- 
saries and inspectors have plenty of leisure. 
Thus much General Moore must know, whether 
we are to send forces to Portugal or not ; for it 
depends upon his report, if the papers lie not. 
jfrwe do, tne place where all the civil operations 
are carried on is Lisbon ; there the commissaries, 
&e.j remain, if the army takes the field ; there I 
want to go, you know for what purpose. To 
say that I do not wish to make money would be 
talking nonsense : but the mere object of making 
money would not take me from home. I can 
inspect accounts, I can make contracts (for beef 
and oats are soon understood), and, doing these, 
can yet have leisure for my own pursuits. What 
efforts I make are more because the thing is pru- 
dent than agreeable. * . * * 

u Madoc is provokingly delayed. Job once 
wished that his enemy had written a book : if he 
himself had printed one, it would have tried his 
patience. I am every day expecting the Great 
Snake* in a frank from Duppa. My emblem of 
the cross, prefixed to the poem, with the In hoc 
signo, and what I have said in the poem of the 
Virgin Mary, is more liable to misconstruction 
than could be wished. In what light I consider 
these things may be seen in the reviews of the 
Missions to Bengal and Otaheite. I have just 
finished another article for the year upon the 
South African Missions. The great use of re- 
viewing is, that it obliges me to think upon sub- 
jects on which I had been before content to have 
very vague opinions, becanse there had never 
been any occasion for examining them ; and this 
is a very important one. 

" It will do me a world of good to see the first 
proof sheet under favor of the Grand Parleur : I 
shall begin to think seriously of the preface. 
You will find it worth while to go to Longman, 
for the sake of seeing the new publications, 
which all lie on his table — a good way of know- 
ing what is going on in the world of typography. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Hickman, Esq. 

"Feb. 16, 1805. 
"Dear Hickman, 
" The mottot to those Metrical Tales is strict- 



* An engraving of one of the incidents in Madoc. 
1 I ai". unable to refer to this edition. 



ly true ; but there is a history belonging to them 
which will show that it was not trifling when I 
wrote them. With the single exception of Gual- 
berto (the longest and best), all the others were 
written expressly for the Morning Post ; and this 
volume-full is a selection from a large heap, by 
which I earned £149 4s., and is now published 
for the very same reason for which it was origin- 
ally composed. Besides the necessity for writing 
such things, there was also a great fitsiess, inas- 
much as, by so doing, a facility and variety of 
style was acquired, to be converted to better pur- 
poses, and I had always better purposes in view. 

■Mf M, M, .SA. ^t, -AL. *&L, 

-7T -Tf- "7?- -7T -7C* •7T J 7T' 

" I have been reading the earliest travels in 
Abyssinia, namely, the History of the Portuguese 
Embassy in 1520, by Francisco Alvares, the 
chaplain — a book exceedingly rare, my copy, 
which is the Spanish translation, a little 24mo 
volume, having cost a moidore. As I can not 
bear to lose any thing, I shall draw up just such 
an abstract as if for a review, and throw what- 
ever is not essential to the main narrative among 
the works of supererogation, which will be 
enough for a volume. The king, or, to give him 
his proper title, the Neguz, dwelt like an Arab 
in his tent. # # # What every 

where surprises me in the history of these dis- 
coveries is, that so little should be known of the 
East in Europe, when so many Europeans were 
to be found in the East, for the Neguz was never 
without some straggler or other ; still more that 
in Europe such idle dreams about Ethiopia should 
prevail, when Abyssinians so often found their 
way to Rome. The opportunities lost by foolish 
ministers and foolish kings makes me swear for 
pure vexation. If Albuquerque had lived, I 
verily believe he would have expelled the Mame- 
lukes from Egypt, by the help of the African 
Christians, and have made that country a Chris- 
tian instead of a Turkish conquest. I should 
like to give Egypt to the Spaniards : they are 
good colonists. # # # =fc # 

Do you know that reflecting mirrors of steel were 
used instead of spectacles for weak or dim-eyed 
persons to read in? This must have been so 
troublesome and so expensive that it never can 
have been common. But that it was used, I 
have found in an old book, purchased when I was 
first your guest in London — the 400 questions 
proposed by the Admiral of Castille and his friends 
to a certain Friar Minorita; 1550 the date of 
the book, some thirty years after it had been 
written. I am in the middle of this most quaint 
book, and have found, among the most whimsical 
things that ever delighted the quaintness of my 
heart, some of more consequence. * * 

The probabilities of my seeing you this year seem 
to increase. I begin to think that the mountain 
may come to Mohammed ; in plain English, that, 
instead of my going to Lisbon, my uncle may 
come to England, in which case I shall meet him 
in London. The expedition to Portugal seems 
given up. Coleridge is confidential secretary to 
Sir A Ball, and has been taking some pains 



jEtat. 31. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



187 



to set the country right as to its Neapolitan poli- 
tics, in the hope of saving Sicily from the French. 

He is going with Capt. into Greece, and 

up the Black Sea to purchase corn for the gov- 
ernment. Odd, but pleasant enough — if he 
would but learn to be contented in that state of 
life into which it has pleased God to call him : 
a maxim which I have long thought the best in 
the Catechism. * * * * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

"March 5, 1805. 
" Dear Wynn, 

I have read Scott's poem* this evening, and like 
it much. It has the fault of mixed language 
which you mentioned, and which I expected ; 
and it has the same obscurity, or, to speak more 
accurately, the same want of perspicuousness, 
as his Glenfinlas. I suspect that Scott did not 
write poetry enough when a boy,t for he has 
little command of language. His vocabulary of 
the obsolete is ample ; but, in general, his words 
march up stiffly, like half-trained recruits — nei- 
ther a natural walk, nor a measured march which 
practice has made natural. But I like his poem, 
for it is poetry, and in a company of strangers I 
would not mention that it had any faults. The 
beginning of the story is too like Coleridge's 
Christobell, which he had seen ; the very line, 
'Jesu Maria, shield her well!' is caught from 
it. When you see the Christobell, you will not 
doubt that Scott has imitated it ; I do not think 
designedly, but the echo was in his ear, not for 
emulation, but propter amor em. This only re- 
fers to the beginning, which you will perceive 
attributes more of magic to the lady than seems 
in character with the rest of the story. 

" If the sale of Madoc should prove that I can 
afford to write poetry, Kehama will not lie long 
unfinished. After lying fallow since the end of 
October, I feel prolific propensities that way. * 
* * # # 

" My book ought to be delivered before this, 
upon the slowest calculation. I pray you com- 
pare the conscientious type of my notes with 
that of Scott's ; and look in his title-page,}: at 
the cruelty with which he has actually split Pa- 
ternoster Row. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 22, 1805. 
" I never learned the Memoria Technica, but 
if ever I have a son he shall. Where is the ear- 
liest mention of the mariner's compass ? I have 
no better reference than a chronological table at 
the end of a worn-out dictionary, which says, in- 



* The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

t This would seem, from Sir W. Scott's Life, to be true. 
He mentions, in his Autobiography, having been a great 
reader of poetry, especially old ballads, "but does not 
speak of having written much, if any, in boyhood. 

X My father used to pride himself upon his title-pages, 
and upon hi a knowledge of typography in general ; beina;, 
as one of his printers said, the only person he ever knew 
who could tell how a page would look before it was set up. 



vented or improved by Gioia of Naples, A.D. 
1302. Now I have just found it mentioned in 
the Laws of Alonzo the Wise, which laws were 
begun A.D. 1251, and finished in seven years ; 
and it is not mentioned as any thing new, but 
made use of as an illustration. You can under- 
stand the Spanish : 

" ' Assi como les marineros sequian en le noctc, 
escura por el aguja que les es mediarnera entre 
la piedra e la estrella, e les muestra por lo vayaiv 

" I suspect that this implies a belief in some 
specific virtue in the north star, as if the mag- 
netic influence flowed from it. This, however, 
is matter for more inquiry, and I will one day 
look into it in Raymond Lully and Albertus 
Magnus — likely authors. The passage certainly 
carries the use of the needle half a century fur- 
ther back than the poor chronology; but whether 
I have made what antiquarians call a discovery, 
is more than I can tell. Robertson ought to have 
found it ; for to write his introduction to Charles 
V. without reading these laws, is one of the thou- 
sand and one omissions for which he ought to be 
called rogue as long as his volumes last. 

" These Partidas, as they are called, are very 
amusing. I am about a quarter through them 
some way, as they fill three folios by help of a 
commentary. They are divided into seven parts, 
for about seven times seven such reasons as would 
have delighted Dr. Slop ; and King Alfonzo has 
ingeniously settled the orthography of his name 
by beginning each of the seven parts with one 
of the seven letters which compose it, in suc- 
cession. His majesty gives directions that no 
young princes should dip their fingers into the 
dish in an unmannerly w T ay, so as to grease them- 
selves, and expatiates on the advantages to be 
derived from reading and writing — if the}- are 
able to learn those arts. He was himself an ex- 
traordinary man ; too fond of study to be a good 
king in a barbarous age, but therefore not only 
a more interesting character to posterity, but a 
more useful one in the long run. 

" You will see in the Madociana a story how 
Alexander went down in a diving-bell to see 
what was going on among the fishes — remark- 
able, because it is found in Spanish, German, and 
Welsh romances of the Middle Ages. I have 
since found a similar story of somebody else 
among the Malays, who certainly did not get it 
from Europe, or Alexander (Iscander) would 
have been their hero also. The number of good 
stories of all kinds which are common to the 
Orientals and Europeans are more likely to have 
been brought home by peaceable travelers than 
by the Crusaders. I suspect the Jew peddlers 
were the great go-betweens. They always went 
every where. All the world over you found Jew 
merchants and Jew physicians ; wherever there 
is any thing to be got, no danger deters a Jew 
from venturing. I myself saw two fellows at 
Evora, under the very nose of the Inquisition, 
j who, if they had any noses, could not have mis- 
taken their game. I knew the cut of their jibs 
at once ; and, upon inquiring what they had for 
' sale, was told — green spectacles. A History of 



83 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



-2ETAT, 31. 



the Jews since their dispersion, in the shape of 
a Chronological Bibliotheca, would be a very- 
valuable work. I want an academy established 
to bespeak such works, and reward them well, 
according to the diligence with which they shall 
be executed. . 

"The abuses, or main abuses, of printing, 
spring from one evil — it almost immediately 
makes authorship a trade. Per-sheeting was in 
use as early as Martin Luther's time, who men- 
tions the price — a curious fact. The Reforma- 
tion did one great mischief: in destroying the 
monastic orders, it deprived us of the only bodies 
of men who could not possibly be injured by the 
change which literature had undergone. They 
could have no peculium ; they labored hard for 
amusement ; the society had funds to spare for 
printing, and felt a pride in thus disposing of 
them for the reputation of their orders. We 
laagh at the ignorance of these orders, but the 
most worthless and most ignorant of them pro- 
duced more works of erudition than all the En- 
glish and all the Scotch universities since the 
Reformation ; and it is my firm belief that a man 
wiU at this day find better society in a Benedict- 
ine monastery than he could at Cambridge — 
certainly better than he could at Oxford. 

"You know I am no friend to popery or to 
monachism ; but if the Irish Catholics are to be 
emancipated, I would let them found convents, 
only restricting them from taking the vows till 
after a certain age, as Catharine did in Russia — 
though perhaps it may be as well to encourage 
any thing to diminish the true Patric-ian breed. 
The good would be, that they would get the 
country cultivated, and serve as good inns, and 
gradually civilize it. As the island unluckily is 
theirs, and there is no getting the devil to re- 
move it any where else, we had better employ 
the pope to set it to rights. 

William Taylor has forsaken the Critical, be- 
cause if has fallen into the hands of , an or- 
thodox, conceited, preferment-hunting Cambridge 
fellow : such is the character he gives of him. 
My book will suffer by the change. The Annual 
is probably delayed by the insurrection among 
the printers. Authors are the only journeymen 
who can not combine — too poor to hold out, and 
too useless to be bought in. 

"Vale! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., 31. P. 

" April 3, 1805. 
" Dear Wynn, 
"I have been grievously shocked this even- 
ing by the loss of the Abergavenny,* of which 
Wordsworth's brother was captain. Of course 
the news came flying up to us from all quarters, 
and it has disordered me from head to foot. At 
such, circumstances I believe we feel as much 
for others as for ourselves — -just as a violent blow 
occasions the same pain as a wound, and he who 



* An allusion to this shipwreck is made in a published 
letter of an earlier date: which of the two dates is cor- 
rect, I can not at this time ascertained. 



breaks his shin feels as acutely at the moment 
as the man whose leg is shot off. In fact, I am 
writing to you merely because this dreadful ship- 
wreck has left me utterly unable to do any thing 
else. It is the heaviest calamity Wordsworth 
has ever experienced, and, in all probability, I 
shall have to communicate it to him, as he will 
very likely be here before the tidings can reach 
him. What renders any near loss of the kind so 
peculiarly distressing is, that the recollection is 
perpetually freshened when any like event oc- 
curs, by the mere mention of shipwreck, or the 
sound of the wind. Of all deaths it is the most 
dreadful, from the circumstances of terror which 
accompany it. 

" I have to write the history of two shipwrecks 
— that of Sepulveda and his wife, which is men- 
tioned by Camoens, and that of D. Paulo de Lina, 
one of the last Portuguese who distinguished 
himself favorably in India. Both these, but 
especially the first, are so dreadfully distressful, 
that I look on to the task of dwelling upon all 
the circumstances, and calling them up before 
my own sight, and fixing them in my own mem- 
ory, as I needs must do, with very great reluct- 
ance. Fifteen years ago, the more melancholy 
a tale was, the better it pleased me, just as we 
all like tragedy better than comedy when we are 
young. But now I as unwillingly encounter this 
sort of mental pain as I would any bodily suf- 
fering. ###### 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

"April 6, 1805. 
"Dear Wynn, 

" I am startled at the price of Madoc ; not 
that it is dear compared with other books, but 
it is too much money; and I vehemently sus- 
pect that, in consequence, the sale will be just 
sufficient for the publisher not to lose any thing, 
and for me not to^gain any thing. What will 
be its critical reception I can not anticipate. 
There is neither meter nor politics to offend any 
body, and it may pass free for any matter that 
it contains, unless, indeed, some wiseacre should 
suspect me of favoring the Roman Catholic re- 
ligion. 

"And this catch-word leads me to the great 
political question. A Catholic establishment 
would be the best, perhaps the only means of 
civilizing Ireland. Jesuits and Benedictines, 
though they would not enlighten the savages, 
would humanize them, and bring the country 
into cultivation. A petition that asked for this, 
saying plainly we are papists, and will be so, 
and this is the best thing that can be done for us, 
and for you too — such a petition I could support, 
considering what the present condition of Ireland 
is, how wretchedly it has always been governed, 
and how hopeless the prospect is. 

" You will laugh at me, but I believe there is 
more need to check popery in England than to 
encourage it in Ireland. It was highly proper 
to let the immigrant monastics associate together 



/Etat. 31. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



189 



here, and live in their old custom;?, but it is not J stitious, I could believe that Providence meant 
proper to let them continue their establishments, to destroy us because it has infatuated us. 



nor proper that the children of Protestant parents 
should be inveigled into nunneries. You will 
tell me their vows are not binding in England ; 
but they are binding in foro conscientice ; and, 
believe me, whatever romances have related of 
the artifices of the Romish priesthood, does not 
and can not exceed the truth. This, by God's 
blessing, I will one day prove irrefragably to the 
world. The Protestant Dissenters will die away. 
Destroy the Test Act, and you kill them. They 
affect to appeal wholly to reason, and bewilder 
themselves in the miserable snare of materialism. 
Besides, their creed is not reasonable : it is a vile 
mingle mangle which a Catholic may well laugh 
at. But Catholicism, having survived the first 
flood of reformation, will stand, perhaps, to the 
end of all things. It would yield either to a 
general spread of knowledge (which would re- 
quire a totally new order of things), or to the 
unrestrained attacks of infidelity, which would 
be casting out devils by Beelzebub, the prince 
of the devils. But if it be tolerated here — if the 
old laws of prevention be suffered to sleep, it 
will gain ground, perhaps to a dangerous extent. 
You do not know what the zeal is, and w T hat the 
power of an army of priests, having no interest 
whatever but that of their order. * * 

* * You will not carry the question now ; 
what you will do in the next reign, Heaven knows ! 

# # * * * * 

" Coleridge is coming home full of Mediter- 
ranean politics. Oh, for a vigorous administra- 
tion ! but that wish implies so much, that Alger- 
non Sidney suffered for less direct high treason. 
If I were not otherwise employed, almost I should 
like to write upon the duty and policy of intro- 
ducing Christianity into our East Indian posses- 
sions, only that it can be done better at the close 
of the Asiatic part of my History. Unless that 
policy be adopted, I prophesy that by the year 
2000 there will be more remains of the Portu- 
guese than of the English empire in the East. 

"We go on badly in the East, and badly in 
the West. You will see in the Review that I 
have been crying out for the Cape. We want 
a port in the Mediterranean just now; for, if 
Gibraltar is to be besieged, certainly Lisbon 
will be shut against us. Perhaps Tangiers could 
be recovered : that coast of Africa is again be- 
coming of importance ; but, above all things, 
Egypt, Egypt. This country is strong enough 
to conquer, and populous enough to colonize ; 
conquest w T ould make the war popular, and colo- 
nization secure the future prosperity of the coun 



God bless you ! 



R. S. 



In later life my father held very different opin- 
ions respecting the eflcct likely to be produced 
by the establishment of popery in Ireland to those 
which he expresses in the foregoing letter. In- 
creased knowledge of the past history of that 
country, and of its present condition, dispossessed 
him altogether of the idea that the Roman Cath- 
olic Church, set up in her full power, would be 
the most effective means of civilizing and human- 
izing the people. He affirms, indeed (Colloquies 
with Sir Thomas More, vol. i., p. 289), after 
quoting Bishop Berkeley's admirable exhorta- 
tion to the Romish priests, that, " had they list- 
ened to it, and exerted themselves for improving 
the condition of the people with half the zeal that 
they display in keeping up an inflammatory ex- 
citement among them, the state of Ireland would 
have been very unlike what it now is, and they 
themselves would appear in a very different light 
before God and man." "They might," he con- 
tinues, " have wrought as great a change in Ire- 
land as the Jesuits effected among the tribes of 
Paraguay and California;" and this "without 
opposition, without difficult}-, in the strict line of 
their duty, in the proper discharge of their sacer- 
dotal functions * * * * to the 
immediate advancement of their own interests, 
and so greatly to the furtherance of those ambi- 
tious views which the ministers of the Romish 
Church must ever entertain, that I know not how 
their claims, if supported by such services, could 
have been resisted." * * * "I 
would not dissemble the merits of the Romish 
clergy," he continues, " nor withhold praise 
from them when it is their due ; they attend sed- 
ulously to the poor, and administer relief and 
consolation to them in sickness and death with 
exemplary and heroic devotion. Many among 
them undoubtedly there are whose error is in 
opinion only, and whose frame of mind is truly 
Christian, and who, according to the light which 
they possess, labor faithfully in the service of the 
Lord. But the condition of Ireland affords full 
evidence for condemning them as a body. In 
no other country is their influence so great, and 
in no other country are so many enormities com- 
mitted." # # # # 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" April 13, 1805. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" There is a translation of Sallust by Gordon. 
I have never seen it, but, having read his Taci- 



try, and the eventual triumph of the English Ian- ' tus, do not think it likely that any new version 
guagc over all others. It would amuse you to would surpass his, for he was a man of great 
hear how ambitious of the honor of England and powers. It is not likely that Longus Homo, or 
of the spread of her power I am become. If ! any other Homo, w T ould pay for such a transla- 
we had a king as ambitious as Napoleon, he could t tion, because the speculation is not promising, 
not possibly find a privy counselor more after his every person who wishes to read Sallust being 
own heart. Heaven send us another minister ! able to read the original. * * =& 

! How long is the present one to fool away * * * There are some Greek authors 

the resources of the country ? If I were super- 1 which we want in English, Diodorus Siculus in 



1.90 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 31. 



particular ; but why not choose for yourself, and 
venture upon original composition ? In my con- 
science I do not think any man living has more 
of Rabelais in his nature than you have. A gro- 
tesque satire a la Garagantua would set all the 
kingdom staring, and place you in the very first 
rank of reputation. # # # # 

You ask if I shall come to town this summer ? 
Certainly not, unless some very material accident 
were to render it necessary. I do not want to 
go, I should not like to go, and I can't afford to 
go — solid reasons, Mr. Bedford, as I take it, for 
not going. This is an inconvenient residence 
for many reasons, and I shall move southward as 
soon as I have the means, either to the neigh- 
borhood of London or Bath. When that may 
be, Heaven knows, for I have not yet found out 
the art of making more money than goes as fast 
as it comes, in bread and cheese, which these 
ministers make dearer and dearer every day, and 
I am one of that class which feels every addi- 
tion. However, I am well off as it is, and per- 
fectly contented, and ten tunes happier than half 
those boobies who walk into that chapel there 
in your neighborhood, and when they are asked 
if I shall give sixteen pence for tenpenny-worth 
of salt, say yes — for which the devil scarify tht m 
with wire whips, and then put them in brine, 
say I. 

" * * % I shall endeavor to account 

for the decline of poetry after the age of Shaks- 
peare and Spenser, in spite of the great excep- 
tions during the Commonwealth, and to trace the 
effect produced by the restorers of a better taste, 
of whom Thomson and Gilbert West are to be 
esteemed as the chief, before the Wartons, with 
tbis difference, that what he did was the effect 
of his own genius ; what they, by a feeling of 
the genius of others. This reign will rank very 
high in poetical history. Goldsmith, Cowper, 
Burns, are all original, and all unequaled in their 
way. Falconer is another whose works will 
last forever. * * * * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., 31. P. 

"April 16, 1805. 

" Dear Wynn, 

'• Madoc has reached Keswick. I am sorry 
to see Snowdon uniformly misspelled, by what 
unaccountable blunder I know not. It is a beau- 
tiful book, but I repent having printed it in quar- 
to. By its high price, one half the edition is 
condemned to be furniture in expensive libraries, 
and the other to collect cobwebs in the publish- 
ers' warehouses. I foresee that I shall get no 
solid pudding by it : the loss on the first edition 
will eat up the profits of the second, if the pub- 
lishers, as I suppose they will, should print a sec- 
ond while the quarto hangs upon hand. However, 
after sixteen years it is pleasant, as well as some- 
thing melancholy, to see it, as I do now for the first 
time, in the shape of a book. Many persons will 
read it with pleasure, probably no one with more 
than you ; for. whatever worth it may have, you 
will feel that, had it not been for you, it could 



never possibly have existed. It is easy to quit 
the pursuit of fortune for fame ; but had I been 
obliged to work for the necessary comforts in- 
stead of the superfluities of life, 1 must have sunk, 
as others have done before me. Interrupted just 
when I did not wish it, for it is twilight — just 
light enough to see that the pen travels straight 
— and I am tired with a walk from Grasmere, 
and was in a mood for letter- writing — but here 
is a gentleman from Malta with letters from 



Coleridge. God bless 



you 



R. S. 



To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

June 25, 1S05. 
"Dear Wynn, 

" Madoc is doing well : rather more than half 
the edition is sold, which is much for so heavy a 
volume. The sale, of course, will flag now, till 
the world shall have settled what they please to 
think of the poem ; and if the reviews favor it, 
the remainder will be in a fair way.* In fact, 
books are now so dear that they are becoming 
rather articles of fashionable furniture than any 
thing else ; they who buy them do not read them, 
and they who read them do not buy them. I have 
seen a Wiltshire clothier, who gives his booksel- 
ler no other instructions than the dimensions of 
his shelves ; and have just heard of a Liverpool 
merchant who is fitting up a library, and has 
told his bibliopole to send him Shakspeare, and, 
Milton, and Pope, and if any of those fellows 
should publish any thing new, to let him have it 
immediately. If Madoc obtain any celebrity, 
its size and cost will recommend it among these 
gentry — libros consumer -e nati — born to buy 
quartos and help the revenue. # # * 
# # # ##### 

You were right in your suspicious dislike of the 
introductory lines. The Me ego is thought ar- 
rogant, as nry self-accusing preface would have 
been thought mock modesty. For this I care 
little : it is saying no more, in fact, than if I had 
said author of so and so in the title-page ; and. 
moreover, it is not amiss that critics who will 
find fault with something, should have these 
straws to catch at. I learn from Sharpe very 
favorable reports of its general effect, which is, 
he says, far greater than I could have supposed. 

" * * * This London Institution 
is likely to supply the place of an academy. 
Sharpe has had most to do with the enlistment, 
and perhaps, remotely, I may have had some- 
thing, having conversed last year with him upon 
the necessity of some association for publishing 
such extensive national works as booksellers will 
not undertake, and individuals can not, such as 
the Scriptores Rerum Britan., Saxon Archaiolo- 
gies, &c, &c. Application will be made to 



* " I think Southey does himself injustice in supposing 
the Edinburgh Review, or any other, could have hurt 
Madoc, even for a time. But the size and price of the 
work, joined to the frivolity of an age which must be 
treated as nurses humor children, are sufficient reasons 
why a poem, on so chaste a model, should not have taken 
immediately. We know the similar fate of Milton's im- 
mortal work in the witty ase of Charles IL, at a time when 
poetry was much more fashionable than at present." — 
Letter from Sir W. Scott to Miss Seward, Life, vol. iii-, p. 2L 



^Etat. 31. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



10 



Coleridge to lecture on Belles-Lettres. Some 
such application will perhaps be made to me 
one day or other ; indeed, a hint to that effect 
was given me from the Royal Institution last 
year. My mind is made up to reject any such 
invitations, because I have neither the acquire- 
ments nor the wish to be a public orator. * 

" Your letter has got the start of mine. I be- 
lieve I told you that both Lord and Lady Hol- 
land had left invitations for me with my uncle to 
Holland House, and that he had offered me the 
use of his Spanish collection. Did Fox mention 
to you that I had sent him a copy of Madoc ? 
I did so because Sharpe desired me to do so, 
who knows Fox ; and I prefaced it with a note, 
as short as could be, and as respectful as ought 
to be. I am much gratified by what you tell 
me of the poem's reception : there was a strong 
and long fit of dejection upon me about the time 
of its coming out. I suspected a want of in- 
terest in the first part, and a want every where 
of such ornament as the public have been taught 
to admire. And still I can not help feeling that 
the poem looks like the work of an older man — 
that all its lights are evening sunshine. This 
would be ominous if it did not proceed from the 
nature of the story, and the key in which it is 
pitched, which was done many years since, be- 
fore Thalaba was written or thought of. *■ * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" July 5, 1805. 
" Dear Wynn, 

" Fox has written me a very civil letter of 
thanks ; saying, however, that he had not yet 
had time to read the poem, so his praise can of 
course only have been of detached parts. 

u They tell me the duty upon foreign works 
is not worth collecting, and that it might be re- 
pealed if any member thought it worth his while 
to take up the matter. If this be the case, I 
pray you take into consideration the case of your 
petitioner ; there is now a roomful of books ly- 
ing for me at Lisbon, all of use to me, and yet 
literally and truly such, the major part, that, 
were they to be sold in England, they would 
not yield the expense of the duty. I can not 
smuggle them all in, to my sorrow, being obliged 
to get over only a box at a time, of such a smug- 
gleable size that a man can easily carry it, and 
this I can not do at London, where I wish to have 
them. What my uncle has sent over, and fairly 
paid for, has cost about a hundred pounds freight 
and duty — the freight far the smaller part. Now, 
if this barbarous tax can be repealed, whoever 
effects its repeal certainly deserves to be esteem- 
ed a benefactor to literature, and it may also be 
taken into the account that you would save me 
from the sin of smuggling, which else, assured- 
ly, I have not virtue enough to resist. Serious- 
ly, if the thing could be done, it would be some 
pride to me, as well as some profit, that you 
should be the man to do it. * * * 

* * I have just received a good and valua- 
ble book from Lisbon, the Earbarorum Leges 



Antiquae, well and laboriously edited by a monk 
at Venice, in five folios, the last published in 
1792. An excellent work it appears to me, 
upon the slight inspection I have yet given it — 
one that by its painful and patient labor reminds 
one of old times ; such a book as monasteries do 
sometimes produce, but universities never. My 
books here are few but weighty, and every day 
I meet with something or other so interesting to 
me, that a wish arises for some friend to drop 
in, to whom and with whom I could talk over 
the facts which have appeared, and the specula- 
tions growing out of them. What profit the 
History may ultimately produce, Heaven knows ; 
but I would not, for any thing that rank or for- 
tune could give, forego the pleasure of the pur- 
suit. 

"The story of Pelayo, the restorer of the 
Gothic or founder of the Spanish monarchy, has 
been for some time in my thoughts as good for a 
poem. I would rather it were a Portuguese 
than a Spanish story ; that, however, can not be 
helped. The historical facts are few and striking 
— just what they should be ; and I could fitly 
give to the main character the strong feelings 
and passions which give life and soul to poetry, 
and in which I feel that Madoc is deficient. 
There is yet half an hour's daylight, enough to 
show you what my ideas are upon the subject, 
in their crude state. Pelayo revolted because 
his sister was made by force the concubine of a 
Moorish governor, or by consent ; and because 
his own life was attempted by that governor, in 
fear of his resentment, he retreated to the mount- 
ains, where a cavern was his strong-hold; and 
from that cavern miraculously defeated an army 
of unbelievers : the end is, that he won the city 
or castle of Gijon, and was chosen king. There 
are for characters, Pelayo himself; the young 
Alphonso, who married his daughter, and suc- 
ceeded to his throne ; Orpas, the renegade arch- 
bishop, killed in the battle of the Cave ; Count 
Julian ; his daughter Florinda, the innocent 
cause of all the evil, who killed herself in conse- 
quence ; and, lastly, King Rodrigo himself, who 
certainly escaped from the battle, and lived as a 
hermit for the remainder of his days. If I ven- 
ture upon machinery, of all subjects here is the 
most tempting one. What a scene would the 
famous Cave of Toledo furnish, and what might 
not be done with the ruined monasteries, with 
the relics and images which the fugitives were 
hiding in the woods and mountains ! I forgot to 
mention among the historical characters the wife 
of Rodrigo, who married one of the Moorish 
governors. Monks and nuns (the latter not yet 
cloistered in communities), persecuted Arians, 
and Jews, and slaves, would furnish fictitious 
and incidental characters in abundance. You 
see the raw materials : if English history could 
supply me as good a subject, it would on every 
account be better ; but I can find none. That 
of Edmund Ironside is the best, which William 
Taylor threw out to me as a lure in the Annual 
Review ; but when an historical story is taken, 
the issue ought to be of permanent importance. 



192 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 31. 



" I have never thought so long at one time 
about Pelayo as while thus talking to you about 
him ; but Madoc does not fully satisfy me, and 
I should like to produce something better — some- 
thing pitched in a higher key. A Spanish sub- 
ject has one advantage, that it will cost me no 
additional labor of research ; only, indeed, were 
I to choose Pelayo, I would see his cave, which 
is fitted up as a chapel, has a stream gliding 
from it, and must be one of the finest things in 
Spain. God bless you ! R. S." 

The following letter requires some explana- 
tion. The Butler, and his man William, to whom 
allusion will from this tune occasionally be found 
in the letters to Mr. Bedford, were mythological 
personages, the grotesque creation of his fertile 
imagination. The idea, which was a standing 
jest among the intimate friends of the originator, 
was of a hero possessing the most extraordinary 
powers — with something like the combined qual- 
ities of Merlin, Garagantua, and Kehama, to be 
biographized in a style compounded of those of 
Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, and Baron Munchausen. 

Mr. Bedford, however, was not to be induced 
by all his friend's entreaties to immortalize the 
Butler, and no relic of him consequently remains, 
except the occasional allusions in these letters, 
which, although they can afford amusement to 
but few persons, are inserted here as showing 
the extreme elasticity of my father's mind, which 
delighted to recreate itself in pure unmitigated 
nonsense — a property shared in common with 
many wise men. 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 



" Greta Hall, July 



1805. 



"7v "Tv tv *7v T/v vc "Jv 

Butler denotes the sensual principle, which is 
subject or subordinate to the intellectual part of 
the internal man ; because every thing which 
serves for drinking or which is drunk (as wine, 
milk, water) hath relation to truth, which is of 
the intellectual part, thus it hath relation to the 
intellectual part ; and whereas the external sens- 
ual principle, or that of the body, is what sub- 
ministers, therefore by Butler is signified that 
subministering sensual principle, or that which 
subministers of things sensual. 

" Read that paragraph again, Grosvenor. 
Don't you understand it ? Read it a third time. 
Try it backward. 

" See if you can make any thing of it diagon- 
ally. Turn it upside down. 

" Philosophers have discovered that you may 
turn a polypus inside out, and it will live just as 
well one way as the other. It is not to be sup- 
posed that Nature ever intended any of its crea- 
tures to be thus inverted, but so the thing hap- 
pens. As you can make nothing of this Butler 
any other way, follow the hint, and turn the para- 
graph inside out. That's a poozzle. 

" Now, then, I will tell you what it is in plain 
English. It is Swedenborgianism, and I have 
copied the passage verbatim from a Swedenbor- 
gian dictionary. Allow, at least, that it would 



make an excellent chapter in your book, if thou 
hadst enough grace in thee ever to let such a book 
come forth. Nonsense, sublime nonsense, is what 
this book ought to be ; such nonsense as requires 
more wit, more sense, more reading, more knowl- 
edge, more learning, than go to the composition 
of half the wise ones in the world. I do beseech 
you, do not lightly or indolently abandon the idea ; 
for, if you will but Butlerize in duodecimo, if you 
fail of making such a reputation as you would 
wish, then will I pledge myself to give one of my 
ears to you, which you may, by the hands of 
Harry, present to the British Museum. The 
book ought only to have glimpses of meaning in 
it, that those who catch them may impute mean- 
ing to all the rest by virtue of faith. 

" God bless you ! I wish you could come to 
the lakes, that we might talk nonsense and eat 
gooseberry pie together, for which I am as fa- 
mous as ever. R. S." 

Madoc having now been published some 
months, the opinions of his various friends be- 
gan to reach him. That of Mr. Rickman was a 
somewhat unfavorable one, and, as may be well 
supposed, he had no false delicacy in expressing 
it, my father being well used to this sort of mas- 
culine freedom, ready to use it himself to oth- 
ers, and wholly incapable of taking any umbrage 
at it himself. His defense of his poetical off- 
spring will be the better understood by the quo- 
tation here of his friend's remarks : " About Ma- 
doc I am very glad to hear that the world ad- 
mires it and buys it, though in reading it, I con- 
fess I can not discover that it is in any degree so 
good as your two former poems, which I have 
read lately by way of comparison. The result 
has been, that I like them the more, and Madoc 
the less. The Virgilian preface, very oddly (as 
I think), sets forth the planting of Christianity in 
America. It is the license of poetry to vary cir- 
cumstances and to invent incidents, but, surely, 
not to predicate a result notoriously false. Thus 
Virgil embellishes the origin of the Roman em- 
pire ; but he does not tell you that Judaism was 
established in it, or that in his own time repub- 
lican Rome remained unfettered by emperors. 
Historically speaking, the Spaniards introduced 
Christianity into America. Besides this, I much 
dislike the sort of nameless division you have 
adopted, and the want of numbering the lines. 
How is the poem to be referred to ? Neither do 
I like the metaphysical kind of preachings pro- 
duced by your Welshman for the instruction of 
savages. # # # I am very glad the 
public admire Madoc so much more than I do, 
and also that many persons knowing so much 
more of poetry do so too. No doubt I am wrong, 
but it would not be honest to conceal my error."* 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"July, 1805. 
" Dear Rickman, 
" * * * Your objections to the ex- 

* June 27, 1805. 



iETAT. 31. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



193 



ordial lines are not valid. I say there of what 
the subject is to treat, not affirming that it is 
historically true. Just as I might have said, in 
an introduction to Thalaba, that he destroyed the 
Dom Daniel, and so put an end to all sorcery. 
The want of numerals is a fault, I confess 5 not 
so the namelessness of the divisions ; nor, indeed, 
are they nameless, for in the notes they are re- 
garded as sections • and that each has not its spe- 
cific name from its subject-matter affixed to it, is, 
you know, the effect of your own advice. How- 
ever, call them sections, cantos, canticles, chap- 
ters, what you will, and then consider in what 
way is this mode of division objectionable. 

"1 am not surprised at your little liking the 
poem ; on the contrary, I am more surprised at 
those who like it, because what merit it has is 
almost wholly of execution, which is infinitely 
better than the subject. Now every body can 
feel if a story be interesting or fiat, whereas there 
are very few who can judge of the worth of the 
language and versification. I have said to some- 
body, perhaps it was to you, that, had this been 
written since Thalaba (for, as you know, the plan 
was formed, and the key pitched, before Thalaba 
was begun or dreamed of), I should have thought 
it ominous of declining powers, it is in so sober 
a tone, its coloring so autumnal, its light every 
where that of an evening sun , but as only the 
last finish of language, the polishing part, is of 
later labor, the fair inference is, that instead of 
the poet's imagination having grown weaker, he 
has improved in the mechanism of his art. A 
fair inference it is, for I am no self-flatterer, 
Heaven knows. Having confessed thus much, I 
ought to add, that the poem is better than you 
think it. * * * Compare it with the 
Odyssey, not the Iliad ; with King John or Cori- 
olanus, not Macbeth or the Tempest. The story 
wants unity, and has, perhaps, too Greek, too 
stoical a want of passion ; but, as far as I can 
see, with the same eyes wherewith I read Ho- 
mer, and Shakspeare, and Milton, 1 * it is a good 
poem, and mu'st live. You will like it better if 
ever you read it again. =* * * *" 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, August 5, 1805. 
"My dear Friend, 
" I am much gratified with your praises of 
Madoc, and disposed to acquiesce in some of 



* I may here, not inappropriately, quote Sir Walter 
Scott's opinion of Madoc, as corroborating what my fa- 
ther himself here allows, that the execution is better than 
the subject, and also that the poem will well bear one of 
the surest tests of merit of all kinds — an intimate knowl- 
edge : " As I don't much admire compliments, you may 
believe me sincere when I tell you that I have read Ma- 
doc three times since my first cursory perusal, and each 
time with an increased admiration of the poetry. But a 
poem, whose merits are of that higher tone, does not im- 
mediately take with the public at large. It is even pos- 
sible that during your own life — and may it be as long as 
every real lover of literature can wish — you must be con- 
tented with the applause of the few whom nature has 
gifted with the rare taste for discriminating in poetry ; 
but the mere readers of verse must one day come in, and 
then Madoc will assume his real place at the feet of Mil- 
ton. Now this opinion of mine was not that (to speak 
frankly) which I formed on reading the poem at first, 
though I then felt much of its merit." — W. S. to It. S., Oct. 
1. 1807. 

N* 



your censure. * * * * It pleased me 
that you had selected for praise the quieter pas- 
sages, those in an under key, with which the 
feeling has the most, and the fancy the least to 
do. * * # # # # * 

" My History would go to press this winter if 
my uncle were in England, and probably will 
not till he and I have met, either in that country 
or in this. Believe me, it is an act of forbear- 
ance to keep back what has cost me so many 
hours of labor : the day when I receive the first 
proof sheet will be one of the happiest of my 
life. The work may or may not succeed ; it 
may make me comfortably independent, or ob- 
tain no credit till I am in a world where its credit 
will be of no effect ; but that it will be a good 
book, and one which, sooner or later, shall justi- 
fy me in having chosen literature for my life pur- 
suit, I have a sure and certain faith. If I com- 
plained of any thing, it would be of the necessity 
of working at employments so worthless in com- 
parison with this- great subject. However, the 
reputation which I am making, and which, thank 
God ! strengthens every year, will secure a sale 
for these volumes whenever they appear. Ros- 
coe's Leo is on the table — sub judice. One great 
advantage in my subject is that it excites no ex- 
pectations : the reader will be surprised to find 
in me a splendor of story which he will be sur- 
prised not to find in the miserable politics of Ital- 
ian princelings. 

" I can not answer your question concerning 
the cotemporary English historians ; Bishop Nich- 
olson will be your best guide. Of English his- 
tory we have little that is good — I speak of mod- 
ern compilers, being ignorant, for the most part, 
of the monkish annalists. Turner's Hist, of the 
Anglo-Saxons ought to be upon your shelves * 
* * so much new information was probably 
never laid before the public in any one historical 
publication ; Lord Lyttleton's Henry II. is a 
learned and honest book. Having particularized 
these two, the 'only faithful found,' it may safely 
be said, that of all the others, those which are 
the oldest are probably the best. What Milton 
and Bacon have left, have, of course, peculiar 
and first-rate excellence. 

" I beg of you to thank young Walpole for his 
book. # # # I wish he were to travel 
any where rather than in Greece ; there is too 
much hazard and too little reward ; nor do I think 
much can be gleaned after the excellent Chand- 
ler. Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, are the coun- 
tries for an able and inquisitive traveler. I should 
for myself, prefer a town in Ireland to a town in 
Greece, as productive of more novelty. 

" I should be much obliged if you could bor- 
row for me Beausobre's Histoire du Manichcis- 
me, which, for want of catalogues, I can not get 
at by any other channel. The book is said to be 
of sterling value, and the subject so connected 
with Christian and Oriental superstition, that my 
knowledge of both is very imperfect till I have 
read it. Besides, I think I have discovered that 
one of the great Oriental mythologies was bor- 
I rowed from Christianity — that of Budda, the Fo 



194 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 32. 



of the Chinese ; if so. what becomes of their 
ohronology '? 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Amelia. 

" Keswick, August 22, 1805. 
;; My dear Tom, 

" I wrote to you as soon as the letter, by favor 
of old Neptune, arrived. As both seem to have 
taken the same course, it will now be desirable 
to have others thrown over in that track, and if 
half a dozen should in half a century follow one 
another, it would prove the existence of a cur- 
rent. 

" Our neighbor, General Peachy, invited us 
lately to meet Lord Somerville at dinner. * 
* * From hence he went into Scotland, 

and there saw , who was on the point of 

coming here to visit "Wordsworth and me. To 

he spoke of the relationship with us : he 

said of me and Wordsworth that, however we 
might have got into good company, he might 
depend upon it we were still Jacobins at heart, 
and that he believed he had been instrumental 
in having us looked after in Somersetshire. This 
refers to a spy who was sent down to Stowey to 
.ook after Coleridge and Wordsworth; the fel- 
low, after trying to tempt the country people to 
tell lies, could collect nothing more than that the 
gentlemen used to walk a good deal upon the 
coast, and that they were what they called poets. 
He got drank at the inn, and told his whole er- 
rand and history, but we did not till now know 
who was the main mover. * * * 

" Continue, I beseech you, to write your re- 
marks upon all you see and all you hear, but do 
not trust them to letters, lest they should be lost. 
Keep minutes of what you write. Such letters 
as your last would make a very interesting and 
very valuable volume. Little is known here of 
the West Indies, except commercially : the moral 
and physical picture would have all the effect of 
novelty. In particular, look to the state of the 
slaves. If you were now in England, it is very 
possible that your evidence might have consider- 
able weight before the House of Lords, now that 
the question of abolition is again coming on. 
Keep your eye upon every thing ; describe the 
appearance of the places you visit, as seen from 
the ship — your walks on shore — in short, make 
drawings in writing. Nothing is so easy as to 
say what you see, if you will but disregard how 
you say it. and think of nothing but explaining 
yourself fully. Write me the history of a plant- 
er's day — what are his meals — at what hours 
-*what his dress — what his amusements — what 
the employments, pleasures, education, &c, of 
his children and family. Collect any anecdotes 
connected with the French expeditions — with 
the present or the last war ; and depend upon 
it, that by merely amusing yourself thus, you 
may bring home excellent and ample materials, 
to which I will add a number of curious historic- 
al facts, gleaned from the Spanish historians and 
travelers. 

'The seas are clear for you once more, and 



I hope, by this time, you have picked up some 
more prizes. Your climate, too, is now getting 
comfortable : I envy you as much in winter as 
you can envy me in summer. * =* * 
" God bless you !'* 



To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 



"1805. 



{: Mr dear Wyxn, 

i: Whenever the encouragement of literature 
is talked of again in the House, I should think a 
motion for letting proof sheets pass as franks 
would not be opposed : they can not produce 
d£l00 a year to the post-office, probably not half 
the sum 5 but it is a tax of some weight on the 
few individuals whom it affects, and a good deal 
of inconvenience is occasioned to the printers by 
waiting for franks, while their presses stand still. 
Few persons have greater facility for getting 
franks than myself, yet the proofs which come 
without them, and those which are over- weight 
from being damp, or which are misdated, do not 
cost me less than 30s. a year. The proofs of • 
Madoc cost me 50s. — rather too much out of 
five-and-twenty pounds profit. 

" I have by me Bishop Lavington's Tracts 
concerning the Moravians ; and as I can in great 
part vouch for the accuracy of his Catholic refer- 
ences, there seems no reason to suspect him in 
the others. At first these tracts left upon my 
mind the same impression which has been made 
upon yours ; nor have I now any doubt that Zin- 
zendorff was altogether a designing man, and 
that the absurdities and obscenities charged upon 
them in their outset are in the main true. But 
it is so in the beginning of all sects, and it seems 
to be a regular part of the process of fanaticism. 
Devotion borrows its language from carnal love. 
This is natural enough ; and the consequences 
are natural enough also, when one who is more 
knave than enthusiast begins to talk out of Solo- 
mon's Song to a sister in the spirit. But this 
sort of leaven soon purges off; the fermentation 
ceases, and the liquor first becomes fine, then 
vapid, and at last you come to the dregs. Mora- 
vianism is in its second stage ; its few proselytes 
fall silently in, led by solitary thought and con- 
viction, not hurried on by contagious feelings, 
and the main body of its members have been 
born within the pale of the society. They do 
not live up to the rigor of their institutions in 
England 5 even here, however, it is certain that 
they are a respectable and respected people, and, 
as missionaries, they are meritorious beyond all 
others. No people but the Quakers understand 
how to communicate Christianity so well, and 
the Quakers are only beginning, whereas the 
Moravians have for half a century been laboring 
in the vineyard. Krantz's History of what they 
have done in Greenland is a most valuable book j 
there is also a History of their American Mis- 
sions which I want to get. Among the Hotten- 
tots they are doing much good. The best ac- 
count of the society, as it exists here, is to be 
found, I believe, in a novel called Wanley Pen- 
son. A great deal concerning their early his- 



/Etat. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



195 



tory is to be found in Wesley's Journals. He 
was at one time closely connected with them, 
but, as there could not be two popes, a separa- 
tion unluckily took place — I say unluckily, be- 
cause Methodism is far the worst s) r stem of the 
two. 

"If you have not read Collins' s book on Ban- 
try B^y, I recommend you to get it before the 
business comes on in Parliament. It is unique 
in its kind ; the minute history of a colony during 
the first years of difficulty and distress. There 
was one man in power there precisely fit for his 
situation — Governor King, and if it had been 
possible to induce him to stay there, governor 
he ought to have been for life, with discretionary 
powers. One thing is plain respecting this colo- 
ny, and that is, that no more convicts ought to 
be sent to the establishments already made. 
Send them to new settlements, and let the old 
ones purify : at present the stock of vice is per- 
petually renewed. Instead of doing this, the 
fresh convicts should be sent at once to new 
points along the coast ; for new settlements must 
necessarily consume men, and these are the men 
who are fit to be consumed. 

" Are you right in thinking that Sallust has 
the advantage in subject over Tacitus ? To me 
it appears that the histories which Sallust relates 
excite no good feeling, treating only of bad men 
in bad times ; but that the sufferings of good men 
in evil days form the most interesting and im- 
proving part of human history. I prefer Tacitus 
to all other historians — infinitely prefer him, be- 
cause no other historian inculcates so deep and 
holy a hatred of tyranny. It is from him that I 
learned my admiration of the Stoics. God bless 
you! R. S." 

The autumn of this year was varied by a short 
excursion to Scotland, accompanied by his friend, 
the Rev. Peter Elmsley (afterward principal of 
St. Alban Hall, Oxford). Edinburgh was their 
destination ; and a few days were passed in a 
visit to Sir Walter Scott, at Ashestiel. The fol- 
lowing letter, written during this absence from 
home, is too characteristic to be omitted. Mr. 
Thomas Moore, indeed, in his life of Lord Byron, 
seems very desirous of proving the incompati- 
bility of genius with any comfortable habits or 
domestic tastes; declares that immortality has 
never thus been struggled for or won ;* and ap- 
pears to think that true poets must necessarily 
be as untamed as Mazeppa's stee # d. But, never- 
theless, I am in nowise afraid that the possession 
of more amiable qualities will deprive my father 
of his claim to be remembered hereafter. 

To Mrs. Southey. 

" October 14, 1805. 
" I need not tell you, my own dear Edith, not to 
read my letters aloud till you have first of all seen 
what is written only for yourself. What I have 
now to say to you is, that having been eight days 
from home, with as little discomfort, and as lit- 



tle reason for discomfort as a man can reasona- 
bly expect, I have yet felt so little comfortable, 
so great sense of solitariness, and so many home- 
ward yearnings, that certainly I will not go to 
Lisbon without you ; a resolution which, if your 
feelings be at all like mine, will not displease 
you. If, on mature consideration, you think the 
inconvenience of a voyage more than you ought 
to submit to, I must be content to stay in En- 
gland, as on my part it certainly is not worth 
while to sacrifice a year's happiness ; for, though 
not unhappy (my mind is too active and too well 
disciplined to yield to any such criminal weak- 
ness), still, without you, I am not happy. But 
for your sake as well as my own, and for little 
Edith's sake, I will not consent to any separa- 
tion ; the growth of a year's love between her 
and me, if it please God that she should live, is 
a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable 
in its consequences, both to her and me, to be 
given up for any light inconveniences either on 
your part or mine. An absence of a year would 
make her effectually forgot me. # # # 
But of these things we will talk at leisure ; only, 
dear, dear Edith, we must not part. * * 
##* ##### 

Last night we saw the young Roscius in Douglas : 
this was lucky and unexpected. He disappoint- 
ed me. I could tell you precisely how, and how 
he pleased me on the other hand, but that this 
would take time,* and the same sort of thought 
as in reviewing ; and in letter writing I love to 
do nothing more than just say what is uppermost. 
This evening I meet Jeffrey and Brougham at 
Thomson's rooms. I know not if Harry knows 
him : he is the person who reviewed Miss Sew- 
ard, and is skillful in manuscripts. Among the 
books I have bought is a little work of Boccaccio, 
for which my uncle has been looking many years 
in vain, so extremely rare is it. Its value here 
was not known, and it cost me only three shill- 
ings, being, I conceive, worth as many guineas. 
I have likewise found the old translation of Ca- 



The third sitting will finish the letter. Thomson 
brought with him the review of Madoc (which 
will be published in about ten days), sent to me 
by Jeffrey, who did not like to meet me till I 
had seen it. There w r as some sort of gentle- 
man-like decency in this, as the review is very 
unfair and very uncivil, though mixed up with 
plenty of compliments, and calculated to serve 
the book in the best way, by calling attention to 
it and making it of consequence. Of course I 
shall meet him with perfect courtesy, just giving 
him to understand that I have as little respect 
for his opinions' as he has for mine ; thank him 
for sending me the sheets, and then turn to other 
subjects. =* # # # Since 

breakfast we have been walking to Calton Hill 
and to the Castle, from which heights I have 
seen the city and the neighboring country to ad- 



* Life and Works of Lord Byron, vol. iii., p. 129. 



* In another letter he says, " Though a little disappoint- 
ed, still I must say he is incomparably the best actor I 
have ever seen." 



196 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF .Etat. 32. 



vantage. I am far more struck by Edinburgh 
itself than I expected, far less by the scenery 
around it. * * * * 
:; God bless you, my own dear Edith. 

:; R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford. Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 13, 1505. 
" Dear Grosvexor, 

' : Here has been as great a gap in our cor- 
respondence as I have seen in the seat of my 
brother Sir Dominie's pantaloons, after he has 
been sliding down Latrigg. Sir. I shall be very 
happy to give you a slide down Latrigg also, if 
you will have the goodness to put it in my power 
to do so, and then you will understand the whole 
merits of the simile. 

• ; TS'ill you Butlerize, Mr. Bedford? By the 
core of William's heart, which I take to be the 
hardest of all oaths, and therefore the most im- 
possible to break, I will never cease persecuting 
you with that question and that advice till you 
actually set that good ship afloat, in which you 
are to make as fair a voyage to the port of Fame 
as ever Englishman accomplished. Mr. Bed- 
ford, it appears to me that Englishmen accom- 
plish that said expedition better by sea than by 
land, and that, therefore, the metaphor is a good 
one, and a sea-horse better than Pegasus. Do, 
do begin : and begin by writing letters to me, 
which may be your first crude thoughts : and I 
will unpack my memory of all its out-of-the-way 
oddities, and give them to you for cargo and bal- 
last. 

"Elmsley will have told you of our adven- 
tures in Scotland, if the non-adventures of a jour- 
ney in Great Britain at this age of the world can 
deserve that name. I am returned with much 
pleasant matter of remembrance ; well pleased 
with Walter Scott, with Johnny Armstrong's 
Castle on the Esk, with pleasant Teviotdale, 
with the Tweed and the Yarrow ; astonished at 
Edinburgh, delighted with Melrose, sick of Pres- 
byterianism, and, above all things, thankful that 
I am an Englishman and not a Scotchman. The 
Edinburgh Reviewers I like well as companions, 
and think little of as any thing else. Elmsley 
has more knowledge and a sounder mind than 
any or all of them. I could learn more from 
him in a day than they could all teach me in a 
year. Therefore I saw them to disadvantage, 
inasmuch as I had better company at home ; and, 
in plain English, living as I have done, and, by 
God's blessing, still continue to do, in habits of 
intimate intercourse with such men as Ricknian, 
William Taylor, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, the 
Scotchmen did certainly appear to me very pig- 
mies — literatuli. 

'"I go to Portugal next year, if politics per- 
mit me. and expect to take Edith and the Edith- 
ling with me, for at least a two years' residence. 
Bating the voyage and the trouble of removal, 
this is a pleasant prospect. I love the country, 
and go well prepared to look for every thing that 
I can want. My winter will be fully employed, 
and hardly. I am at my reviewing, of which 



this year I take my leave forever. It is an irk 
some employment, over which I lose time, be- 
cause it does not interest me. A good exercise 
certainly it is, and such I have found it ; but it 
is to be hoped that the positive immorality of 
servinor a literary apprenticeship in censuring 
the works of others will not be imputed wholly 
to me. In the winter of 1797, when I was only 
twenty-three and a half, I was first applied to to 
undertake the office of a pubfie critic ! Precious 
criticism ! And thus it is that these things are 
done. I have acquired some knowledge, and 
much practice in prose, at this work, which I 
can safely say I have ever executed with as 
much honesty as possible : but, on the whole, I 
do and must regard it as an immoral occupation, 
unless the reviewer has actually as much knowl- 
edge at least of the given subject as the author 
upon whom he undertakes to sit in judgment. 

:; When will your worship call upon me for my 
preface ? May I inform you that Patres nostri 
frequently remind me that we are losing time, 
thereby hinting that loss of time is loss of money. 

" What a death is Nelson's ! It seems to me 
one of the characteristics of the sublime that its 
whole force is never perceived at once. The 
more it is contemplated, the deeper is its effect. 
When this war began, I began an ode, which 
almost I feel now disposed to complete : take the 
only stanza : 

■ O dear, dear England ! O my mother isle ! 

There was a time when, woe the while ! 
In thy proud triumphs I could take no part; 

And even the tale of thy defeat 
In those unhappy days was doom'd to meet 
Unnatural welcome in an English heart : 
For thou wert leagued in an accursed cause, 
O dear, dear England ! and thy holiest laws 
Were trampled under foot by insolent power. 
Dear as my own heart's blood wert thou to me, 
But even thou less dear than liberty ! 

I never ventured on more, for fear lest what fol- 
lowed should fall flat in comparison. Almost I 
could now venture, and try at a funeral hymn 
for Nelson. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieutenant Southey. 

"Nov. 15,1305. 
Ci My dear Tom, 

" You will have heard of Nelson's most glo- 
rious death. The feeling it occasioned is highly 
honorable to the country. He leaves a name 
above all former admirals, with, perhaps, the 
single exception of Blake, a man who possessed 
the same genrus upon great occasions. We 
ought to name the two best ships in the navy 
from these men. 

' : My trip to Edinburgh was pleasant. I went 
to accompany Elmsley. We stayed three days 
with Walter Scott at Ashestiel, the name of his 
house on the banks of the Tweed. I saw all the 
scenery of his Lay of the Last Minstrel, a poem 
which you will read with great pleasure when 
you come to England ; and I went salmon-spear- 
ing on the Tweed, in which, though I struck at 
no fish, I bore my part, and managed one end of 
the boat with a long spear. Having had neither 



Mi at. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



197 



new coat nor hat since the Edithling was born, 
you may suppose I was in want of both ; so at 
I Edinburgh I was to rig myself, and, moreover, 
; lay in new boots and pantaloons. Howbeit, on 
considering the really respectable appearance 
j which my old ones made for a traveler, and con- 
sidering, moreover, that as learning was better 
than house or land, it certainly must be much 
| better than fine clothes, I laid out all my money 
! in books, and came home to wear out my old 
wardrobe in the winter. My library has had 
many additions since you left me, and many gen- 
tlemen in parchment remain with anonymous 
backs till you come and bedeck them. 

"From your last letter, I am not without 
hopes that you may have taken some steps to- 
ward getting to Europe, and in that case it is 
aot absolutely impossible that you may yet reach 
this place before we quit it, and that you may 
make the circumnavigation of the lakes in my 
company. I am an experienced boatman, and, 
what is better, recline in the boat sometimes like 
a bashaw, while the women row me. Edith is 
an excellent hand at the oar. Her love. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Dec. 6, 1805. 

" William's iron-gray had his advantages and 
disadvantages. He never required shoeing ; for, 
as the hoof is harder than the flesh, so, in just 
proportion to his metallic muscles, he had hoofs 
of adamant ; but, then, he was hard-mouthed. 
There was no expense in feeding him : but he 
required scouring, lest he should grow rusty. 
Instead of spurs, William had a contrivance for 
touching him with aquafortis. It was a fine 
thing to hear the rain hiss upon him as he gal- 
loped. # # # The Butler wears 
a chest of drawers — sometimes a bureau. 

" Bedford, I will break off all acquaintance 
with you if you do not publish the Butler. Who 
would keep a Phoenix with a spaniel's ear, a pig's 
tail, C 's nose, and W 's wig, all nat- 
urally belonging to him, in a cage only for his 
own amusement, when he might show it for five 
shillings a piece, and be known all over the 
world as the man who hatched it himself? 

" * * By the 1st of January; * send 
me the first chapter, being the mythology of the 
Butler, or else — I will for evermore call you sir 
when I speak to you, and Mr. Bedford when I 
speak of you ; and, moreover, will always pull 
off my hat when I meet you in the streets. 

" I perceive that the reviewals of Madoc have 
in a certain degree influenced you, which they 
will not do if you will look at them when they 
are three months old, or if you recollect that a 
review is the opinion of one man upon the work 
of another, and that it is not very likely that any 
man who reviews a poem of mine should know 
quite as much of the mechanism of poetry, or 
should have thought quite so much upon the na- 
ture of poetry, as I have done. The Monthly is 
mere malice, and is beneath all notice ; but look 
at the Edinburgh, and you will see that Jeffrey 



himself does not know what he is about. He 
talks of Virgil, and Pope, and Racine as what I 
have set up against. I told him Pope was a 
model for satire. That, he said, was a great 
concession. ' No,' said I ; ' if his style be a mod- 
el for satire, how can it be for serious narrative ?' 
And he did not attempt to hold up his Homer for 
imitation, but fairly and unequivocally declared 
he did not like it. And yet Jeffrey attacks me 
for not writing in Madoc like Pope ! The pas- 
sages which he has quoted, for praise or for cen- 
sure, may just as well change places ; they are 
culled capriciously, not with any sense of se- 
lection. The real faults of Madoc have never 
been pointed out. William Taylor has criti- 
cized it for the Annual very favorably and very 
ably : there are remarks in his critiques to set 
one thinking and considering ; but W. Taylor is a 
man who fertilizes every subject he touches upon. 

"Don Manuel — how could you not under- 
stand it was a secret ? Do you not remember 
how covertly I inquired of you the text in Field's 
Bible ? * * The use of secrecy is 

to excite curiosity, and, perhaps, to pass through 
the reviews under cover. Rickman particularly 
recommended the foreign cast of remarks through 
the whole of the journey. Thus do doctors dif- 
fer. As for the queerities, let them stay : it is 
only they who know me pretty nearly that know 
what a queer fish I am ; others conceive me to 
be a very grave sort of person. Besides, I have 
not the least intention of keeping the thing con- 
cealed after the purpose of secrecy has answered. 

"That wretch Mack has very likely spoiled 
my voyage to Lisbon. If there be not peace, 
Bonaparte will show himself master of the Con- 
tinent and turn us out of Portugal, if only to 
show that he is more powerful in that peninsula 
than Charlemagne was. I am afraid of France, 
and wish for single-handed war carried on stead- 
ily and systematically. We ought to have Egypt, 
Sicily, and the Cape ; if we do not, France will. 
But nothing good ever will be done while that 
wretched minister is at the head of affairs. * 



" Tui favoris studiosissimus, 



R. S 



To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Amelia. 

- Keswick, Dec. 7, 1805. 
" Dear Tom, 
" I was preparing last night to write to you ; 
but the newspaper came, and seeing therein that 
a mail was arrived, I waited till this evening for 
a letter, and have not been disappointed. Thank 
you for the turtle, and thank Heaven it has never 
reached me. In bodily fear lest it should, I wrote 
off immediately to Wynn, and if he had not been 
in town, should have given it to any body who 
would have been kind enough to have eased'me 
of so inconvenient a visitor. How, Tom, could 
you think of sending me a turtle ! When, in- 
deed, I come to be lord mayor, it may be a suit- 
able present; but now! its carriage down would 
not have been less than forty shillings. Nobody 
would have known how to kill it, how to cut it 
up, or how to dress it ; there would have been 
nobody here to help us eat it, nobody to whom 



198 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 32. 



we could have given it. Whether Wynn has 
got it I can not tell, but most likely it has been 
eaten upon the way. 

" Your extracts are very interesting, but sev- 
eral have miscarried : the devil seems to be post- 
master-general on that station. Go on as you 
have begun, and you will soon collect more, and 
more valuable materials than you are aware of. 
Describe a West Indian tavern — its difference 
from ours. Go to church one Sunday, to de- 
scribe church and congregation. Inquire at ev- 
ery town if there be any schools there — any Dis- 
senters ; how the Methodists get on ; collect 
some Jamaica newspapers — and, if you can, the 
Magazine which is printed there. Your Torto- 
la letter is a very delightful one. Put down all 
the stories you hear. When you go ashore, take 
notice of the insects that you see, the'birds, &c — 
all make parts of the picture. Lose nothing that 
a Creole, or any man acquainted with the islands, 
tells you concerning them. Send me all the sto- 
ries about Pompey — he must be a curious char- 
acter : ask him his history. What sort of church- 
yards have they ? any epitaphs ? Where do they 
bury the negroes ? Is there any funeral service 
for them ? 

" You talk of invasion : depend upon it, it 
never will and never can be attempted while our 
fleet is what it is ; and poor Nelson has left its 
name higher than ever. What a blaze of glory 
has he departed in ! The Spaniards, you will 
see, behaved most honorably to the men who 
were wrecked, and who fell into their hands — 
and about our wounded, and the French very ill. 
Continental politics are too much in the dark for 
me to say any thing. It is by no means clear 
that Prussia will take part against France, though 
highly probable, and now highly politic. If she 
should, I think Bonaparte's victories may prove 
his destruction. 

" No further news of the sale of Madoc. The 
reviews will probably hurt it for a time ; that is 
in their power, and that is all they can do. Un- 
questionably the poem will stand and flourish. 
I am perfectly satisfied with the execution — 
now, eight months after its publication, in my 
cool judgment. William Taylor has said it is 
the best English poem that has left the press 
since the Paradise Lost ; indeed, this is not ex- 
aggerated praise, for, unfortunately, there is no 
competition. 

: ' I want you grievously to tell Espriella sto- 
ries about the navy, and give him a good idea 
of its present state, which, of course, I can not 
venture to do except very slightly and very cau- 
tiously, fully aware of my own incompetence. 
Some of your own stories you will recognize. 
The book will be very amusing, and promises 
more profit than any of my former works. Most 
praise I have had for Amadis, for the obvious 
reason that it excited no envy ; they who were 
aiming at distinction as poets, &c, without suc- 
cess, had no objection to allow that I could trans- 
late from the Spanish. But praise and fame are 
two very distinct things. Nobody thinks the 
higher of me for that translation, or feels a wish 



to see me for it, as they do for Joan of Arc and 
Thalaba. Poor Thalaba got abused in every re- 
view except the Critical ; and yet there has not 
any poem of the age excited half the attention, 
or won half the admiration that that kind has. I 
am fairly up the hill. 

" Little Edith looks at the picture of the ships 
in the Cyclopedia, and listens to the story how 
she has an uncle who lives in a ship, and loves 
her dearly, and sends her a kiss in a letter. Poor 
Cupid* has been hung at last for robbing a hen- 
roost ! Your three half-crown sticks, you see, 
were bestowed upon him in vain. He is the first 
of all my friends who ever came to the gallows. 
and I am very sorry for him. Poor fellow ! I 
was his godfather. Of Joe the last accounts 
were good. Thus have I turned my memory in- 
side out, to rummage out all the news for you, 
and little enough it is. We live here in the 
winter as much out of the way of all society as 
if we were cruising at sea. From November 
till June not a soul do we see, except perhaps 
Wordsworth once or twice during the time. Of 
course it is my working season, and I get through 
a great deal. Edith's love. God bless you, Tom. 

U R. S." 



CHAPTER XII. 

ADVANTAGES OF KESWICK AS A RESIDENCE OPIN 

IONS POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND RELIGIOUS THF 

LANGUAGE OF MADOC DEFENDED FOREIGN 

POLITICS CURIOUS CASE OF MENTAL DERANGE- 

MENT AMELIORATED HOBBEs's THEORY OF A 

STATE OF NATURE COMBATED MR. COLERIDG5 

MR. WORDSWORTH MR. DUPPa'sLIFE OF MI- 
CHAEL ANGELO DETAILS OF HIMSELF AND HI? 

LITERARY PURSUITS AND OPINIONS POLITICA1 

CH AN GE S LITE RARY LABORS C ONGRATULA- 

TIONS TO MR. WYNN ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILT 

REMARKS ON THE EFFECTS OF TIME BRIS 

TOL RECOLLECTIONS BEAUSOBRe's HISTORTf 

OF MANICHEISM GOES TO NORWICH THE AN- 
NUAL REVIEW JESUITISM IN ENGLAND BRIEI 

VISIT TO LONDON AND RETURN QUAINT THEO- 
RY OF THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES THALABA 

URGES MR. BEDFORD TO VISIT HIM AT KES- 
WICK DIRECTIONS ABOUT SPECIMENS OF EN- 
GLISH POETS KEHAMA DEATH OF HIS UNCLE 

JOHN SOUTHEY LINES UPON THAT EVENT 

MOUNTAIN EXCURSIONS REVIEWS OF MADOC 

EPIC SUBJECTS SUGGESTED TRANSLATION 

OF PALMERIN OF ENGLAND PAPERS CONCERN- 
ING SOUTH AMERICA MEMOIRS OF COLONEL 

HUTCHINSON. 1 806. 

My father was now a settled dweller among 
the mountains of Cumberland ; and although for 
some years he again and again refers to Lisbon 
as a place he earnestly desired to revisit, still 
this was a project which would probably have as- 
sumed a very different aspect, had it come more 
immediately before him : he would never have 



* Cupid was a dog, of what kind does not appear h*>- 
longing to Mr. Danyers. 



iEr.vT. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



199 



removed his family abroad, and he was far too 
much attached to, and, indeed, too dependent 
upon, home comforts and domestic relations, to 
have made up his mind to leave them even for 
the furtherance of his chief literary pursuits. 

A more thoroughly domestic man, or one more 
simple in his mode of living, it would be diffi- 
cult to picture ; and the habits into which he set- 
tled himself about this time continued through 
life, unbroken regularity and unwearied industry 
being their chief characteristics. Habitually an 
early riser, he never encroached upon the hours 
of the night ; and finding his highest pleasure and 
his recreation in the very pursuits necessary for 
earning his daily bread, he was, probably, more 
continually employed than any other writer of 
his generation. " My actions," he writes about 
this time to a friend, " are as regular as those 
of St. Dunstan's quarter-boys. Three pages of 
history after breakfast (equivalent to five in small 
quarto printing) ; then to transcribe and copy for 
the press, or to make my selections and biogra- 
phies, or what else suits my humor, till dinner- 
time ; from dinner till tea I read, write letters, 
see the newspaper, and very often indulge in a 
siesta — for sleep agrees with me, and I have a 
good, substantial theory to prove that it must ; 
for as a man who walks much requires to sit 
down and rest himself, so does the brain, if it be 
the part most worked, require its repose. Well, 
after tea I go to poetry, and correct, and re- 
write, and copy till I am tired, and then turn to 
any thing else till supper ; and this is my life — 
which, if it be not a very merry one, is yet as 
happy as heart could wish. At least I should 
think so if I had not once been happier 5 and I 
do think so, except when that recollection comes 
upon me. And then, when I cease to be cheer- 
ful, it is only to become contemplative — to feel 
at times a wish that I was in that state of ex- 
istence which passes not away ; and this always 
ends in a new impulse to proceed, that I may 
leave some durable monument and some efficient 
good behind me." 

The place of abode which he had chosen for 
himself, or, rather, which a variety of circum- 
stances had combined to fix him in, was, in most 
respects, well suited to his wishes and pursuits. 
Surrounded by scenery which combines in a rare 
degree both beauty and grandeur, the varied and 
singularly striking views which he could com- 
mand from the windows of his study were of 
themselves a recreation to the mind, as well as 
a feast to the eye, and there was a perpetual in- 
ducement to exercise which drew him oftener 
from his books than any other cause would have 
done, though not so often as was advisable for 
due relaxation both of mind and body. Unin- 
terrupted leisure for a large portion of the year 
was absolutely essential ; and that the long win- 
ter of our northern clime, which may be said 
generally to include half the autumnal and near- 
ly all the spring months, was well calculated to 
afford him. With the swallows the tourists be- 
gan to come, and among them many friends and 
acquaintances, and so many strangers bearing 



letters of introduction, that his stores of the lat- 
ter were being continually increased, and some- 
times pleasing and valuable additions made to 
the former class. During several years his 
brother Henry, while a student of medicine at 
Edinburgh, spent his vacations at Keswick, and 
occasionally some of his more intimate friends 
came down for a few weeks. These were his 
golden days ; and on such occasions he indulged 
himself in a more complete holiday, and extend- 
ed his rambles to those parts of the mountain 
country which were beyond the circle lying im- 
mediately within reach of his own home. These 
happy times left a permanent memory behind 
them, and the remembrance of them formed 
many anecdotes for his later years. 

The society thus obtained, while occasionally 
it was a heavy tax upon his time (to whom time 
was all his wealth), was, on the whole, more 
suited to his habits than constant intercourse 
with the world would have been, and more 
wholesome than complete seclusion. " Lon- 
don," he writes at this time to his friend Mr. 
Rickman, who was urging him to make a longer 
visit than usual, " disorders me by over stimula- 
tion. I dislike its society more from reflection 
than from feeling. Company, to a certain ex- 
tent, intoxicates me. I do not often commit the 
fault of talking too much, but very often say 
what would be better unsaid, and that, too, in a 
manner not to be easily forgotten. People go 
away and repeat single sentences, dropping all 
that led to them, and all that explains them 5 and 
very often, in my hearty hatred of assentation, I 
commit faults of the opposite kind. Now I am 
sure to find this out myself, and to get out of 
humor with myself; what prudence I have is 
not ready on demand ; and so it is that the so- 
ciety of any except my friends, though it may be 
sweet in the mouth, is bitter in the belly." 

As concerns his social and political opinions, 
it may be said that they were for many years 
in a transition state — rather settling and sober- 
ing than changing ; indeed, if fairly examined, 
they altered through life, not so much in the ob- 
jects he had in view, as in the means whereby 
those objects were to be gained. He had be- 
gun in early youth with those generous feelings 
toward mankind, which made him believe al- 
most in their perfectibility, but these soon passed 
away. " There was a time," he wrote, six 
years earlier, " when I believed in the persuad- 
ibility of man, and had the mania of man-mend- 
ing. Experience has taught me better." But 
before experience had finished her lessons, he 
had another stage to pass through; and from 
having too good an opinion of human nature, he, 
for a time, entertained far too low a one. Many 
of his early letters are full of the strongest mis- 
anthropical expressions ; and in his earliest pub- 
lished prose work, the letters from Spain and 
Portugal, he gives emphatic utterance to the 
same feelings. "Man is a beast," he exclaims, 
" and an ugly beast, and Monboddo libels the 
orang-outangs by suspecting them to be of the 
same family;" but this, again, was naturally a 



200 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 32. 



transition state, and his mature mind judged 
more justly and much more charitably, being re- 
moved alike from the visionary enthusiasm of 
his young life, and the self-concentered apathy 
which succeeded it. 

With respect to particular questions of poli- 
tics, it will be seen, in the course of this volume, 
that on certain prominent subjects his feelings 
became strongly enlisted on the same side w T hich 
the Tory politicians advocated, and in direct op- 
position to those who professed to be the leaders 
of Liberal opinions ; agreement on some points 
elicited agreement on others, and, in like man- 
ner, disagreement naturally had for its fruits 
dislike and complete estrangement. 

His religious 'views, also, during middle life, 
were settling down into a more definite shape, 
and were drawing year after year nearer to a 
conformity with the doctrines of the Church of 
England. However vague and unsettled his 
thoughts on such subjects were in early youth, 
he had never doubted the great truths of Reve- 
lation ; and how rarely this was the case at that 
period, especially among men of cultivated minds, 
at least of that stirring democratic school into 
whose society he had been thrown, the memo- 
ries of many of the passing generation will bear 
testimony. "I knew no one w T ho believed," is 
the startling expression of one of my father's co- 
temporaries, himself a man of intellect and well- 
stored mind, when speaking of his own passage 
through that " Valley of the Shadow of Death," 
and referring to the friends of his own age and 
standing ; and he goes on to say that he took up 
the study of the grounds and evidences of Chris- 
tianity with the full expectation that he should 
find no difficulty whatever in refuting to his own 
satisfaction what so many others considered as 
hardly worthy the serious consideration of rea- 
sonable men. Many of those persons whose 
mental and social qualifications my father most 
admired were at best but unsettled in their faith ; 
and though, almost without exception in later 
life, they sought and found the only sure resting- 
place for their hopes and fears, still the frequent 
intercourse with such men was an ordeal not to 
be passed through without difficulty or without 
danger. But he was blessed with a pure and 
truthful heart, strong in the rejection of evil prin- 
ciples ; and this, through God's mercy, was con- 
firmed by his solitary, laborious, and dutiful life, 
united as it was with the constant study of the 
Holy Scriptures, and at a rather later period, by 
an acquaintance with the works of most of the 
great English theologians. 

The reader has seen from my father's letters 
the reception which Madoc had hitherto met 
with, and that many of the reviews had been 
somewhat unfavorable, and had not failed to take 
full advantage of those defects in the structure 
of the story of which the author himself seems 
to have been well aware. 

These hostile criticisms, however, had not al- 
ways their intended effect. Mr. Bedford asks 
him at the close of the past year, " I should like 
to know what you call the real faults of Madoc ? 



Wyndham told Wynn that from what he had 
seen of the abusive reviews, he was inclined to 3 
like the poem exceedingly, and from those speci- 
mens speaks of it in high terms : this would 
make Godwin's nose three times as horrid as 
ever we thought it." 

To this my father replies : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Jan. 1,1806. 
"Dear Grosvenor, 

"You use Godwin's name as if he had mali- 
ciously reviewed Madoc, which I do not by any 
means suspect or believe, though he has all the 
ill will in the world to make me feel his power. 
The Monthly was rather more dull than he would 
have made it. I should well like to know who 
the writer is ; for, by the Living Jingo — a deity 
whom D. Manuel* conceives to have been wor- 
shiped by the Celts — I would contrive to give 
him a most righteous clapper-elawing in re- 
turn. 

" Thalaba is faulty in its language. Madoc 
is not. I am become what they call a Puritan 
I in Portugal with respect to language, and I dare 
assert that there is not a single instance of ille- 
gitimate English in the whole poem. The faults 
are in the management of the story and the con- 
{ elusion, where the interest is injudiciously trans- 
ferred from Madoc to Yuhidthiton ; it is also an- 
other fault to have rendered accidents subservient 
to the catastrophe. You will see this very ac- 
curately stated in the Annual Review : the re- 
mark is new, and of exceeding great value. I 
acknowledge no fault in the execution of any 
magnitude, except the struggle of the women 
with Amalahta, which is all clumsily done, and 
must be rewritten. Those faults which are in- 
herent in and inseparable from the story, as they 
could not be helped, so are they to be considered 
as defects or wants rather than faults. I mean 
the division of the poem into two separate sto- 
ries and scenes, and the inferior interest of the 
voyage, though a thing of such consequence. 
But as for unwarrantable liberties of language — 
there is not a solitary sin of the kind in the 
wiiole 9000 lines. Let me be understood : I 
call it an unwarrantable liberty to use a verb 
deponent, for instance, actively, or to form any 
compound contrary to the strict analogy of the 
language — such as tameless in Thalaba, applied 
to the tigress. I do not recollect any coinage 
in Madoc except the word deicide ; and that 
such a word exists I have no doubt, though I 
can not lay my finger upon an authority, for de- 
pend upon it the Jews have been called so a 
thousand times. That word is unobjectionable. 
It is in strict analogy — its meaning is immedi- 
ately obvious, and no other word could have ex- 
pressed the same meaning. Archaisms are 
faulty if they are too obsolete. Thewes is the 
only one I recollect ; that also has a peculiar 
meaning, for which there is no equivalent word. 
But, in short, so very laboriously was Madoc re- 



ters.' : 



The fictitious name of the writer of " Esprielia'e Let- 



4Etat. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



201 



written and corrected, time after time, that I 
will pledge myself, if you ask me in any in- 
stance why one word stands in the place of an- 
other which you, perhaps, may think the better 
one, to give you a reason (most probably, eu- 
phonice gratia) , which will convince you that I 
had previously weighed both in the balance. Sir, 
the language and versification of that poem are 
as full of profound mysteries as the Butler ; and 
he, I take it, was as full of profundity as the 
great deep itself. 

" I do not know any one who has understood 
the main merit of the poem so nearly as I wish- 
ed it to be understood as yourself: the true and 
intrinsic greatness of M adoc, the real talents of 
his enemies, and (which I consider as the main 
work of skill) the feeling of respect for them — 
of love even for the individuals, yet with an ab- 
horrence of the national cruelties that perfectly 
reconcile you to their dreadful overthrow. You 
have very well expressed this. 

[have written this at two days — many sittings 
— under the influence of influenza and antimony. 
I am mending, but very w T eak, and sufficiently 
uncomfortable. R. S. 

" Jan. 1. Multos et felices." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Amelia. 

" Jan. 1, 1806. (Many happy returns.) 
" My dear Tom, 

" Don't be cast down, Tom : w T ere I to make 
laws, no man should be made master and com- 
mander till he was thirty years of age. Made 
you will be at last, and will get on at last as 
high as your heart can wish : never doubt that, 
as I never doubt it. 

" Don't send me another turtle till I am lord 
mayor, and then I shall be much obliged to you 
for one ; but, for Heaven's sake, not till then. 
I consigned over all my right and title in the 
green fat to Wynn, by a formal power sent to 
Coutts the banker, who was to look out for him ; 
but of his arrival not a word yet — ten to one 
ut he is digested. When you are coming home, 
if you could bring a cargo of dried tamarinds, I 
should like them, because they are very seldom 
to be got in England : I never saw them but 
once. Dried, mark you, in the husk — not pre- 
served. The acid is exceedingly delightful. 
Now remember, the words are when you are 
coming home, and bring : do not attempt to send 
them, or there will be trouble, vexation, unneces- 
sary expense, and, most likely, the loss of the 
thing itself. 

" My daughter never sees a picture of ship or 
boat but she talks of her uncle in the ship, and 
as regularly receives the kiss which he sent in 
the letter. You will be very fond of her if she 
goes on as well when you come home as she does 
at present. Harry is hard at work for the last sea- 
son at Edinburgh, preparing to pass muster and 
be be-doctored in July. Most likely he will go 
to Lisbon with me in the autumn — at least I 
know not how he can be better employed for a 



few months than in traveling and spoiling his 
complexion. 

" The extraordinary success of Bonaparte, or, 
rather, the wretched misconduct of Austria, has 
left the Continent completely under the control 
of France. Our plan should be to increase our 
cruisers and scour the seas effectually — to take 
all we can, and keep all we take — professing 
that such is our intention, and that we are ready 
to make peace whenever France pleases, upon 
the simple terms of leaving off with our win- 
nings. Meantime we ought to take the Cape, 
the French islands in the East (those in the 
West would cost too many lives, and may be left 
for the blacks), Minorca, Sicily, and Egypt. If 
France chooses to have the main-land, the isl- 
ands should be ours. I suppose we shall go upon 
some such plan. As for invasion, the old story 
will begin again in the spring ; but it is a thing 
impossible, and you sailors best know this. Lord 
St. Vincent used to say, when it was talked of, 
' I don't say they can't come ; I only say that 
they can't come hj sea.' What will affect me 
is the fate of Portugal ; for it is now more than 
ever to be expected that Bonaparte will turn us 
out, merely to show he can do it. This will be 
to me a grievous annoyance. It is not unlikely 
that he will propose peace after these splendid 
victories, and it is not impossible that Pitt may 
accept it, to keep his place. Heaven forbid ! To 
give up Malta now would be giving up the na- 
tional honor : it would be confessing that we had 
lost the game, whereas we can play the single- 
handed game forever. Our bad partners ruin us. 
The ultimate consequences of the success of 
France may not be so disastrous to Europe as is 
generally supposed. Suppose that the Continent 
be modeled as Bonaparte pleases — which it will 
be — and that it remains so in peace for twenty 
or thirty years : he will have disabled Austria, 
it is true, but all the other powers will be 
strengthened, and a new state created in Italy 
which did not exist before. Then she will 
be under French direction : true, but still not 
French ; the difference of language effectually 
J prevents that. Bonapai'te will not be a long- 
lived man ; he can not be, in the ordinary course 
of nature ; there has been, and will be too much 
wear and tear of him. His successor, if the suc- 
cession go regularly on, as I suppose it will, will 
certainly not inherit his talents, and the first- 
j born emperor will have all the benefit of impe 
| rial education, which is quite sure to make him 
upon a level with all other sovereign princes. 
By that time the French generals will have died 
off, and we must not forget that it is the Revolu- 
tion which made these men generals, and that 
men no longer rise according to their merit. 

"Jan. 5. 
{: I have just received the following news • ' Sir 
— Am extremely sorry to be obliged to inform 
you, that a turtle, that I flattered myself would 
have survived home, from the execs.-ive long 
passage and performance of quarantine at Cork, 
Falmouth, and Sea Reach, died in the former 



202 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 32. 



port, with every one on board the ship. Re- 
spectfully, y r much obliged and obedient servant, 
Stephen T. Selk.' So much for the turtle ! I 
think, if government will make such beasts per- 
form quarantine, they ought to pay for the loss. 
Surfeits and indigestions they may bring into the 
city, but of the yellow fever there can be no dan- 
ger. The Court of Aldermen should take it into 
consideration. 

" And now, to finish this letter of gossip, I 
am in the midst of reviewing, which will be over 
by the time this reaches you, even if, contrary 
to custom, it should reach you in regular course. 
Espriella also will, by that time, be gone to press. 
This, and the History of the Cid, I shall have to 
send you in the summer. No further news of 
the sale ; in fact, if the edition of 500 goes off in 
two years, it will be a good sale for so costly a 
book. I hope it will not be very long before 
Thalaba goes to press a second time. God bless 
you ! R. S." 

To Messrs. Longman and Rees. 

" Jan. 5, 1806. 
"Dear Sirs, 

"A gentleman in this neighborhood, Mr. , 

is printing some poems at his own expense, which 
Faulder is to publish ; and he has applied to me 
to request that your name also may appear in 
the title-page. In such cases, the only proper 
mode of proceeding is to relate the plain state 
of the matter. His verses are good for nothing, 
and not a single copy can possibly sell, except 
what his acquaintance may purchase ; but he 
has been laboring under mental derangement — 
the heaviest of all human calamities — and the 
passion which he has contracted for rhyming has 
changed the character of his malady, and made 
him, from a most miserable being, a very happy 
one. Under these circumstances you will not, 
perhaps, object to gratifying him, and depositing 
copies of his book in your ware-room, for the ac- 
commodation of the spiders. He tells me his 

MS. is at , if you think fit to inspect it : 

this trouble you will hardly take : the poems are 
as inoffensive as they are worthless. I shall 
simply tell him that I have made the applica- 
tion, without giving him any reason to expect its 
success. You will, of course, use your own 
judgment, only I will beg you to signify your as- 
sent or dissent to him himself. # =fc # 
"Believe me, yours truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

The following curious letter needs some ex- 
planation. My father had sent the MS. of his 
letters, under the assumed character of Espriella, 
to his friend Mr. Rickman for his remarks, who 
was anxious that some strong condemnation of 
pugilism should not appear, as he considered it 
acted as a sort of so.fety-valve to the bad pas- 
sions of the lower orders, and in some cases 
prevented the use of the knife ; and he goes on 
to say, " The abstract love of bloodshed is a very 
odd taste, but I am afraid very natural ; the in- 
crease of gladiatorial exhibitions at Rome is not 



half so strong a proof of this as the Mexican 
sacrifices, which I think commenced not till 
about A.D. 1300 — and by a kind of accident or 
whim — and lasted above 200 years, with a hor- 
rible increase, and with the imitation of all the 
neighboring states. This last circumstance is a 
wonderful proof of the love of blood in the human 
mind. Without that, the practice must have 
raised the strongest aversion around Mexico. I 
believe Leviathan Hobbes says ' that a state of 
nature is a state of war, i. e., bloodshed.' I be- 
gin to think so too ; else why has Nature made 
such a variety of offensive as well as defensive 
armor in all her animal and vegetable produc- 
tions ? It seems a perverted industry, and is 
unexplainable, unless we believe Hobbes."* 

My father's reply shows he was of a different 
opinion. \ 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Jan. 15, 1806. 
" Dear Rickman, 

" Before I speak of myself, let me say some- 
thing upon a more important subject. Nature 
has given offensive armor for two* reasons : in the 
first place, it is defensive because it -serves to in- 
timidate ; a better reason is, that claws t^nd teeth 
are the tools with which animals must ge^t their 
living ; and that the general system of one creat- 
ure eating another is a benevolent one, npeds 
little proof; there must be death, and what c^n 
be wiser than to make death subservient to life ? 
As for a state of nature, the phrase, as applied 
to man, is stark naked nonsense. Savage man 
is a degenerated animal. My own belief is, that 
the present human race is not much more than 
six thousand years old, according to the concur- 
rent testimony of all rational history. The In- 
dian records are good for nothing. But add as 
many millenniums as you will, the question, ' How 
came they here at first ?' still occurs. The in- 
finite series is an infinite absurdity ; and to sup- 
pose them growing like mushrooms or maggots 
in mud, is as bad. Man must have been «nade 
here, or placed here with sufficient powers, bod- 
ily and mental, for his own support. I think the 
most reasonable opinion is, that the first men had 
a knowledge of language and of religion; in 
short, that the accounts of a golden or patri- 
archal age are, in their foundation, true. How 
soon the civilized being degenerates under un- 
favorable circumstances, has been enough prov- 
ed by history. Free-will, God, and final retri- 
bution solve all difficulties. That Deity can not 
be understood, is a stupid objection ; without one 
we can understand nothing. I can not put down 
my thoughts methodically without much revision 
and re-arrangement; but you may see what I 
would be at : it is no difficult matter to harpoon 
the Leviathan, and wound him mortally. 

<•# ###### 

You may account by other means for the spread 
of the Mexican religion than by the love of blood. 
Man is by nature a religious animal ; and if the 



J. R. to R. S., Jan. 9, 1806. 



jEtat. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



203 



elements of religion were not innate in him, as 
I am convinced they are, sickness would make 
him so. You will find that all savages connect 
superstition with disease — some cause, which 
they can neither comprehend nor control, affects 
them painfully, and the remedy always is to ap- 
pease an offended Spirit, or drive away a malig- 
nant one. Even in enlightened societies, you 
will find that men more readily believe what 
they fear than what they hope : * # # 
religions, therefore, which impose privations and 
self-torture, have always been more popular than 
any other. How many of our boys' amusements 
consist in bearing pain ? grown children like to 
do the same from a different motive. You will 
more easily persuade a man to wear hair-cloth 
drawers, to flog himself, or swing upon a hook, 
than to conform to the plain rules of morality 
and common sense. I shall have occasion to 
look into this subject when writing of the spirit 
of Catholicism, which furnishes as good an il- 
lustration as the practices of the Hindoos. Here, 
in England, Calvinism is the popular faith. . . . 
Beyond all doubt, the religion of the Mexicans 
is the most diabolical that has ever existed. It 
is not, however, by any means so mischievous as 
the Brahminical system of caste, which, wherever 
it exists, has put a total stop to the amelioration 
of society. The Mexicans were rapidly advanc- 
ing. Were you more at leisure, I should urge 
you to bestow a week's study upon the Spanish 
language, for the sake of the mass of information 
contained in their travelers and historians. * =* 
" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Scott, Esq., ddvocate. 

" Greta Hall, Keswick, Feb. 4, 1806. 
v My dear Sir, 

" We are under considerable uneasiness re- 
specting Coleridge, who left Malta early in Sep- 
tember to return overland from Naples, was 
heard of from Trieste, and has not been heard 
of since. Our hope is, that, finding it impracti- 
cable to proceed, he may have returned, and be 
wintering at Naples or in Sicily. 

" Wordsworth was with me last week ; he has 
of late been more employed in coi-recting his 
poems than in writing others ; but one piece he 
has written, upon the ideal character of a soldier, 
than which I have never seen any thing more 
full of meaning and sound thought. The subject 
was suggested by Nelson's most glorious death, 
though having no reference to it. He had some 
thoughts of sending it to the Courier, in which 
case you will easily recognize his hand. 

" Having this occasion to write, I will ven- 
ture to make one request. My friend Duppa is 
about to publish a Life of Michael Angelo : the 
book will be a good book, for no man understands 
his art better. I wish, when it comes in course 
of trial, you would save it from Judge Jeffrey, 
or intercede with him for as favorable a report 
as it may be found to deserve. Duppa deserves 
well of the public, because he has, at a very 
considerable loss, published those magnificent 
heads from RafTaelle and Michael Angelo, and 



is publishing this present work without any view 
whatever to profit ; indeed, he does not print 
copies enough to pay his expenses. 

" Mrs. Southey and her sister join me in re- 
membrance to Mrs. Scott. I know not whether 
I shall ever again see the Tweed and the Yar- 
row, yet should be sorry to think I should not. 
Your scenery has left upon me a strong impres- 
sion — more so for the delightful associations 
which you and your country poets have insepa- 
rably connected with it. I am going in the au- 
tumn, if Bonaparte will let me, to streams as 
classical and as lovely — the Mondego of Camo- 
ens, the Douro, and the Tagus ; but I shall not 
find such society on their banks. 

" Remember me to my two fellow-travelers. 
Heaven keep them and me also from being the 
subject of any further experiments upon the in- 
finite compressibility of matter. 

" Believe me, yours very truly, 

"Robert Southey. 

"If Hogg should publish his poems, I shall 
be very glad to do what little I can in getting 
subscribers for him." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

"Keswick, Feb. 8, 1806. 
" My dear Friend, 

" You tell me to write as an egotist, and I am 
well disposed so to do ; for what else is it that 
gives private letters their greatest value, but the 
information they bring us of those for whom we 
are interested ? I saw your marriage in the 
papers, and perhaps one reason why my letter 
has remained so long unfinished in my desk is a 
sort of fear lest I should mention it after death 
might have dissolved it — a sort of superstitious 
feeling to which I am subject. I wish you — 
being a father myself — as large a family as you 
can comfortably bring up, and if you are not 
provided with a godfather upon the next occa- 
sion, I beg you to accept of me, as an old and 
vary affectionate friend ; 'tis a voluntary kind of 
relationship, in which it would gratify me to 
stand to a child of yours, and which I should 
consider as a religious pledge on my part for 
any useful, kind, and fatherly offices which it 
might ever happen to be in my power to per- 
form. 

"I have for some time looked on with pleas- 
ure to the hope of seeing you next autumn, when, 
in all probability, if the situation of affairs abroad 
does not prevent me, I shall once more visit Port- 
ugal, not for health's sake, but to collect the last 
materials for my history, and to visit those parts 
of the kingdom which I have not yet seen. In 
this case my way will lie through Devonshire, 
and I will stop a day or two at Crediton, and talk 
over old times. 

" You inquire of the wreck of the Seward fam- 
ily — a name as dear to my inmost heart as it can 
be to yours. No change has taken place among 
them for some years, as I understand from Dup- 
pa, who was my guest here the autumn before 
last, and with whom I have an occasional corre* 
spondence. 



204 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE Oh 



Mtat. 32. 



" I passed through Oxford two years ago, and 
walked through the town at four o'clock in the 
morning ; the place never before appeared to me 
half so beautiful. I looked up at my own win- 
dows, and as you may well suppose, felt as most 
people do when they think of what changes time 
brings about. 

"If you have seen or should see the Annual 
Review, you may like to know that I have borne 
a great part in it thus far, and I may refer you 
for the state of my opinions to the Reviewals of 
the Periodical Accounts of the Baptist Mission, 
vol. i., of Malthus's Essay on Population, Miles's 
History of the Methodists, and the Transactions 
of the Missionary Society, vol. ii. and iii., and of 
the Report of the Society for the Suppression of 
Vice, vol. iii. In other articles you may trace 
me from recollections of your own, by family 
likeness, by a knowledge of Spanish literature, 
and by a love of liberty and literature freely and 
warmly expressed. I was ministerial under Ad- 
dington, regarded his successor with the utmost 
indignation, and am exceedingly well pleased at 
the present changes. Time, you say, moderates 
opinions as it mellows wine. My views and 
hopes are certainly altered, though the heart and 
soul of my wishes continues the same. It is the 
world that has changed, not I. I took the same 
way in the afternoon that I did in the morning, 
but sunset and sunrise make a different scene. 
If I regret any thing in my own life, it is that I 
could not take orders, for of all ways of life that 
would have best accorded with my nature ; but 
[ could not get in at the door. 

" In other respects time has not much altered 
me. I am as thin as ever, and to the full as 
noisy : making a noise in any way whatever is 
an animal pleasure with me, and the louder it is 
the better. Do you remember the round hole at 
the top of the stair-case, opposite your door ?* 

" Coleridge is daily expected to return from 
Malta, where he has been now two years for his 
health. I inhabit, the same house with his wife 
and children — perhaps the very finest single spot 
in England. We overlook Keswick Lake, have 
the Lake of Bassenthwaite in the distance on the 
other side, and Skiddaw behind us. But we only 
sojourn here for a time. I may, perhaps, be 
destined to pass some years in Portugal — which, 
indeed, is my wish — or, if otherwise, must ulti- 
mately remove to the neighborhood of London, 
for the sake of the public libraries. 

" My dislike was not to schoolmasters, but to 
the rod, which I dare warrant you do not make 
much use of. Here is a long letter, and you 
have in it as many great I's as your heart can 
wish. It will give me much pleasure to hear 
again from you, and to know that your family is 
increased. If I can not be godfather now, let me 
put in a claim in time for the next occasion ; but 
I hope you will write to tell me that three things 
have been promised and vowed in my name by 
proxy. No man can more safely talk of defying 
the world, the flesh, and the devil. With the 
world my pursuits are little a kin ; the flesh and 

* See p. 219, 



I quarreled long ago, and I have been nothing 
but skin and bone ever since ; and as for the 
devil, I have made more ballads in his abuse than 
any body before me. 

" God bless you, Lightfoot ! 

" Yours very affectionately, 

"Robert Southey. ' 

To John Hickman, Esq. 

"Feb. 11, 1806. 
" My dear Rickman, 

* * It seems to me that the Grenvilles 

get into power just as they could wish, but that 
it is otherwise with Fox and Grey. They are 
pledged to parliamentary reform, and in this 
their other colleagues will not support them. It 
will be put off at first with sufficient plausibili- 
ty, under the plea of existing circumstances ; 
but my good old friend Major Cartwright (who 
is as noble an old Englishman as ever was made 
of extra best superfine flesh and blood) will find 
that existing cii'cumstances have no end ; there 
must come a time when it will appear, that if 
the question be not honestly brought forward, it 
has been given up as the price of their admis- 
sion to power ; and in that case, Fox had better 
for himself have died, instead of the other min- 
ister who had nothing to lose in the opinion of 
wise men; so that I am not sure that Fox's 
friends ought to rejoice at his success. 

" But quoad Robert Southey, things are differ- 
ent. I have a chance of getting an appointment 
at Lisbon (this, of course, is said to yourself only) ; 
either the Secretaryship of Legation or the Con- 
sulship — whichever falls vacant first — has been 
asked for me, and Lord Holland has promised to 
back the application. * * * I 

shall follow my own plans — relying upon nobody 
but myself, and shall go to Lisbon in the au- 
tumn : if Fortune finds me there, so much the 
better, but she shall never catch me on the wild 
goose chase after her. 

" I want Tom to be an admiral, that when he 
is fourscore he may be killed in a great victory 
and get a monument in St. Paul's ; for this rea- 
son, I have some sort of notion that one day or 
other I may have one there myself, and it would 
be rather awkward to get among so many sea 
captains, unless one had a friend among them to 
introduce one to the mess-room. It is ridiculous 
giving the captains the honors — a colonel in the 
army has the same claim ; better build a pyra- 
mid at once, and insert their names as they fall 
in this marble gazette. # # # # 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Amelia. 

" Keswick, February 15, 1806. 
"A world of events have taken place since 
last I wrote — indeed, so as almost to change the 
world here. Pitt is dead, Fox and the Gren- 
villes in place, Wynn Under Secretary of State 
in the Home Office. I have reason to expect 
something ; of the two appointments at Lisbon 
which would suit me, whichever falls vacant first 



jEtat. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



205 



is asked for me ; both are in Fox ; s gift, and 
Lord as well as Lady Holland speak for me. It 
is likely that one or other will be vacated ere 
long, and if I should not succeed, then Wynn will 
look elsewhere. Something or other will cer- 
tainly turn up ere it be very long. I hope, also, 
something may some way or other be done for 
you ; you shall lose nothing for want of applica- 
tion on my part. 

" St. Vincent supersedes Cornwallis in the 
Channel fleet : Sir Samuel was made admiral in 
the last list of promotions. As for peace or war, 
one knows not how to speculate. If I were to 
guess any thing, it would be, that by way of get- 
ting all parties out of the way with credit, Bona- 
parte may offer us Malta, which he can not take, 
as an indemnification for Hanover, which we 
must lose. I should be glad this compromise 
were made. You have news enough here to set 
you in a brown study for the rest of the day. I 
will only add an anecdote, which I believe is not 
in the papers, and which sailors will like to know. 
The flag of the Victory was to be buried with 
Nelson ; but the sailors, when it was lowering 
into the grave, tore it in pieces to keep as relics. 
His reward has been worthy of the country — a 
public funeral of course, and a monument, be- 
sides monuments of some kind or other in most 
of the great cities by private subscriptions. His 
widow made countess with 662000 a year, his 
brother an earl with an adequate pension, and 
^6200, 000 to be laid out in the purchase of an 
estate, never to be alienated from the family. 
Well done, England ! 

" As several of my last letters have been di- 
rected to St. Kitt's, I conclude that by this time 
one or other may have reached you. Yours is 
good news so far as relates to your health, and 
to the probability of going to Halifax — better 
summer-quarters than the Islands. If you should 
go there, such American books as you may fall 
in with will be curiosities in England. The New 
York publications I conclude travel so far north ; 
reviews and magazines, novels or poetry — any 
thing of real American growth I shall be glad 
to have. Keep a minute journal there, and let 
nothing escape you. * * * 

" Did I tell you that I have promised to sup- 
ply the lives of the Spanish and Portuguese au- 
thors in the remaining volumes of Dr. Aikin's 
great General Biography ? This will not inter- 
fere with my own plans ; where it does, it is lit- 
tle more than printing the skeleton of what is 
hereafter to be enlarged. I can tell you nothing 
of the sale of Madoc, except that Longman has 
told me nothing, which is proof enough of slow 
sale ; but if the edition goes off in two years, or 
indeed in three, it will be well for so costly a 
book. There is a reaction in these things ; my 
poems make me known first, and then I make 
the poems known : as I rise in the world, the 
books will sell. I have occasional thoughts of 
going on with Kehama now, when my leisure 
time approaches, to keep my hand in, and to 
leave it for publication next winter. Not a line 
has been added to it since vou loft me. 



" No news yet of Coleridge. We are seri- 
ously uneasy about him. It is above two months 
since he ought to have been home. Our hope 
is, that, finding the Continent overrun by the 
French, he may have returned to Malta. Edith's 
love. 

" God bless you, Tom ! R. S." 

To Richard Duppa, Esq. 

"Feb. 23,1806. 
" Dear Duppa. 

" Nicholson, I see, sets up a new review. 
Carlisle ought to get you well taken care of 
there. Need you be told the history of all re- 
views? If a book falls into the hands of one 
who is neither friend nor enemy — which for a 
man known in the world is not very likely — the 
reviewer will find fault to show his own superi- 
ority, though he be as ignorant of the subject 
upon which he writes as an ass is of metaphys- 
ics, or John Pinkerton of Welsh antiquities and 
Spanish literature. As your book, therefore, has 
little chance of fair play, get it into the hands 
of your friends. Have you any access to the 
Monthly ? 

" For politics. As far as the public is con- 
cerned, God be praised ! How far I may be con- 
cerned, remains to be seen. My habits are now 
so rooted, that every thing not connected with 
my own immediate pursuit seems of secondary 
consequence, and as far as relates to myself, 
hardly worth a hope or fear. So far as any thing 
can be given me which will facilitate that pur- 
suit, I greatly desire it, and have good reason to 
expect the best. But nothing that can happen 
will in any way affect my plan of operations for 
the present year. I go to London in a month's 
time ; I go to Lisbon in the autumn, and in the 
interim must work like a negro. By-the-by, can 
not you give me a letter to Bartolozzi ? He will 
like to see an Englishman who can talk to him 
of the persons with whom he was acquainted in 
England. 

" I am reading an Italian History of Heresies 
in four folios, by a certain Domenico Bernino, 
If there be one thing in the world which delights 
me more than another, it is ecclesiastical histo- 
ry. This book of Bernino's is a very useful one 
for a man who knows something of the subject, 
and is aware how much is to believed, and how 
much is not. 

" My reviewing is this day finished forever and 
ever, amen. Our Fathers who are in the Row 
will, I dare say, wish me to continue at the em- 
ployment, but I am weary of it. Seven years 
have I been, like Sir Bevis, preying upon ' rats 
and mice, and such small deer,' and for the fu- 
ture will fly at better game. It is best to choose 
my own subjects. 

" You mentioned once to me certain prophet- 
ical drawings by a boy. Did you see them, or 
can you give me any particulars concerning 
them? for I find them connected with Joanna 
Southcote, of whose prophecies I have about a 
dozen pamphlets, and about whom Don Manuel 
is going to write a letter. I like our friend Hunt- 



206 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 3*. 



ingdon's Bank of Faith so well on a cooler pe- 
rusal, that I shall look for two other of his works 
at the shop of his great friend, Baker, in Oxford 
Street. That man is a feature in the age, and 
a great man in his way. People who are curi- 
ous to see extraordinary men, and go looking 
after philosophers and authors only, are some- 
thing like the good people in genteel life, who 
pay nobody knows what for a cod's head, and 
don't know the luxury of eating sprats. Oh ! 
Wordsworth sent me a man the other day who 
was worth seeing ; he looked like a first assas- 
sin in Macbeth as to his costume, but he was a 
rare man. He had been a lieutenant in. the 
navy, was scholar enough to quote Virgil aptly, 
had turned Quaker or semi-Quaker, and was 
now a dealer in wood somewhere about twenty 
miles off. He had seen much and thought much, 
his head was well stored, and his heart in the 
right place. 

"It is five or six-and-twenty years since he 
was at Lisbon, and he gave me as vivid a de- 
scription of the Belem Convent as if the impres- 
sion in his memory was not half a day old. Ed- 
ridge's acquaintance, Thomas Wilkinson, came 
with him. They had both been visiting an old 
man of a hundred in the Vale of Lorton, and it 
was a fine thing to hear this Robert Foster de- 
scribe him. God bless you ! 

> "R.S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Feb. 28, 1806. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" The intelligence* in your letter has given 
me more pleasure than I have often felt. In 
spite of modern philosophy, I do not believe that 
the first commandment is an obsolete statute yet, 
and I am very sure that man is a better being, 
as well as a happier one, for being a husband and 
a father. May God bless you in both relations 
of life ! 

" I shall be in London about the time when 
you are leaving it. * * It is long since 
we have met, and I shall be sorry to lose one of 
those opportunities of which life does not allow 
very many. It will be nearly two years since 
you were here, and if our after meetings are to 
be at such long intervals, there are not many to 
look on to. Many things make me feel old — 
ten years of marriage ; the sort of fatherly situ- 
ation in which I have stood to my brother Hen- 
ry, now a man himself; the premature age at 
which I commenced author ; the death of all who 
were about me in childhood; a body not made 
of lasting materials, and some wear and tear of 
mind. You once remarked to me how time 
strengthened family affections, and, indeed, all 
early ones : one's feelings seem to be weary of 
traveling, and like to rest at home. I had a 
proof the other night in my sleep how the mere 
lapse of time changes our disposition ; I thought, 
of all men in the world, 1 called upon me, 



* Of the birth of a child. 

t A Westminster school-fellow, from whom he had re- 
ceived much brutal treatment. 



and that we were heartily glad to see each other. 
They who tell me that men grow hard-hearted 
as they grow older, have had a very limited view i 
of this world of ours. It is true with those whose 
views and hopes are merely and vulgarly world- 
ly; but when human nature is not perverted, 
time strengthens our kindly feelings, and abates 
our angry ones. 



" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 



R. S. 5 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 6, 1806. 

" I am writing, Grosvenor, as you know, the 
History of Portugal — a country of which I prob- 
ably know more than any foreigner, and as much 
as any native. Now has it come athwart me, 
this afternoon, how much more accurate, and 
perhaps, a thousand years hence, more valuable, 
a book it would be, were I to write the History 
of Wine Street below the Pump, the street where- 
in I was born, recording the revolutions of every 
house during twenty years. It almost startles 
me to see how the events of private life, within 
my own knowledge, et quorum pars maxima, etc., 
equal or outdo novel and comedy ; and the con- 
clusion to each tale — the mors omnibus est com- 
munis — makes me more serious than the sight 
of my own gray hairs in the glass ; for the hoar 
frosts, Grosvenor, are begun with me. Oh, there 
would be matter for moralizing in such a history 
beyond all that history offers. The very title is 
a romance. You, in London, need to be told 
that Wine Street is a street in Bristol, and that 
there is a pump in it, and that by the title I 
would mean to express that the historian does 
not extend his subject to that larger division of 
the street which lies above the pump. You, I 
say, need all these explanations, and yet, when 
I first went to school, I never thought of Wine 
Street and of that pump without tears, and such 
a sorrow at heart as, by Heaven! no child of 
mine shall ever suffer while I am living to pre- 
vent it ; and so deeply are the feelings connected 
with that place rooted in me. that perhaps, in the 
hour of death, they will be the last that survive. 
Now this history it is most certain that I, the 
Portuguese historiographer, &c, &c, &c, shall 
never have leisure, worldly motive, nor perhaps 
heart to write ; and yet, now being in tune, I 
will give you some of the recollections whereof 
it would be composed, catching them as they 
float by me ; and as I am writing, forms enough 
thicken upon me to people a solitary cell* in 
Bedlam, were I to live out the remainder of a 
seventy years' lease. 

" Let me begin with the church at the corner. . 
I remember the old church : a row of little shops 
were built before it, above which its windows re- 



* Baron Trenck, in his account of his long and wretched 
imprisonment, says, " I had lived long and much in the 
world ; vacuity of thought, therefore, I was little troubled 
with." May not this give some clew to the cause why 
solitary confinement makes some insane and does not af- 
fect others ? I have read somewhere of a man who said, 
if his cell had been round he must have gone mad, but 
there was a corner for the eye to rest upon. — Ed. 



MtAT. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



207 



eeived light ; and on the leads which roofed them, 
crowds used to stand at the chairing of members, 
as they did to my remembrance when peace was 
proclaimed after the American war. I was 
christened in that old church, and at this mo- 
ment vividly remember our pew under the or- 
gan, of which I certainly have not thought 

these fifteen years before. was then the 

rector, a humdrum somnificator, who, God rest 
his soul for it! made my poor mother stay at 
home Sunday evenings, because she could not 
keep awake after dinner to hear him. A world- 
ly-minded man succeeded, and effected, by dint 
of begging and impudence, a union between the 
two parishes of Christ Church and St. Ewins,* 
for no other conceivable reason than that he 
might be rector of both. However, he was a 
great man ; and it was the custom once a year 
to catechize the children, and give them, if they 
answered well, a good plum-cake apiece in the 
last day of the examination, called a cracknell, 
and honestly worth a groat ; and I can remem- 
ber eating my cracknell, and being very proud 
of the praise of the curate (who was a really 
good man), when he found that I knew the ety- 
mology of Decalogue ; for be it known to your 
worship that I did not leave off loving plum-cake 
when I began my Greek, nor have I left it off 
now when I have almost forgotten it. But I 
must turn back to the pew, and tell you how, in 
my very young days, a certain uncle Thomas, who 
would make a conspicuous figure in the history 
of Wine Street below the pump, once sentenced 
me to be deprived of my share of pie on Sunday 
for some misdemeanor there committed — I for- 
get what — whether talking to my brother Tom, 
or reading the Revelations there during the ser- 
mon, for that was my favorite part of the Chris- 
tian religion, and I always amused myself with 
the scraps from it after the collects whenever 
the prayer-book was in my hand. 

" There were quarter-boys to this old church 
clock, as at St. Dunstan, and I have many a time 
stopped with my satchel on my back to see them 
strike. My father had a great love for these 
poor quarter-boys, who had regulated all his 
movements for about twenty years ; and when 
the church was rebuilt, offered to subscribe 
largely to their re-establishment ; but the Wine 
Strceters. had no taste for the arts, and no feel- 
ing for old friends, and God knows what became 
of the poor fellows ; but I know that when I saw 
them represented in a pantomine, which was 
called Bristol, and got up to please the citizens, 
I can not say whether I felt more joy at seeing 
them, or sorrow in thinking they were only rep- 
resented — only stage quarter-boys, and not the 
real ones. 

''The church was demolished, and sad things 
were said of the indecencies that occurred in re- 
moving the coffins for the new foundation to be 
laid. We had no interest in this, for our vault 



* These are still held by one person ; but as the popu- 
lation of the latter is stated at fifty-live only in the Clergy 
List, and the income of the two under £400, it would seein 
to be an unobjectionable union. — Ed. 



was at Ashton. I sent you once, years ago, a 
drawing of this church. It is my only freehold 
— all the land I possess in the world — and is 
now full — no matter ! I never had any feeling 
about a family grave till my mother was buried 
in London, and that gave me more pain than was 
either reasonable or right. My little girl lies 
with my dear good friend Mrs. Danvers. I, my- 
self, shall lie where I fall ; and it will be all one 
in the next world. Once more to Christ Church 
I was present in the heart of a crowd when the 
foundation stone was laid, and read the plates 
wherein posterity will find engraved the name 
of Robert Southey — for my father was church- 
warden — by the same token that that year he 
gave me a penny to go to the fair instead of a shil- 
ling as usual, being out of humor or out of mon- 
ey ; and I, referring to a common phrase, called 
him a generous church- warden. There was mon- 
ey under the plate. I put some half-pence which 
I had picked out for their good impressions ; and 
Winter, the bookseller, a good medal of the pres- 
enting. ###### 
* * * * Shame on me for not 

writing on foolscap ! Vale ! 

"Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"March 15, 1806. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" My last week has been somewhat desultori- 
ly employed in going through Beausobre's His- 
tory of Manicheism, and in sketching the life of 
D. Luisa de Carvajal, an extraordinary woman 
of high rank, who came over to London in 
James the First's time, to make proselytes to 
the Catholic religion, under the protection of 
the Spanish embassador. It is a very curious 
story, and ought to be related in the history of 
that wretched king, who beheaded Raleigh to 
please the Spaniards. 

"Beausobre's book is one of the most valua- 
ble that I have ever seen ; it is a complete The- 
saurus of early opinions, philosophical and theo- 
logical. It is not the least remarkable circum- 
stance of the Catholic religion that it has silently 
imbibed the most absurd parts of most of the 
heresies which it opposed and persecuted. I do 
not conceive Manes to have been a fanatic : 
there is too much philosophy in the whole of 
his system, even in the mythology, for that. 
His object seems to have been to unite the su- 
perstitions of the East and West ; unluckily, 
both priests and magi united against the grand 
scheme — the Persians flayed him alive, and the 
Catholics roasted his disciples whenever they 
could catch them. Beausobre, as I expected, 
has perceived the similarity between Buddas 
and the Indian impostor; but he supposes that 
he came from the East. I am inclined to think 
otherwise, because I have found elsewhere that 
the Adam whose footstep is shown in Ceylon 
was a ManichaGan traveling disciple, though 
both Moors and Portugese very naturally attrib- 
uted this story to their old acquaintance. A 
proof this that the immediate disciples of Manes 



203 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 32. 



were successful; besides, the Asiatic fables are 
full of resemblances to Christianity. * * 

" If there be any one thing in which the world 
has decidedby degenerated, it is in the breed of 
Heresiarchs : they were really great men in for- 
mer times, devoting great knowledge and pow- 
erful talents to great purposes. In our days 
they are either arrant madmen or half rogues. 
* * * I am about to be the St. 
Epiphanius of Richard Brothers and Joanna 
Southcote; what say you to paying these wor- 
thies a visit some morning ? the former is sure 
to be at home, and we might get his opinion of 
Joanna. I know some of his witnesses, and 
could enter into the depths of his system with 
him. As for Joanna, though tolerably well 
versed in the history of human credulity, I have 
never seen any thing so disgraceful to common 
sense as her precious publications. * * 

"Metaphysicians have become less mischiev- 
ous, but a good deal more troublesome. There 
was some excuse for them when they believed 
their opinions necessary to salvation ; and it was 
certainly better for plain people like you and I 
that they should write by the folio than talk by 
the hour. * * * * 



" God bless 



# 

R. S." 



To Mrs. Southey. 

" Norwich, April 12, 1806. 
"My dear Edith, 

" My adventures here are such as you might 
guess — a mere repetition of visits and dinners. 

* * * Yesterday a sumptuous din- 
ner with Joseph Gurney. The two impossibili- 
ties for a stranger at Norwich are, to find his 
tvay about the city, and to know the names of 
the Gurneys. They talked about Clarkson, and 
seemed to fear his book would not sell as he ex- 
pected it to do, not more than twenty subscribers 
having been procured among the Quakers there. 

* * * To-morrow I sup at New- 
market on my way to London, and sleep in the 
coach; and there you have my whole history 
thus far. 

"King Arthur has, I see, been playing his 
usual editorial tricks with me, and has lopped 
off a defense of Bruce against Pinkerton because 
he did not like to have Mr. Pinkerton contradict- 
ed ; and some remarks upon the infamous blun- 
ders of the printer, because he did not choose to 
insert any thing that was not agreeable to the 
bookseller. And yet Miss Lucy Aikin says her 
brother is by nature of an intrepid character, 
and alleges as a proof of his intrepidity that he 
puts his name to the Annual Review ! 

"I have got a clew to the state of the Catholics 
here, of which some use may be made by D. 

Manuel. is the head of the sect here, 

and loves to talk about them, and from him I have 
borrowed a sort of Catholic almanac, which ex- 
plains their present state. I shall purchase one 
in London, and turn it to good account. He tells 
me the Jesuits exist in England as a separate 
fcody, and have even a chapel in Norwich ; but 



how they exist, and whence their funds are de- 
rived, is a secret to himself. This is a highly 
curious fact, and to me, particularly, a very in- 
teresting one : I shall make further inquiry. St. 
Winifred has lately worked a miracle at her Well, 
and healed a paralytic woman. These Catholics 
want only a little more success to be just as impu- 
dent as they were three centuries ago. * * 
" God bless you, my dear Edith ! R S." 

From Norwich my father went on to London, 
where, however, he remained only a very short 
time, and then returned home through Hereford- 
shire, where he had some affairs to look after con- 
cerning his uncle, Mr. Hills, living in that county. 

A letter to Mr. Bedford on his return com- 
mences with one of those quaint fancies with 
w T hich he delighted to amuse himself. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, May 27, 1806. 

"A discovery of the original language pro- 
pounded to the consideration of the worshipful 
Master Bedford. 

"There was in old times a King of Egypt, 
who did make a full politic experiment touching 
this question, as is discoursed of by sundry an- 
tique authors. Howbejt to me it seemeth that 
it falleth short of that clear and manifest truth 
which should be the butt of our inquiry. Now, 
methinks, if it could be shown what is the very 
language which Dame Nature, the common 
mother of all, hath implanted in animals whom 
we, foolishly misjudging, do term dumb, that 
were, indeed, a hit palpable and of notable im- 
port. To this effect I have noted what that silly 
bird, called of the Latins Anser, doth utter in 
time of affright ; for it then thinketh of the wa- 
ter, inasmuch as in the water it hndeth its safe- 
ty ; and while its thoughts be upon the water so 
greatly desired of, it crieth qua — a-qua — a-qua ; 
wherefore it is to be inferred that aqua is the 
very natural word for water, and the Latin, there- 
fore, the primitive, natural, and original tongue. 

" Etymology is of more value when applied to 
the elements of language, and it must be ac 
knowledged that I have here hit upon an ele 
mentary word. One of those critics, I forget 
which, who thought proper to review Thalaba 
without taking the trouble to understand the 
story, noticed, as one of the absurdities of the 
book, that Thalaba was enabled to read some 
unintelligible letters on a ring by others equally 
unintelligible upon the head of a locust — an ab- 
surdity existing only in their own stupid and care- 
less misconception, for the thing is clear enough. 
I remember giving myself credit for putting a 
very girlish sort of thing into Oneiza's mouth 
when I made her call those locust's lines ' Na- 
ture's own language ;' for I have heard unthink- 
ing people talk of a natural language ; and you 
know the story of the woman with child by \ 
Dutchman, who was afraid to swear the child to 
an Englishman, because the truth would be found 
out when the child came to speak Dutch. 

" I beseech vou to come to me this season : we 



TEtat. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



209 



shall see more of each other in one week when 
once housed together, than during a seven years' 
intercourse in London. And if you do not come 
this year, the opportunity may be gone forever, 
and you will never see this country so well nor 
so cheerfully after I have left it. If he were 
here, would be the thought to damp enjoyment, 
you would come as a mere laker, and pay a 
guide for telling you what to admire. When I 
go abroad it will be to remain there for a con- 
siderable time, and you and I are now old enough 
to feel the proportion which a few years bear to 
the not very many that constitute the utmost 
length of life. 

" This feeling is the stronger upon me just 
now, as, in arranging my letters, I have seen 
those of three men now all in their graves, each 
of whom produced no little effect upon my char- 
acter and after life — Allen, Lovell, and poor 
Edmund Seward — whom I never remember 
without the deepest love and veneration. Come 
you to Keswick, Bedford, and make sure of a 
few weeks' enjoyment while we are both alive. 

" I wish you would get the Annual Reviews, 
because without them my operas are very in- 
complete : my share there is very considerable, 
and you would see in many of the articles more 
of the tone and temper of my mind than you can 
otherwise get at. * . * * * * 

You must be my biographer if I go first. * * 
Documents you shall have in plenty, if, indeed, 
you need more than our correspondence already 
supplies. This is a subject on which we will 
talk some evening when the sun is going down, 
and has tuned us to it. If the harp of Memnon 
had played in the evening instead of at the sun- 
rise, it would have been a sweet emblem of that 
state of mind to which I now refer, and which, 
indeed, I am at this minute enjoying. But it is 
supper-time. 

" God bless you, Grosvenor !" 

To Grosvenor C Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, June 17, 1806. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" There are two poets who must come into our 
series, and I do not remember their names in 
your list : Sir John Moore, of whom the only 
poem which I have ever seen should be given. 
It is addressed to a lady, he himself being in a 
consumption. If you do not remember it, Wynn 
will, and I think can help you to it, for it is very 
beautiful. The other poor rhymer is poor old 
Botch Hayes, whom we are in duty bound not to 
forget, and of whom you may say what you will, 
only let it be in the best good humor ; because 
poor Botch's heart was always in the right place, 
which certainly his wig was not. And you may 
say, that though his talent at producing common- 
place English verses was not very convenient for 
jkis competitors at Cambridge for the Seatonian 
^rize, that his talent of producing common-place 
Latin ones was exceedingly so for his pupils at 
' Westminster. I don't say that I would wish to 
plant a laurel upon old Hayes's grave; but I 
could find in my heart to plant a vine there (if 
O 



it would grow), as a more appropriate tree, and 
to pour a brimming libation of its juice, if we 
had any reason to think that the spirit of the 
grape could reach the spirit of the man. Poor 
fellow ! that phrase of ' being no one's enemy 
but his own' is not admitted as a set-off on earth, 
but in the other world, Grosvenor ! 

" Our last month has been so unusually fine 
that the farmers want rain. July will probably 
give them enough. September and October are 
the safest months to come down in; though, if 
you consider gooseberry-pie as partaking of the 
nature of the summum bonum (to speak modestly 
of it), about a fortnight hence will be the happi- 
est time you can choose. If Tom and Harry 
should be with me in time for the feat, I have 
thoughts of challenging all England at a match 
at gooseberry-pie : barring Jack the Giganti- 
cide's leathern bag, we are sure of the victory. 
Thank God ! Tom has escaped the yellow fever ; 
and if ever he lives to be an admiral, Grosvenor 
— as by God's blessing he may — he shall give 
you and me a good dinner on board the flag- 
ship. We shall be so much the older by that 
time, that I fear good fortune would make neither 
of us much the happier. 

" I have been inserting occasional rhymes in 
Kehama, and have in this way altered and 
amended about six hundred lines. When what 
is already written shall be got through in this 
manner, I shall think the poem in a way of 
completion : indeed, it will most likely supply 
my ways and means for the next winter, instead 
of reviewing. Elmsley advised me to go on 
with it ; and the truth is, that my own likings 
and dislikings to it have been so equally divided, 
that I stood in need of somebody's encourage- 
ment to settle the balance. It gains by rhyme, 
which is to passages of no inherent merit what 
rouge and candle-light are to ordinary faces. 
Merely ornamental parts, also, are aided by it, 
as foil sets off paste. But where there is either 
passion or power, the plainer and more straight- 
forward the language can be made, the better. 
Now you will suppose that upon this system I 
am writing Kehama. My proceedings are not 
quite so systematical ; but what with revising 
and re-revising over and over again, they will 
amount to something like it at last. 

" God bless you. R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

July 5, 1806. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
"I thought it so likely you would hear from 
Wynn the particulars concerning John Southey's 
will,* that I felt no inclination to repeat the 
story to you, which would not have been the 
case had the old man done as he ought to have 
done. Good part of his property, consisting of 
a newly-purchased estate, is given to a very dis- 
tant relative of his mother's family, and, of course, 
gone forever. About <£2000 in legacies : the 
rest falls to his brother, as sole executor and re- 



* An uncle of my father's, a wealthy solicitor of Taun- 
ton. See p. 18. 



210 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 32. 



siduary legatee. Neither my own name nor 
either of my brothers' is mentioned. Thomas 
Southey apprised me of this the day of the old 
man's death. With him I am on good terms — 
that is, if we were in the same town, we should 
dine together, for the sake of relationship, about 
once a month ; and if any thing were to happen 
to me, of any kind of family importance — such 
as the birth of a child — I should write a letter 
to him, beginning 'Dear Uncle.' He invites me 
to the ' Cottage,' and I shall go there on my way 
to Lisbon. I think it likely that he will leave 
his property rather to Tom than to me, for the 
name's sake, but not likely that he will leave it 
out of the family. He is about three or four- 
and-fifty, a man of no education, nor, indeed, of 
any thing else. And so you have all that I can 
tell you about the matter, excepting that there's 
an end of it. Some people, they say, are born 
with silver spoons in their mouths, and others 
with wooden ladles. I will hope something for 
my daughter, upon the strength of this proverb, 
inasmuch as she has three silver cups ; but, for 
myself, I am of the fraternity of the wooden 
ladle. 

" # * * Last night I began the 
Preface^ — huzza ! And now, Grosvenor, let me 
tell you what I have to do. I am writing, 1. 
The History of Portugal ; 2. The Chronicle of 
the Cid; 3. The Curse of Kehama; 4. Espriel- 
la's Letters. Look you, all these I am writing. 
The second and third of these must get into the 
press, and out of it before this time twelve 
months, or else I shall be like the Civil List. 
By way of interlude comes in this Preface. Don't 
swear, and bid me do one thing at a time. I 
tell you I can't afford to do one thing at a time 
— no, nor two neither ; and it is only by doing 
many things that I contrive to do so much ; for 
I can not work long together at any thing with- 
out hurting myself, and so I do every thing by 
heats ; then, by the time I am tired of one, my 
inclination for another is come round. 

" Dr. Southey is arrived here. He puts his 
degree in his pocket, summers here, and will 
winter in London, to attend at an hospital. 
About this, of course, I shall apply to Carlisle ; 
and, if it should so happen that you do not see 
hi in here, shall give him a direction to you when 
he goes to London. R. S." 

The following lines, written immediately after 
hearing of the event mentioned in the commence- 
ment of this letter, and preserved accidentally 
by a friend to whom he had sent them, may be 
appropriately inserted here. 

" So thou art gone at last, old John, 
And hast left all from me : 
God give thee rest among the bless'd — 
I lay no blame to thee. 

" Nor marvel I, for though one blood 
Through both our veins was flowing, 
Full well I know, old man, no love 
From thee to me was owing. 

" Thou had st no anxious hopes for me, 
In the winning years of infancy, 

* To the " Specimens of English Poets." 



No joy in my up-growing ; 
And when from the world's beaten way 
I turned mid rugged paths astray, 

No fears where I was going. 

" It touched thee not if envy's voice 
Was busy with my name ; 
Nor did it make thy heart rejoice 
To hear of my fair fame. 

" Old man, thou liest upon thy bier, 
And none for thee will shed a tear ! 
. They'll give thee a stately funeral, 
With coach and hearse, and plume and pall ; 
But they who follow will grieve no more 
Than the mutes who pace with their staves before. 
With a light heart and a cheerful face 

Will they put mourning on, 
And bespeak thee a marble monument, 

And think nothing more of Old John. 

" An enviable death is his, 

Who, leaving none to deplore him, 
Hath yet a joy in his passing hour, 

Because all he loved have died before him. 
The monk, too, hath a joyful end, 
And well may welcome death like a friend, 
When the crucifix close to his heart is press'd, 
And he piously crosses his arms on his breast, 
And the brethren stand round him and sing him to resti 
And tell him, as sure he believes, that anon, 
Receiving his crown, be shall sit on his throne, 

And sing in the choir of the bless'd. 

" But a hopeless sorrow it strikes to the heart, 
To think how men like thee depart. 
Unloving and joyless was thy life, 

Unlamented was thine end ; 
And neither in this world nor the next 

Hadst thou a single friend : 
None to weep for thee on earth — 

None to greet thee in heaven's hall ; 
Father and mother, sister and brother — 

Thy heart had been shut to them all. 

u Alas, old man, that this should be ! 
One brother had raised up seed to thee ; 
And hadst thou, in their hour of need, 
Cherished that dead brother's seed, 
Thrown wide thy doors, and called them in, 
How happy thine old age had been » 
Thou wert a barren tree, around whose trunk, 
Needing support, our tendrils should have clung ; 

Then had thy sapless boughs 
With buds of hope and genial fruit been hung ; 

Yea, with undying flowers, 
And wreaths forever young." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M. S. Amelia. 

"Monday, July 28, 180tr. 
" My dear Tom, 
"For many days I have looked for a letter 
from you, the three lines announcing your arrival 
in England being all which have yet reached me. 
Yesterday the Dr. and I returned home after a 
five days' absence, and I was disappointed at 
finding no tidings of you. We were two days 
at Lloyd's ; and have had three days' mountain- 
eerning— one on the way there, two on our re- 
turn — through the wildest parts of this wild 
country, many times wishing you had been with 
us. One day we lost our way upon the mount- 
ains, got upon a summit where there were prec- 
ipices before us, and found a way down through 
a fissure, like three sides of a chimney, where 
we could reach from side to side, and help our- 
selves with our hands. This chimney-way was 
considerably higher than any house, and then 
we had an hour's descent afterward over loosed 
stones. Yesterday we mounted Great Gabel — 
one of the highest mountains in the country — 
and had a magnificent view of the Isle of Man, 
rising out of a sea of light, for the water lay like 
a sheet of silver. This was a digression from 



jEtat. 32. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



211 



our straight road, and exceedingly fatiguing it 
was ; however, after we got down we drank five 
quarts of milk between us, and got home as fresh 
as larks after a walk of eleven hours. You will 
find it harder service than walking the deck 
when you come here. 

" Our landlord, who lives in the house adjoin- 
ing us, has a boat, which is as much at our serv- 
ice as if it were our own ; of this we have voted 
you commander-in-chief whenever you shall ar- 
rive. The lake is about four miles in length, 
and something between one and two in breadth. 
However tired you may be of the salt water, I 
do not think you will have the same objection to 
fresh when you see this beautiful basin, clear as 
crystal, and shut in by mountains on every side 
except one opening to the northwest. We are 
very frequently upon it, 'Harry and I being both 
tolerably good boatmen ; and sometimes we sit in 
state and the women row us — a way of manning 
a boat which will amuse you. The only family 
with which we are on familiar terms, live, dur- 
ing the summer and autumn, on a little island 
here — one of the loveliest spots in this wide 
world. They have one long room, looking on 
the lake from three windows, affording the most 
beautiful views ; and in that room you may have 
as much music, dancing, shuttle-cocking, &c, 
as your heart can desire. They generally em- 
bargo us on our water expeditions. I know not 
whether you like dining under a tree, as well as 
with the conveniences of chairs and table, and a 
roof over your head — which I confess please me 
better than a seat upon any moss, however cush- 
iony, and in any shade, however romantic ; if, 
however, you do, here are some delightful bays 
at the head of the lake, in any of which we may 
land ; and if you love fishing, you may catch 
perch enough on the way for the boat's company, 
and perhaps a jack or two into the bargain. 

" One main advantage which this country pos- 
sesses over Wales is, that there are no long 
tracks of desolation to cross between one beau- 
tiful spot and another. We are sixteen miles 
only from Winandermere, and three other lakes 
are on the way to it. Sixteen only from Wast- 
water, as many from Ulswater, nine from But- 
termere and Crummock. Lloyd expects you 
will give him a few days — a few they must be ; 
for though I shall be with you, we will not spare 
vou long from home ; but his house stands de- 
lightfully, and puts a large part of the finest 
scenery within our reach. You will find him 
very friendly, and will like his wife much — she 
s a great favorite with me. The Bishop of 
LlandafF lives near them, to whom I have lately 
oeen introduced. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Joseph Cottle, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 11, 1806. 
" My dear Cottle, 
" Madoc has not made my fortune. By the 
state of my account in May last — that is, twelve 
months after its publication — there was a bal- 
ance due to me (on the plan of dividing the prof- 
its) of c£3 19s. Id. About 180 then remained 



to be sold, each of which will give me 5s. • but 
the sale will be rather slower than distillation 
through a filtering stone. We mean to print a 
small edition in two vols, without delay, and 
without alterations, that the quarto may not lose 
its value. 

" Of the many reviewings of this poem I have 
only seen the Edinburgh, Monthly, and Annual. 
I sent a copy to Mr. Fox, and Lady Holland told 
me it was the rule at St. Ann's Hill to read aloud 
till eleven, and then retire ; but that when they 
were reading Madoc they often read till the 
clock struck twelve. In short, I have had as 
much praise as heart could desire, but not quite 
so much of the more solid kind of remuneration. 
#####=£ J ar n pre- 
paring for the press the Chronicle of the Cid — 
a very curious monument of old Spanish man- 
ners and history, which will make two little vol- 
umes, to the great delight of about as many read- 
ers as will suffice to take off an edition of 750. 

" You suggest to me three epic subjects, all 
of them striking, but each liable to the same ob- 
jection, that no entire and worthy interest can 
be attached to the conquering party in either. 
1st. William of Normandy is less a hero than 
Harold. The true light in which that part of 
our history should be regarded was shown me 
by William Taylor. The country was not thor- 
oughly converted. Harold favored the pagans, 
and the Normans were helped by the priests. 
2dly. Alaric is the chief personage of a French 
poem by Scudery, which is notoriously worth- 
less. The capture of Rome is in itself an event 
so striking that it almost palsies one's feelings ; 
yet nothing resulted which could give a worthy 
purport to the poem. In this point Theodoric is 
a better hero ; the indispensable requisite, how- 
ever, in a subject for me is, that the end — the 
ultimate end — must be worthy of the means. 
3dly. The expulsion of the Moriscoes. This is 
a dreadful history, which I will never torture 
myself by reading a second time. Besides, I am 
convinced, in opposition to the common opinion, 
that the Spaniards did wisely in the act of ex- 
pelling them, though most wickedly in the way 
of expelling them. One word more about lit- 
erature, and then to other matters. How goes 
on the Fall of Cambria, and what are you about ? 

"My little girl is now two years and a quar- 
ter old — a delightful play-fellow, of whom I am 
somewhat more fond than is fitting. * * 

* * Edith is in excellent health ; I myself 
the same barebones as ever, first cousin to an 
anatomy, but with my usual good health and 
steady good spirits ; neither in habits nor in any 
thing else different from what I was, except that 
if my upper story is not better furnished, a great 
deal of good furniture is thrown away. 

In spite of the slow sale of Madoc, I can not but 
think that it may answer as well for the year's 
ways and means to finish the ' Curse of Kehama,' 
and sell the first edition, as to spend the time in 
criticising other people's books. * # # 

" God bless you ! R. Southey " 



212 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ^tat. 33. 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Oct. 13, 1806. 
" My dear Hickman, 

" You will be glad to hear that my child proves 
to be of the more worthy gender. 

"I would do a great deal to please poor To- 
bin (indeed, it is doing a good deal to let him in- 
flict an argument upon me), but to write an epi- 
logue is doing too much for any body. Indeed, 
were I ever so well disposed to misemploy time, 
paper, and rhymes, it would be as much out of 
my reach as the moon is ; and I bless my stars 
for the incapacity, believing that a man who can 
do such things well can not do any thing better. 

' ; I am also thoroughly busy. Summer is my 
holiday season, in which I lay in a store of ex- 
ercise to serve me for the winter, and leave my- 
self, as it were, lying fallow to the influences of 
heaven. I am now very hard at Palmerin — so 
troublesome a business, that a look before the 
leap would have prevented the leap altogether. 
I expected it would only be needful to alter the 
Propria qua maribus to their original orthogra- 
phy, and restore the costume where the old 
translators had omitted it, as being to them for- 
eign or obsolete ; but they have so mangled, mu- 
tilated, and massacred the manners — vulgarized, 
impoverished, and embeggared the language — 
so lopped, cropped, and docked the ornaments, 
that I was fain to set my shoulder stiffly to the 
wheel, and retranslate about the one half. As 
this will not produce me one penny more than 
if I had reprinted it with all its imperfections on 
its head, the good conscience with which it is 
done reconciles me to the loss of time 5 and I 
have, moreover, such a true love of romance that 
the labor is not irksome, though it is hard. To 
correct a sheet — sixteen pages of the square- 
sized black letter — is a day's work; that is, 
from breakfast till dinner, allowing an hour's 
walk, and from tea till supper ; and the whole is 
about sixty sheets. 

" Secondly, Espriella is regulated by the print- 
er, who seems as little disposed to hurry me as 
I am to hurry him. # # # 

u Thirdly, the reviewing is come round, of 
which, in the shape of Missionaries, Catholic 
Miracles, Bible and Religious Societies, Clark- 
son, and little Moore (not forgetting Captain 
Burney), I have more to do than I at first de- 
sired, yet not more than will make a reasonable 
item on the right side of the King of Persia's* 
books. 

"Fourthly, I have done half the Cid, and, 
whenever I seem sufficiently ahead of other em- 
ployment to lie-to for a while, this is what I go to. 

" Lastly, for the Athenaeum — alias Foolaeum, 
for I abominate such titles — I am making some 
preparations, meaning, among other things, to 
print there certain collections of unemployed 
notes and memoranda, under the title of Omnia- 
na. * * * By God's blessing I 
shall have done all this by the end of the winter, 
and come to town early in the spring, to inspect 



* Artaserxes, surnamed Longimanua— Longman. 



certain books for the Cid at the Museum and 
Holland House. God bless you! R. S." 



To John Rickman, Esq. 



" My dear Rickman, 
# # # # 



"Dec. 23, 1806. 
# * * 



I am left alone to my winter occupations, and 
truly they are quite sufficient to employ me. 
Two months, however, if no unlucky interruption 
prevent, will be sufficient to clear all off, and send 
Espriella and Palmerin into the world. I have 
an additional and weighty motive for dispatch. 
The times being South American mad, my ac- 
count of Brazil, instead of being the last work in 
the series, must be the first. There are in the 
book-case down stairs at your house sixteen bun- 
dles of sealed papers. Those papers contain 
more information respecting South America than 
his majesty's agents have been able to obtain at 
Lisbon — more, in all probability, than any other 
person in Europe possesses except one French- 
man, now returned to Paris : he has seen them, 
and is very likely to get the start of me, unless, 
which is not improbable, Bonaparte choose to 
withhold from the world information which would 
be of specific use to England. 

" Concerning these papers, of whose contents 
I was till last week ignorant, my uncle has writ- 
ten to me, urging me to make all possible speed 
with this part of the book, and desiring me to of- 
fer the information to government. I inclosed 
the letter to Wynn, and it may be he will advise 
me to come up to London upon this business. I 
hope not. I should rather wash my hands of all 
other business first, and then can certainly, in 
half a year, accomplish a large volume, for on 
this subject there is no collateral information to 
hunt for. A very few books contain all the 
printed history, and there will be more difficulty 
in planning the work than in executing it. There 
will be business of some consequence in the way 
of map-making, which will delight Arrowsmith. 
My uncle has very valuable materials for a map 
of Brazil. 

" This is of so much consequence that it will 
perhaps be advisable to let the Palmerin sleep, 
and so have a month's time. * * * 
Wynn's letter will instruct me whether to set to 
work for myself or for the government ; giving 
them information is, God knows, throwing pearls 
you know to whom, but, so the pearls be paid 
for, well. The best thing they could do for me 
and for them, if they really want information 
about South America, is to send me to Lisbon 
for that specific purpose, without any ostensible 
charge. 

" There is nothing in the world like resolute, 
straightforward honesty ; it is sure to conquer in 
the long run. I have been reading Quaker his- 
tory, which is worth reading because it proves 
this, and proves also that institutions can com- 
pletely new-model our nature ; for, if the instinct 
of self-defense be subdued, nothing else is so pow- 
erful. 

" Fox's death is a loss to me, who had a prom- 



IKtat. 33. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



213 



ise from him, but I will not affect to think it a 
loss to the country : he lived a year too long. 
England can not fall yet, blessed be God ! be- 
cause its inhabitants are Englishmen ; but, if 
any thing could destroy a country, it would be 
the incurable folly of such governors. 

" Have you seen the Memoirs of Colonel 
Hutchinson ? If not, by all means read it : it is 
the history of a right Englishman ; and the sketch 
of English history which it contains from the 
time of the Reformation is so admirable, that it 
ought to make even Scotchmen ashamed to men- 
tion the name of Hume. I have seldom been 
so deeply interested by any book as this. =* 

# # # * # "R. S." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



HE UNDERTAKES TO EDIT KIRKE WHITES RE- 
MAINS" DETAILS OF HIS SETTLING AT GRETA 

HALL GRANT OF A SMALL PENSION OPINIONS 

ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION PROGRESS OF 

U KIRKE WHITE'S REMAINS" HEAVY DEDUC- 
TIONS FROM HIS PENSION MODERN POETRY 

POLITICS PREDICTS SEVERE CRITICISMS ON 

THE " SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH POETRY" REC- 
OLLECTIONS OF COLLEGE FRIENDS REMARKS 

ON CLASSICAL READING THE CATHOLIC QUES- 
TION SPANISH "PAPERS WANTED MR. DUP- 

Pa's "LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELo" MOTIVES 

FOR EDITING " KIRKE WHITE'S REMAINS" 

BEST SEASON FOR VISITING THE LAKES EF- 
FECT UPON THEM OF CLOUD AND SUNSHINE 

THEORY OF EDUCATING CHILDREN FOR SPE- 
CIFIC LITERARY PURPOSES PROBABLE ESTAB- 
LISHMENT OF A NEW EDINBURGH REVIEW 

PLAYFUL LETTER TO THE LATE HARTLEY COLE- 
RIDGE NEW EDITION OF DON QUIXOTE PRO- 
JECTED PLAN OF A CRITICAL CATALOGUE 

PALMERIN OF ENGLAND LAY OF THE LAST 

MINSTREL CHRONICLE OF THE CID MORTE 

d' ARTHUR PE CUNIARY DIFFICULTIES SALE 

OF ESPRIELLA'S LETTERS SPECIMENS OF EN- 
GLISH POETRY OVERTURES MADE TO HIM TO 

TAKE PART IN THE EDINBURGH REVIEW REA- 
SONS FOR DECLINING TO DO SO. 1807- 

Amid all my father's various and multiplied 
occupations, he was yet one of those of whom it 
might be truly said, that 

" They can make who fail to find 
Brief leisure even in busiest days" 

for any kindly office ; and needful as was all his 
time and all his labor to provide for the many 
calls upon him, he was never grudging of a por- 
tion of it to assist another. "Silver and gold" 
he had little to bestow, but " such as he had" he 
" gave freely." 

We have already seen how materially he had 
assisted, in conjunction with his friend Mr. Cot- 
tle, in establishing the reputation of Chatterton, 
and in procuring for his needy relatives some 
profit from his writings ; he now engaged him- 
self in a task not dissimilar, except in the per- 
fect and unalloyed satisfaction with which the 



whole character of the subject of it could be 
drawn out and contemplated. 

In the spring of the year 1804, he had ob- 
served in the Monthly Review what he consid- 
ered a most harsh and unjust reviewal of a small 
volume of poems by Henry Kirke White ; and 
having also accidentally seen a letter which the 
author had written to the reviewers, explaining 
the peculiar circumstances under which these 
poems were written and published, he under- 
stood the whole cruelty of their injustice. In 
consequence of this, he wrote to Henry to en- 
courage him : told him that, though he was well 
aware how imprudent it was in young poets to 
publish their productions, his circumstances 
seemed to render that expedient from which it 
would otherwise be right to dissuade him ; ad- 
vised him, therefore, if he had no better pros- 
pects, to print a larger volume by subscription, 
and offered to do what little was in his power to 
serve him in the business. 

This letter, which I regret has not been pre- 
served, produced a reply full of expressions of 
gratitude both for the advice and offers of assist- 
ance it contained ; but, in consequence of Kirke 
White's going very soon afterward to Cambridge, 
but little further communication took place, and 
his untimely and lamented death, in October, 
1806, caused by the severe and unrelenting 
course of study he pursued, acting upon a frame 
already debilitated by too great mental exertion, 
put an end to the hopes my father had cherished 
both of enjoying his friendship and of witnessing 
his fame. 

On his decease, one of his friends wrote to my 
father, informing him of the event, as one who 
had professed an interest in his fortunes. This 
led to an inquiry what papers he had left behind 
him, to a correspondence with his brother Nev- 
ille, and, ultimately, to the publication, under 
my father's editorship, of two volumes of his 
"Remains," accompanied with a brief Memoir 
of his Life. 

To the preparation of these the three follow- 
ing letters refer; others, relating to the same 
subject, as well as to more general matters, ad- 
dressed to Kirke White's two brothers, with 
whom, especially the elder, the acquaintance 
thus begun ripened into an intimate and life-long 
friendship, will appear in their proper places. 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Dec. 20, 1806. 
" Dear Sir, 

" Your letter and parcel arrived yesterday, 
just as I had completed the examination of the 
former papers. I have now examined the whole. 

" What account of your brother shall be given 
it rests with you, sir, and his other nearest friends, 
to determine. I advise and entreat that it may 
be as full and as minute as possible. The ex- 
ample of a young man winning his way against 
great difficulties, of such honorable ambition, 
such unexampled industry, such a righteous unci 
holy confidence of genius, ought not to be with, 
held. A full and faithful narrative of his diffi- 



214 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



TAT. 33. 



culties, his hopes, and his eventual success, till 
it pleased God to promote him to a higher state 
of existence, will be a lasting encouragement to 
others who have the same up-hill path to tread ; 
he will be to them what Chatterton was to him, 
and he will be a purer and better example. If 
it would wound the feelings of his family to let 
all and every particular of his honorable and ad- 
mirable life be known, those feelings are, of 
course, paramount to every other consideration. 
But I sincerely hope this may not be the case. 
It will, I know, be a painful task to furnish me 
with materials for this, which is the most useful 
kind of biography, yet, when the effort of begin- 
ning such a task shall have been accomplished, 
the consciousness that you are doing for him 
what he would have wished to be done, will 
bring with it a consolation and a comfort. 

"Let me beg of you and of your family, when 
you can command heart for the task, to give me 
all your recollections of his childhood and of 
every stage of his life. Do not fear you can be 
too minute ; I will arrange them, insert such 
poems as will best appear in that place, and add 
such remarks as grow out of the circumstances. 
The narrative itself can not be told too plainly ; 
all ornament of style would be misplaced in it : 
that which is meant to tickle the ear will never 
find its way either to the understanding or the 
heart. 

" Respecting the mode of publication, you had 

better consult Mr. . The booksellers will, 

beyond a doubt, undertake to publish them on 
condition of halving the eventual profits, which 
are the terms on which I publish. The profit, 
I fear, will not be much, unless the public should 
be taken with some unusual fit of good feeling ; 
and, indeed, this is not unlikely, for they are more 
frequently just to the dead than to the living. 

" I shall be glad to see all his magazine pub- 
lications ; possibly some of the pieces marked by 
me for transcription may be found among them. 
There is one poem, printed in the Globe for Feb. 
11, 1803, which I remember noticing when it 
appeared, and which may be more easily copied 
from the newspaper than from the manuscript. 
Whether any of his prose writings should be in- 
serted, I shall better be able to judge after hav- 
ing seen the magazines. But the most valuable 
materials which could be intrusted to me would 
be his letters — the more that could be said of 
him in his own words, the better. 

" I have been affected at seeing my own name 
among your brother's papers ; there is a defense 
of Thalaba, a part of which I regard as the most 
discriminating and appropriate praise which I 
have received.^ It seems to have been pub- 



* It may not be uninteresting to the reader to see here 
that portion of Kirke White's remarks on Thalaba which 
is thus referred to. After saying that " an innovation so 
bold as that of Mr. Southey is sure to meet with disap- 
probation and ridicule," he continues : " Whoever is con- 
versant with the writings of this author, will have ob- 
served and admired that greatness of mind and compre- 
hension of intellect by which he is enabled, on all occa- 
sions, to throw off the shackles of habit and preposses- 
sion. Southey never treads in the beaten track: his 
thoughts, while they are those of nature, carry that cast 
of originality which is the stamp and testimony of genius. 



lished in some magazine. These are the high- 
est gratifications which a writer can receive ; for 
that class of readers who call themselves the 
public, I have as little respect as need be ; but 
to interest and influence such a mind as Henry 
White's is the best and worthiest object which 
any poet could propose to himself — the fulfill- 
ment of his dearest hopes. 

" Yours truly, Robert Southey." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

"Keswick, Feb. 3, 1807. 
"Dear Sir, 
" * * * It will be well to print 
the Melancholy Hours, and some other of the 
prose compositions. They mark the character, 
as well as the powers, of your brother's mind, 
and should, therefore, be preserved. The No. 
10 which you mention is, I believe, that criti- 
cism upon Thalaba the Destroyer, of which I 
spoke in a former letter. I may be permitted to 
expunge from it, or to soften, a few epithets, of 
which it gratifies me that your brother should 
have thought me worthy, but which it is not de- 
cent that I should edit myself. * * Be- 
lieve me, sir, if I were not now proving the high 
respect which I feel for your brother, it would 
give me pain to think what value he assigned to 
the mere expression of it. How deeply I regret 
that the little intercourse \?e ever had should 
have ended where it did, it is needless now to 
say. I should have begged him to have visited 
me here but for this reason : when he told me 
he was going to Cambridge, there were some 
circumstances which made me believe he was 
under the patronage of Mr. Henry Thornton, or 
of some other persons of similar views ; that his 
opinions had taken what is called an evangelical 
turn, and that he was designed for that particu- 
lar ministry. My own religious opinions are not 
less zealous and not less sincere, but they are 
totally opposite. I would not run the risk of 
disturbing his sentiments, and therefore delayed 



He views things through a peculiar phasis ; and while he 
has the feelings of a man, they are those of a man almost 
abstracted from mortality, and reflecting on and painting 
the scenes of life as if he were a mere spectator, unin- 
fluenced by his own connection with the objects he sur- 
veys. To this faculty of bold discrimination I attribute 
many of Mr. Southey's excellences as a poet. He never 
seems to inquire how other men would treat a subject, 
or what may happen to be the usage of the times ; but, 
filled with that strong sense of fitness, which is the result 
of bold and unshackled thought, he fearlessly pursues 
that course which his own sense of propriety points out. 
« ********** 

At first, indeed, the verse may appear uncouth, because it 
is new to the ear ; but I defy any man, who has any feel- 
ing of melody, to peruse the whole poem without paying 
tribute to the sweetness of its flow and the gracefulness 
of its modulation. 

"In judging of this extraordinary poem, we should 
consider it as a genuine lyric production — we should con- 
ceive it as recited to the harp, in times when such rela- 
tions carried nothing incredible with them. Carrying 
this idea along with us, the admirable art of the poet will 
strike us with ten-fold conviction ; the abrupt sublimity of 
his transitions, the sublime simplicity of his manner, and 
the delicate touches by which he connects the various 
parts of his narrative, will then be more strongly observ- 
able ; and we shall, in particular, remark the uncommon 
felicity with which he has adapted his versification, and, 
in the midst of the wildest irregularity, left nothing to 
shock the ear or offend the judgment." — Remains, vol. it, 
p. 285, 286. 



^TAT. 33. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



215 



forming that personal friendship with him, to 
which I looked on with pleasure, till his mind 
should have outgrown opinions through which 
it was well that it should pass. 

" In reading and re-reading the poem, I have 
filled up a few of the gaps with conjectural words 
of correction, which shall be printed in italics, 
and to which, therefore, there can be no objec- 
tion. The more I read them, the more is my 
admiration ; they are as it should be — of very va- 
rious merit, and show the whole progress of his 
mind. Many of them are excellently good — so 
good that it is impossible they could be better, 
and all together certainly exceed the productions 
of any other young poet whatsoever. I do not 
except Chatterton from the number ; and I have 
a full confidence that, sooner or later, the public 
opinion will confirm mine. Perhaps this may be 
immediately acknowledged. 

"I am greatly in hopes that many of his let- 
ters may be fit for publication. Till these ar- 
rive, it is not possible to judge to what extent 
the proposed introductory account (in which they 
would probably be inserted, or after it) will run ; 
but as soon as this is ascertained, the volumes 
may be divided, and the second go to press. 
Will you have the goodness to copy for me that 
abominable criticism in the Monthly Review 
upon Clifton Grove, and also the notice they took 
of your brother's letter ? That criticism must 
be inserted ; and if you remember any other re- 
viewal in which he was treated with illiberality, 
I shall be glad to hold up such criticism to the 
infamy which it deserves. 

" It will give me great pleasure if a likeness 
can be recovered — very great pleasure. Your 
brother Henry, sir, is not to be lamented. He 
has gained that earthly immortality for which he 
labored, and that heavenly immortality of which 
he was worthy. I say this with tears, but they 
are tears of admiration as well as of human re- 
gret. If you knew me, sir, and how little prone 
I am to let such feelings as these appear upon 
the surface, you would understand these words 
in their literal sense and in their full meaning. 
" Yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

"March 3, 1807. 
11 My dear Sir, 
" Your parcel reached me on Sunday evening, 
and I have perused every line of its contents with 
deep and painful interest. The letters, and your 
account (of which I should say much were I 
writing to any other person), have made me 
thoroughly acquainted with one of the most ami- 
able and most admirable human beings that ever 
was ripened upon earth for heaven. Be assured 
that I will not insert a sentence which can give 
pain or offense to any one. There will come a 
time (and God only knows how soon it may 
come) when some one will perform that office 
for me which I am now performing for your in- 
comparable brother, and I shall endeavor to show 
how that office ought to be performed. I will 



be scrupulously careful; and if, when the pa- 
pers pass through your hands, you should think 
I have not been sufficiently so, I beg you will, 
without hesitation, expunge whatever may ap- 
pear exceptionable. 

w ^r ^ ^ 4? w tt 

" When I obeyed the impulse which led me 
to undertake this task, it was from a knowledge 
that Henry White had left behind him an exam- 
ple, which ought not to be lost, of well-directed 
talents, and that, in performing an act of respect 
to his memory, I should at the same time hold 
up the example to others who have the up-hill 
paths of life to tread. No person can be more 
thoroughly convinced that goodness is a better 
thing than genius, and that genius is no excuse 
for those follies and offenses which are called its 
eccentricities. 

" The mention made in my last of any differ- 
ence in religious opinions from your brother was 
merely incidental ; nor is it by any means my 
intention to say any more upon the subject than 
simply to state that those opinions are not mine, 
lest it should be supposed they were, from the 
manner in which I speak of him. 

"I shall now proceed as speedily as I can 
with the work. 

" Yours truly, and with much esteem, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Richard Duppa, Esq. 

" March 27, 1807. 
" Dear Duppa, 
" The ministry — by this time, perhaps, no lon- 
ger a ministry — have made a very pretty kettle 
of fish of it ; which phrase, by-the-by, would look 
well in literal translation into any other language. 
Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that on 
the Catholic Question I am as stiffly against them 
as his majesty himself. Of all my friends, Cole- 
ridge is perhaps the only one who thinks with 
me upon this subject ; but I am clear in my own 
mind. I am, however, sorry for the business — 
more to think what a rabble must come in, than 
for any respect for those who are going out — 
though the Limited Service and the Abolishment 
of the Slave Trade are great things. As for any 
effect upon my own possible fortunes, you need not 
be told how little any such possibilities ever enter 
into my feelings : they have entered into my cal- 
culations just enough to keep me unsettled, and 
nothing more. And here I am now planting gar- 
den inclosures, rose-bushes, currants, gooseber- 
ries, and resolute to become a mountaineer — per- 
haps forever — unless I should remove for final set- 
tlement at Lisbon. My study is to be finished — 
my books gathered together ; and if you do not 
come down again, the very first summer you are 
not otherwise engaged, why — you may stay and 
be smoke-dried in London for your good-for- 
nothingness. I have a man called Willy, who 
is my Juniper in this business. We are going 
to have laburnums and lilacs, syringas, barberry 
bushes, and a pear-tree to grow up by your win- 
dow against the wall, and white curtains in my 
library, and to dye the old ones in the parlor 



216 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^tat. 33. 



blue, and to put fringe to them, Mr. Duppa, and 
to paper the room, Mr. Duppa, and I am to have 
a carpet in my study, Mr. Duppa, and the chairs 
are to be new bottomed, and we are to buy some 
fenders at the sale of the general's things, and 
we have bought a new hearth-rug. And then 
the outside of the house is to be rough-cast as 
soon as the season will permit, and there is a 
border made under the windows, and there is to 
be a gravel walk there, and turf under the trees 
beyond that, and beyond that such peas and beans ! 
Oh ! Mr. Duppa, how you will like them when 
you come down, and how fine we shall be, if all 
this does not ruin me ! 

" The reason of all this is, that some arrange- 
ments of Coleridge's made it necessary that I 
should either resolve upon removing speedily, or 
remaining in the house. The one I could not 
do, and was, not unwillingly, forced to the other. 
Indeed, the sense of being unsettled was the only 
uneasiness I had ; and these little arrangements 
for future comfort give me, I am sure, more 
solid satisfaction and true enjoyment than his 
great Howickship can possibly have felt upon 
getting into that Downing Street, from whence 
he will so reluctantly get out — like a dog on a 
wet day out of the kitchen, growling as he goes, 
with his tail between his legs, and showing the 
teeth with which he dares not bite. Jackson — 
God bless him — is as well pleased about it as I 
am ; and that excellent good woman, Mrs. Wil- 
son, is rejoiced at heart to think that we are 
likely to remain here for the remainder of her 
da} T s. 

" Sir, it would surprise you to see how I dig 
in the garden. I am going to buy the ' Com- 
plete Gardener;' and we do hope to attain one 
day to the luxuries of currant wine, and such 
like things, which I hope will meet your appro- 
bation, after you and I have been up Causey 
Pike again, and over the Fells to Blea Tarn — 
expeditions to the repetition of which I know 
you look on with great pleasure. 

" I shall miss Harry this summer — an excel- 
lent boatman, and a companion whose good spir- 
its and good humor never fail. If T. Gren- 
ville would make Tom a captain, and send him 
down to grass for the summer, he would do a 
better thing than he has done yet since he went 
to the Admiralty. Wynn did mention my broth- 
er to him ; but we had no borough interest to 
back us, and fourteen years' hard service go for 
nothing, with wounds, blowing up, honorable 
mention, and excellent good conduct. Still I 
have a sort of faith (God willing) that he will 
be an admiral yet. 

" I am hurrying my printer with Espriella, 
for fear another translation should appear before 
mine, which, you know, would be very unlucky. 
Ten sheets of the second volume are done. I 
much wish it were out, having better hopes of its 
sale than the fate of better books will perhaps 
warrant. But this is a good book in its way, 
and its way ought to be. in book-selling phrase, 
a takinsr one. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



At the commencement of the preceding letter, 
my father alludes to the tottering condition of 
the Grenville ministry, of which his friend Mr. 
Wynn was a member, who had been for some 
time looking out for an opportunity of serving 
him ; and under the impression that their resig- 
nation had taken place, without any having oc- 
curred, he now writes : "When you have it in 
) r our power again, let the one thing you seek 
for me be the office of Historiographer, with a 
decent pension. If £300, it would satisfy my 
wishes — if 66400, I should be rich. I have no 
worldly ambition : a man who lives so much in 
the past and the future can have none. * 

* * * When you are in, do not form 
higher wishes for me than I have for myself. I 
am in that state of life to which it has pleased God 
to call me, for which I am formed, in which I 
am contented ; nor is it likely that I could be in 
any other so usefully, so worthily, or so happily 
employed. If what I now receive shall in the 
future come from the Treasury, I shall not then 
have any serious wish for any change of fortune j 
nor would this be one, if you were wealthier. 
What more is necessary I get — hardly enough, 
it is true, but still in my own way ; and it is 
not impossible but that some day or other one of 
my books should, by some accident, hit the fash- 
ion of the day, and, by a rapid sale, place me in 
comparative affluence. I must be a second time 
cut off if I do not still inherit an independence ; 
and if, after all, I should go out of the world as 
poor a man as I am at this present — the mo- 
ment it comes to be 'poor Southey,' my name 
becomes a provision for my wife and children, 
even though I had not that reliance upon indi- 
vidual friendship which experience makes me 
feel."* 

The next letter shows that his friend had suc- 
ceeded in obtaining for him a small pension, 
which, though it really diminished his income 
instead of increasing it, was very acceptable, for 
the reasons he here states. 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, March 30, 1S07. 
" My dear Friend, 
"I am just now enabled to give you some in- 
telligence concerning myself. In this topsy- 
turvying of ministers, Wynn was very anxious, 
as he says, ' to pick something out of the fire for 
me.' The registership of the Vice-Admiralty 
Court in St. Lucia was offered, worth about 
£600 a year. He wrote to me, offering this, 
or, as an alternative, the only one in his power, 
a pension of £200 ; but, before my answer could 
arrive, it was necessary that he should choose 
for me, and he judged rightly in taking the lat- 
ter. Fees and taxes will reduce this to £l60,t 
the precise sum for which I have hitherto been 
indebted to him, so that I remain with just the 
same income as before. The different source 
from which it is derived is, as you may suppose, 
sufficiently grateful ; for though Wynn could till 

* March 27, 1807. 

t The deduction proved to be £56, reducing it to JJ144 



£tat. 33. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



217 



now well afford this, and I had no reluctance in 
accepting it from one who is the oldest friend I 
have in the world (we have been intimate for 
nineteen years), he has now nearly doubled his 
expenditure by marrying. * * This, 
I suppose, is asked for and granted to me as a 
man of letters, in which character I feel myself 
fully and fairly entitled to receive it ; and you 
know me too well to suppose that it can make 
me lose one jot of that freedom, both of opinion 
and speech, without which I should think my- 
self unworthy, not of this poor earthly pittance 
alone, but of God's air and sunshine, and my in- 
heritance in heaven. 

"I sent you the Specimens, and shall have to 
send you, owing to some omissions of Bedford's, 
a supplementary volume hereafter, which will 
complete its bibliographical value. Of its other 
merits and defects, hereafter. It will not be 
long before, I trust, you will receive Espriella : 
the printer promises to quicken his pace, and I 
hurry him, anticipating that this book will give 
you and my other friends some amusement, and 
deserve approbation on higher grounds. Thank 
you for all your kindness to, Harry. * * 

This change of ministry — I am as hostile to the 
measure which was the pretext for it as the 
king himself; but, having conceded that meas- 
ure, the king's conduct is equally unexception- 
able. Neither the country nor the Commons 
called for the change, and they were getting 
credit, and deserving it, by the 'Arms Bill,' the 
blessed 'Abolition of the Slave Trade,' the pro- 
jected reforms, and the projected plan for edu- 
cating the poor. And now their places are to be 
filled by a set of men of tried and convicted in- 
capacity, with an old woman at their head ! But 
I must refer you to my friend, Don Manuel Al- 
varez, for the reason why there is always a lack 
of talents in the English government. 

" God bless you ! 



Yours in haste. 



R. S." 



To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" April, 1807. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" And so I am a Court Pensioner ! It is well 
that I have not to kiss hands upon the occasion, 
or, upon my soul, I do not think I could help 
laughing at the changes and chances of this 
world ! dear, dear Wynn, when you and I 
used to hold debates with poor Bunbury over a 
pot of porter, how easily could your way of life 
have been predicted ! And how would his and 
mine have mocked all foresight ! And yet mine 
has been a straight-onward path ! Nothing more 
has taken place in me than the ordinary process 
of beer or wine — of fermenting — and settling — 
and ripening. 

" If Snowdon will come to Skiddaw in the 
summer, Skiddaw will go to Snowdon at the fall 
of the leaf. I shall work hard to get the Cid 
ready for publication, and must go with it to 
London. In that case my intention is to go first 
to Bristol, and perhaps to Taunton, and Wales 
will not be out of my way. But I wish to show 



you those parts of the country which you have 
not seen, and which I have since you were here ; 
and to introduce you to the top of Skiddaw, 
which is an easy morning's walk. 

" The mystery of this wonderful history of the 
change in administration is certainly explained ; 
but who are the king's advisers ? Are they his 
sons, or old Lord Liverpool ? Mr. Simeon's 
wise remark, that ' the new ministry was better 
than no ministry at all,' put me in mind of a 
story which might well have been quoted in re- 
ply. One of the German electors, when an 
Englishman was introduced to him, thought the 
best thing he could say to him was to remark 
that ' it was bad weather ;' upon which the En- 
glishman shrugged up his shoulders and replied, 
'yes — but it was better than none I' Would not 
this have told in the House ? You do not shake 
my opinion concerning the Catholics. Their re- 
ligion regards no national distinctions — it teaches 
them to look at Christendom and at the Pope as 
the head thereof — and the interests of that relig- 
ion will always be preferred to any thing else. 
Bonaparte is aware of this, and is aiming to be 
the head of the Catholic party in Germany. 

" These people have been increasing in En- 
gland of late years, owing to the number of sem- 
inaries established during the French Revolution. 
It is worth your while to get their Almanac — 
the 'Lay Directory' it is called, and published 
by Brown and Keating, Duke Street, Grosvenor 
Square. They are at their old tricks of mira- 
cles here and every where else. St. Winifred 
has lately worked a great one, and is in as high 
odor as ever she was. 

" I am for abolishing the test with regard to 
every other sect — Jews and all — but not to the 
Catholics. They will not tolerate : the proof is 
in their whole history — in their whole system — 
and in their present practice all over Catholic 
Europe : and it is the nature of their principles 
now to spread in this country ; Methodism, and 
the still wilder sects preparing the way for it. 
You have no conception of the zeal with which 
they seek for proselytes, nor the power they 
have over weak minds ; for their system is as 
well the greatest work of human wisdom as it is 
of human wickedness. It is curious that the 
Jesuits exist in England as a body, and have 
possessions here ; a Catholic told me this, and 
pointed out one in the streets of Norwich, but 
he could tell me nothing more, and expressed 
his surprise at it, and his curiosity to learn more. 
Having been abolished by the Pope, they keep 
up their order secretly, and expect their restora- 
tion, which, if he be wise, Bonaparte will effect. 
Were I a Catholic, that should be the object to 
which my life should be devoted — I would be 
the second Loyola. 

" Concessions and conciliations will not satisfy 
the Catholics ; vengeance and the throne are 
what they want. If Ireland were far enough 
from our shores to be lost without danger to our 
own security, I would say establish the Catholic 
religion there, as the easiest way of civilizing it ; 
but Catholic Ireland would always be at the 



118 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 33. 



command of the Pope, and the Pope is now at 
the command of France. It is dismal to think 
of the state of Ireland. Nothing can redeem 
that country but such measures as none of our 
statesmen, except perhaps Marquis Wellesley, 
would be hardy enough to adopt — nothing but a 
system of Roman conquest and colonization, and 
shipping off the refractory to the colonies. 

" England condescends too much to the Cath- 
olic religion, and does not hold up her own to 
sufficient respect in her foreign possessions ; and 
the Catholics, instead of feeling this as an act of 
indulgence to their opinions, interpret it as an 
acknowledgment of their superior claims, and 
insult us in consequence. This is the case at 
Malta. In India the want of an established 
church is a crying evil. Nothing but mission- 
aries can secure in that country what we have 
won. The converts would immediately become 
English in their feelings ; for, like Mohammed, 
we ought to make our language go with our re- 
ligion — a better policy this than that of introduc- 
ing pig-tails, after our own home-plan of princely 

reform, for which , with all due respect to 

him, or whoever else was the agent in this in- 
conceivable act of folly, ought to be gibbeted 
upon the top of the highest pagoda in Hindostan. 
God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

"April 7, 1807. 
' : My dear Sir, 

The preliminary account is nearly finished. I 
have inserted in it such poems as seem best suited 
to that place, because they refer to Henry's then 
state of mind, and thus derive an interest from 
the narrative, and in their turn give it also. 
After the introduction I purpose to insert a se- 
lection of his letters, or, rather, of extracts from 
them, in chronological order. Upon mature con- 
sideration, and upon trial as well, I believe this 
to be better than inserting them in the account 
of his life. If the reader feel for Henry that love 
and admiration which I have endeavored to make 
him feel, he will be prepared to receive these 
epistolary fragments as the most authentic and 
most valuable species of biography ; and if he 
does not feel that love, it is no matter how he 
receives them, for his heart will be in fault, and 
his understanding necessarily darkened. 

"I have, to the best of my judgment, omitted 
every thing of which the publication could oc- 
casion even the slightest unpleasant feeling to 
any person whatever; and if any thing of this 
kind has escaped me, you will, of course, con- 
sider your own opinion as decisive, and omit it 
accordingly, without any regard to mine. As- 
suredly we will not offend the feelings of any 
one ; but there are many passages which, though 
they can give no pain to an individual, you per- 
haps may think will not interest the public. If 
this fear come across you, take up Chatterton's 
letters to his mother and sister, and see if the 
very passages which will excite in you the great- 
est interest are not of the individual and individ- 



ualizing character, and then remember that 
Henry's is to be a name equally dear to the gen- 
eration which will come after us. * * 

^ ^ ^ TT ^ ?/$ ^ 

" My heart has often ached during this em- 
ployment. 

" Yours very truly and respectfully, 

"Robert Southey." 

One extract from a letter written to Mr. Nev- 
ille White at the close of the year I will place 
here, as it speaks of the completion of my father's 
grateful office. 

" The sight of the books now completed gave 

me a melancholy feeling, and I could not help 

repeating some lines of Wordsworth's : 

" ' Thou soul of God's best earthly mold, 
Thou happy soul, and can it be 
That this * * * * 
Is all that must remain of thee ?' 

But this is not all : so many days and nights of 
unrelenting study, so many hopes and fears, so 
many aspirations after fame, so much genius, and 
so many virtues, have left behind them more than 
this — they have left comfort and consolation to 
his friends, an honorable remembrance for him- 
self, and for others a bright and encouraging ex- 
ample. 

" Our intercourse will not be at an end. When 
I visit London, which will certainly be during 
the winter, and probably very soon, I shall see 
you. We shall have, it is to be hoped and ex- 
pected, to communicate respecting after editions ; 
and at all times it will give me great pleasure 
to hear from you." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"April 21, 1807. 
"Whether, Grosvenor, you will ascribe it to 
the cut of my nose, I can not tell ; nor whether 
it be a proof of the natural wickedness of the 
heart, but so it is, that I am less disposed to be 
very much obliged to the Treasury for giving 
me c=£200 a year, than I am to swear at the 
Taxes for having the impudence to take £56 of 
it back again. And if it were a pull Devil pull 
Baker between that loyalty which, as you know, 
has always been so predominant in my heart, 
and that Jacobinism of which, you know how 
vilely, I have been suspected, I am afraid the 56 
would give a stronger pull on the Baker's side 
than the 144 on the Devil's. Look you, Mr. 
Bedford of the Exchequer, it is out of all con- 
science. Ten in the hundred has always, in all 
Christian states, been thought damnable usury ; 
and to say that a man took ten in the hundred 
was the same as saying that he would go to the 
Devil.* But this is eight-and-twenty in the 



* So says the epigram attributed to Shakspeare, upon his 
friend Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted for his wealth 
and usury : 

" Ten in the hundred lies here in graved ; 
'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved. 
If any man ask, ' Who lies in this tomb ?' 
' Oh ! oh !' quoth the Devil, ' 'tis my John-a-Combe.' " 

It must be added that Mr. Knight strenuously opposes 
the tradition that Shakspeare wrote these lines — Ku ight's 
Shakspeare, a Biography, p. 488. 



JE.TAT. 33. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



219 



hundred, for which may eight-and-twenty hund- 
red Devils #*##*# 
I am a little surprised to hear you speak so con- 
temptuously of modern poetry, because it shows 
how very little you must have read, or how little 
you can have considered the subject. The im- 
provement during the present reign has been to 
the full as great in poetry as it has been in the 
experimental sciences, or in the art of raising 
money by taxation. What can you have been 
thinking of? Had you forgotten Burns a second 
time ? had you forgotten Cowper, Bowles, Mont- 
gomery, Joanna Baillie, Walter Scott ? to omit 
a host of names which, though inferior to them, 
are above those of any former period except the 
age of Shakspeare, and not to mention Words- 
worth and another poet, who has written two very 
pretty poems in my opinion, called Thalaba and 
Madoc. # # # I am as busy in 
my household arrangements as you can be. My 
tent is pitched at last, and I am thankful that my 
lot has fallen in so goodly a land. 

" Politics are very amusing, and go to the tune 
of Tantara-rara. The king has been fighting 
for a veto upon the initiation of laws, and he has 
won it. I had got into good humor with the late 
ministry because of the Limited Service Bill, the 
Abolishment of the Slave Trade, and their wise 
conduct with regard to the Continent. As for 
their successors, they have given a pretty sam- 
ple of their contempt for all decency by their re- 
instatement of Lord Melville, the attempt at giv- 
ing Percival the place for life, and the threat 
held out by Canning of a dissolution. The Gren- 
villes now find the error of their neglecting Scot- 
land at the last election, an error which I heard 
noticed with regret at the time. What is it has 
made them so unpopular in the city? It is to 
me incomprehensible why the memory of Pitt 
should be held in such idolatrous reverence — a 
man who was as obstinate in every thing wrong 
as he was ready to give up any thing good, and 
who, except in the Union and in the Scarcity, 
was never by any accident right during his long 
administration. 

" I finish poor Henry White's papers to-mor- 
row. One volume of Palmerin still remains to 
do, and then there will be nothing to impede my 
progress in S. America. Our Fathers wrote to 
me about the same time that you did ; they were 
then in pursuit of the culprits Hinchcliffe and 
Gildon. I'll tell you what I would have done 
had I been in town and could not have found 
them. I would have made them a present of 
verses of my own, just enough in number to fill 
the gap, and dull enough to suit them. Nobody 
would have suspected it, and it would have been 
a very pious fraud to save trouble. 

"It consoles me a little when I think of the 
reviewing* that is to take place : how much 
more you will feel it than I shall. I am case- 
hardened ; but you — oh, Mr. Bedford, how your 
back and shoulders will tingle ! how you will 
perspire ! how you will bite youfc nails and gnash 



* Of the Specimens of English Poets. 



your teeth ! how you will curse the reviewers, 
and the printers, and the poor poets, with now 
and then a remembrance of me and yourself. 
Why, man, there never was so bad a book be- 
fore ! If I were to take any twenty pages, and 
enumerate all the faults in them — do you remem- 
ber Duppa, when he came from the Installation 
at Oxford, all piping hot ? even to that degree 
of heat would the bare enumeration excite you, 
and your shirt would be as wet as if you had 
tumbled into a bath. I tell you my opinion as 
a friend, just to prepare you for what is to come, 
and am actually laughing at the conceit of how 
you will look when you take up the first re- 
view! Farewell! U.S." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

" Keswick, April 24, 1807. 
"My dear Lightfoot, 

" Circumstances have prevented me going to 
Portugal so soon as I intended. I am, however, 
likely (God willing, I may say certain, as far as 
human intentions can be so) to procure a whole 
holiday for your boys in the month of November 
next. Business will then lead me to London, 
and when I am so far south I have calls into the 
west, having an uncle and aunt near Taunton. 
The Barnstaple coach will carry me to Tiverton ; 
and for the rest of the way I have shoulders to 
carry a very commodious knapsack, and feet to 
carry myself, being a better walker than when 
we were at Oxford. 

" Your last letter is fourteen months old, and 
they may have brought forth so many changes 
that I almost fear to ask for my godchild Fanny. 
During that time I have had a son born into the 
world, and baptized into the Church by the name 
of Herbert, who is now six months old, and bids 
fair to be as noisy a fellow as his father — which 
is saying something ; for be it known that I am 
quite as noisy as ever I was, and should take as 
much delight as ever in showering stones through 
the hole of the stair-case against your room door, 
and hearing with what hearty good earnest 'you 
fool !' was vociferated in indignation against me 
in return. 0, dear Lightfoot, what a blessing it 
is to have a boy's heart ! it is as great a blessing 
in carrying one through this world, as to have a 
child's spirit will be in fitting us for the next. 

"If you are in the way of seeing reviews and 
magazines, they will have told you some of my 
occupations ; the main one they can not tell you, 
for they do not know it, nor is it my intention 
that they shall yet a while. I am preparing that 
branch of the History of Portugal for publication 
first which would have been last in order, had not 
temporary circumstances given it a peculiar in- 
terest and utility — that which relates to Brazil 
and Paraguay. The manuscript documents in 
my possession are very numerous, and of the ut- 
most importance, having been collected with un- 
wearied care by my uncle during a residence of 
above thirty years in Portugal. 

" Burnett is about to make his appearance in 
the world of authors with, I trust, some credit 
to himself. When we meet I will tell you the 



220 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 33. 



whole course of his eventful history, for more 
eventful it has been than any one could have 
prognosticated on his entrance at old Baliol. 

" Elmsley, I am sorry to say, is fatter than 
ever he was : he is one of my most intimate and 
most valuable friends. I hear from Duppa, or of 
him, frequently. His visit to Oxford at the In- 
stallation has been the occasion of throwing him 
quite into the circle of my friends in London. I 
sometimes think with wonder how few acquaint- 
ances I made at Oxford ; except yourself and 
Burnett, not one whom I should feel any real 
pleasure in meeting. Of all the months in my 
life (happily they did not amount to years), those 
which were passed at Oxford were the most un- 
profitable. What Greek I took there I literally 
left there, and could not help losing ; and all I 
learned was a little swimming (very little the 
worse luck) and a little boating, which is greatly 
improved, now that I have a boat of my own 
upon this delightful lake. I never remember to 
have dreamed of Oxford — a sure proof how little 
it entered into my moral being ; of school, on the 
contrary, I dream perpetually. 

' ; C is become a great disciplinarian. 

Some friend of Dr. Aikin's dined one day at 
Baliol, and I was made the subject of conversa- 
tion in the common room ; poor C was my 

only friend : I believe he allowed that I must be 
damned for all my heresies, that was certain, but 
that it was a pity; he remembered me with a 
degree of affection which neither a dozen years, 
nor that heart-deadening and uncharitable at- 
mosphere had effaced. I should be glad to shake 
hands with him again. * * Let me 

hear from you, and believe me, 

" Yours very truly, Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford. Esq. 

" Keswick, May 5, 1S07. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" When I wished you never to read the clas- 
sics again, it was because, like many other per- 
sons, you read nothing else, and were not likely 
ever to get more knowledge out of them than 
you had got already, especially as you chiefly (I 
may say exclusively) read those from whom least 
is to be got, which is also another sin of the age. 
Your letter contains the usual blunders which 
the ignorance of the age is continually making, 
and upon which, and nothing else, rests the 
whole point at issue between such critics as Jef- 
frey and myself : you couple Homer and Virgil 
under the general term of classics, and suppose 
that both are to be admired upon the same 
grounds. A century ago this was better under- 
stood ; the critics of that age did read what they 
wrote about, and understood what they read, and 
they knew that whoever thought the one of these 
writers a good poet must upon that very prin- 
ciple hold the other to be a bad one. Greek and 
Latin poets, Grosvenor, are as opposite as French 
and English (excepting always Lucretius and 
Catullus), and you may as well suppose it pos- 
sible for a man equally to admire Shakspeare and 
Racine as Homer and Virgil : that is, provided 



he knows why and wherefore he admires either. 
Elmsley will tell you this, and I suppose you 
will admit him to be authority upon this subject. 

" You ask me about the Catholic question. I 
am against admitting them to power of any kind, 
because the immediate use that would be made 
of it would be to make proselytes, for which 
Catholicism is of all religions best adapted. 
Every ship which had a Catholic captain would 
have a Catholic chaplain, and in no very long 
time a Catholic crew : so on in the army; just 
as every rich Catholic in England at this time 
has his mansion surrounded with converts fairly 
purchased — the Jerningham family in Norfolk 
for instance. I object to any concessions, be- 
cause no concession can possibly satisfy them; 
and I think it palpable folly to talk or think of 
tolerating any sect (beyond what they already 
enjoy) whose first principle is that their Church 
is infallible, and, therefore, bound to persecute 
all others. This is the principle of Catholicism 
every where, and when they can they avow it 
and act upon it. 

"If our statesmen (God forgive me for de- 
grading the word) — if our traders in politics — 
had better information of how things are going 
on abroad, they would not talk of the distinction 
between Catholic and Protestant as political par- 
ties being extinct. But for that distinction Prus- 
sia could not have retained its conquests from 
Austria ; and that distinction Bonaparte is at 
this time endeavoring to profit by. This is a 
regular conspiracy — a system carrying on to 
propagate popery in the North of Germany, of 
which Coleridge could communicate much if he 
would, he knowing the main directors of the new 
propaganda at Rome. The mode of doing it is 
curious : they bring the people first to believe in 
Jacob Behmen, and then they may believe in any 
thing else. All fanaticism tends to this point. 
You will hear something that bears upon this 
subject from Espriella when he makes his ap- 
pearance ; and you will also see more of the 
present history of enthusiasm in this country than 
any body could possibly suspect who has not, as 
I have done, cast a searching eye into the holes 
and corners of society, and watched its under cur- 
rents, which carry more water than the upper 
stream. 

"I have a favor to ask of Horace, which is, 
that he will do me the kindness to send me the 
titles of such Portuguese manuscripts as are in 
the Museum. There can not be so many as to 
make this a thing of much trouble ; and there 
are some of great value, which were, I believe, 
part of the plunder of Osorio's library carried off 
from Sylvas by Sir F. Drake. I wish to know 
what they are, for the purpose of ascertaining 
how many among them are not to be found in 
their own country, and either taking myself, or 
causing to be taken, if a fit transcriber can be 
found, copies to present to some fit library at 
Lisbon : in so doing I shall render the literature 
of that country a most acceptable service, which 
it would most highly gratify me to do, and for 
which I should receive very essential services in 



^TAT. 33. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



221 



return. There are, I believe, in particular, some 
papers of Geronimo Lobos concerning Abyssinia, 
and a MS. of which Vincent has made some use. 
I am particularly desirous of effecting this, not 
merely because I could do nothing which would 
be more essentially useful to my own views there, 
but also because of the true and zealous love 
which I feel for Portuguese literature, in which 
I am now as well versed as in that of my own 
country, and into which (whenever the reign of 
priestcraft is at an end) I hope to be one day 
adopted. 

" I pray you remember that what I think upon 
the Catholic question by no means disposes me 
in favor of the new ministry. I, Mr. Bedford, 
am, as you know, a court pensioner, and have, 
as you well know, deserved to be so for my great 
and devoted attachment to the person of his maj- 
esty and the measures of his government. Nev- 
ertheless, Mr. Bedford, his ministers are men of 
tried and convicted incapacity ; they have always 
been the contempt of Europe ; whether they can 
be more despised than their predecessors have 
uniformly and deservedly been, I know not. I 
can not tell how far below nothing the political 
barometer can sink till it has been tried. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Richard Duppa, Esq. 

« May 23, 1807. 
"My dear Duppa, 
" Your book and your letter reached me at the 
same time. I have cut the leaves, collated the 
prints, and observe many valuable additions and 
some great typographical improvements. It was 
accompanied by a note from Mr. Murray of a 
very complimentary kind. I like to be compli- 
mented in my authorial character, and best of 
all by booksellers, because their good opinion 
gets purchasers, and so praise leads to pudding, 
which I consider to be the solid end of praise. 

" I have Walter Scott's promise to do what he 
can for M. Angelo in the Edinburgh, with this 
sort of salvo — that Jeffrey is not a very practi- 
cable man, but he would do his best with him. 
My acquaintance with Scott is merely an ac- 
quaintance ; but I had occasion once to write to 
him respecting the sale of a MS. intrusted to 
me, and bought by him for the Advocate's Li- 
brary, and in that letter I introduced the subject. 
I was greatly in hopes, and indeed expected, that 
Wordsworth would have done as much in the 
Critical, by means of his brother, who writes 
there. Had it not been for this, I might, per- 
haps, have done something by applying to Fel- 
lowes, the anti-Calvinist, a very interesting man 
— such a one, indeed, that, though I never met 
him but once, I could without scruple have writ- 
ten to him. Wonderful to tell, he bears a part 
in that Review, though his opinions are as op- 
posite to Hunt's, and all his other steeple-hunt- 
ing whippers-in, as light is to darkness. The 
hostile article I have not seen ; one of the ad- 
vantages of living here is, that I never see these 
things till their season is over, and then, like 
wasps in winter, their power of stinging is at an 



end. I should have been angry at seeing your 
book abused when the abuse could do any hurt, 
and should have felt that sort of heat in my cheek 
which denotes the moral temperature of the min- 
ute to be above temperate. Now, whenever it 
falls in my way, which, very likely, never may 
be the case, it will come as a matter of literary 
history — as what was said by some malevolent 
and ignorant person when a good book first ap- 
peared, and so it will furnish me an anecdote to 
relate when I speak of the book ; or if I should 
ever live to old age, and have leisure to leave 
behind me that sort of transcript from recollec- 
tions which would make such excellent materials 
for the literary history of my own times. 

" You are mistaken about Henry White ; the 
fact is briefly this : at the age of seventeen he 
published a little volume of poems of very great 
merit, and sent with them to the different Re- 
views a letter stating that his hope was to raise 
money by them to pursue his studies and get to 
college. Hamilton, then of the Critical, showed 
me this letter. I asked him to let me review 
the book, which he promised ; but he sent me no 
books after the promise. Well, the M. Review 
noticed this little volume in the most cruel and 
insulting manner. I was provoked, and wrote 
to encourage the boy, offering to aid him in a 
subscription for a costlier publication. I spoke 
of him in London, and had assurances of assist- 
ance from Sotheby, and, by way of Wynn, from 
Lord Carysfort. His second letter to me, how- 
ever, said he was going to Cambridge, under 
Simeon's protection. I plainly saw that the 
Evangelicals had caught him ; and as he did not 
want what little help I could have procured, and 
I had no leisure for new correspondences, ceased 
to write to him, but did him what good I could 
in the way of reviewing, and getting him friends 
at Cambridge. He died last autumn, and I re- 
ceived a letter informing me of it. It gave me 
a sort of shock, because, in spite of his evangel- 
icism, I always expected great things, from the 
proof he had given of very superior powers ; 
and, in replying to this letter, I asked if there 
were any intention of publishing any thing which 
he might have left, and offered to give an opin- 
ion upon his papers, and look them over. Down 
came a boxful, the sight of which literally made 
my heart ache and my eyes overflow, for never 
did I behold such proofs of human industry. To 
make short, I took the matter up with interest, 
collected his letters, and have, at the expense of 
more time than such a poor fellow as myself can 
very well afford, done what his family are very 
grateful for, and what I think the world will 
thank me for too. Of course I have done it gra- 
tuitously. His life will affect you, for he fairly 
died of intense application. Cambridge finished 
him. When his nerves were already so over- 
strained that his nights were utter misery, they 
gave him medicines to enable him to hold out 
during examination for a prize ! The horse -won, 
but he died after the race ! Among his letters 
there is a great deal of Methodism : if this pro- 
cures for the book, as it very likely may, a sale 



222 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



tEtat. 33. 



among the righteous over-much, I shall rejoice 
for the sake of his family, for whom I am very 
much interested. I have, however, in justice to 
myself, stated, in the shortest and most decorous 
manner, that my own views of religion differ 
widely from his. Still, that I should become, 
and that, too, voluntarily, an editor of methodist- 
ical and Calvinistic letters, is a thing which, 
when I think of it, excites the same sort of smile 
that the thoughts of my pension does, and I won- 
der, like the sailor, what is to be done next. 

" Want of room has obliged me to reserve 
most of your letters, which I meant for the lat- 
ter end of Espriella's remarks ;* but when I 
came to the latter end, the printing had got be- 
yond my calculation of pages so much that I was 
fain to stop. I have good hopes of such a sale 
as may induce my friend to travel again, my own 
stock of matter not being half exhausted, nor, in- 
deed, my design half completed. The book ought 
to be published in a month. Palmerin will ap- 
pear nearly at the same time, and, perhaps, tend 
to remove suspicion, if any should subsist. The 
reception of this book will determine whether it 
is to be followed up or not ; but if it be, be as- 
sured that you shall have ample revenge upon 
Fuseli. 

" I know nothing of botany, and every day re- 
gret that I do not. It is a settled purpose of my 
heart, if my children live, to make them good 
naturalists. If you come either into Yorkshire 
or Northumberland, you must not return to the 
south without touching at Greta Hall, and seeing 
me in my glory. We have papered the parlor 
this very day. It is not so fine a room as yours, 
Mr. Duppa, but it is very beautiful, I assure you 
— and the masons are at this time making a ceil- 
ing to my study — and I have got curtains for it, 
the color of nankeen — and there is to be a car- 
pet, and a new fender, and all sorts of things, 
that are proper. Miss Barker tells me she has 
seen you. I am in good hope of persuading her 
to come down this summer, and if she comes she 
shall not go till I have a set of drawings for the 
parlor. 

" I want to hear, in spite of great trouble and 
little profit, that you have fixed upon a new sub- 
ject, and are again at work. There is no being 
happy without having some worthy occupation 
in hand. 

" Farewell ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"May 27, 1807. 
" My dear Rickmax, 
" The pleasantest season in the country for 
one who lives in it is undoubtedly the month of 
blossoms and beauty, when we have not only im- 
mediate enjoyment, but summer before us. The 
best season for seeing a country, and especially 
this country, is during the turn of the leaf. Sep- 
tember and October are our best months. We 
have usually long and delightful autumns, ex- 
tending further into the winter than they do in 



* Mr. Duppa had been furnishing him with some infor- 
mation for this book. 



the south of England. Our harvests, such as 
they are, are sometimes not in till the end of Oc- 
tober, every thing with us being proportionably 
late. 

" Mrs. Rickman has seen all that water colors 
can do for our lakes, in seeing them as delineated 
by Glover, who is of all our artists the truest to 
nature. But I will show her sights beyond all 
reach of human coloring — such work as nature 
herself makes with traveling clouds, and columns 
of misty sunshine, falling as if from an eye of 
light in Heaven, like that upon Guy Fawkes in 
the prayer-book. Every point of sight is beau- 
tiful, and Derwentwater can only be judged by 
a panorama, such as you will have from our boat. 
Do not wait for another year for the sake of in- 
cluding your Scotch journey. God knows what 
another year may produce, either of good or evil, 
to both of us. There is always so much chance 
of being summoned off on the grand tour of the 
universe, that a man ought not, without good 
reason, to delay any little trip he may wish to 
take first upon our microcosm. * * * 
# ■ =* # What you say about breeding 
up a boy to. understand the Keltic language has 
often been in my mind. Have you seen a good 
book in reply to Malthus by Dr. Jarroid ? This 
disjointed question comes in, because he shows 
how animals that are the most highly finished are 
most apt, like looking-glasses, to break in the 
making ; and I have always the fear of too much 
sensorial power in my children so before my 
eyes, as never willingly to shape any plan about 
them which might occasion more cause for dis- 
appointment. How easy would it be for the 
London Institution, or any society, to look out 
promising lads, and breed them up for specific 
literary purposes. Should Herbert live, I should 
more incline (as more connected with my own 
pursuits) to let him pass two or three years in 
Biscay, and so procure all that is to be found of 
Cantabrian antiquity — a distinct stock, I learn, 
from the Keltic ; but I believe that one part of 
our population came from those shores, of which 
the prevalence of dark hair and dark complex- 
ions is to me physical proof. Nothing can be no 
little calculated to advance our stock of knowl 
edge as our inveterate mode of education, where 
by we all spend so many years in learning so lit 
tie. I was from the age of six to that of twenty 
learning Greek and Latin, or, to speak more tru- 
ly, learning nothing else. The little Greek I had 
sleepeth, if it be not dead, and can hardly wake 
without a miracle, and my Latin, though abund- 
ant enough for all useful purposes, would be held 
in great contempt by those people who regard 
the classics as the scriptures of taste. * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

Some differences having arisen between the 
Messrs. Longman and Co. and the editor of the 
Edinburgh Review, it was at this time in con- 
templation to carry on the work under a differ- 
ent management; and on this supposition they 
wrote to my father, requesting him to furnish 
them with certain articles ' : in his best manner," 



JEtat. 33. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



223 



and offering payment at a higher rate than he 
had reeeivcd for the Annual Review. His re- 
ply shows that his principle was, "whatsoever 
his hand found to do, to do it with his might."* 
The contemplated separation of the editor from 
the Review did not, however, take place, and 
the articles were consequently transferred to the 
Annual, my father stating that nothing but the 
circumstance of the Review having changed 
hands, and their needing a ready writer, would 
induce him to have, any thing to do with it, dis- 
approving as he did the principles upon which it 
was conducted. 

To the Messrs. Longman and Co. 

" June 5, 1807. 
" Dear Sirs, 

" I will review the books as soon as they ar- 
rive, and as well as I can, but I can not do them 
better for an Edinburgh Review than for an An- 
nual one. There are many articles which are 
valued precisely in proportion to the time and 
labor bestowed upon them, and which, therefore, 
can be accurately fixed accordingly ; these arti- 
cles are not of that description. The worst re- 
viewals } t ou have ever had from me have cost 
me more time and labor than the best. When 
the subject is good, and I am acquainted with 
it, the pen flows freely ; otherwise it is tilling an 
ungrateful soil. I can promise you a better re- 
view of Clavigero than any other person could 
furnish ; upon the other books, I will do my best. 
All reviewals, however, which are not seasoned 
either with severity or impertinence, will seem 
flat to those whose palates have been accustomed 
to 's sauce-damnable. 

" Some time ago, the Bishop of Llandaff ob- 
served to me that few things were more wanted 
than a regular collection of translations of the 
ancient historians, comprising the whole of them 
in their chronological order. It is worth think- 
ing of; and if you should think of it, modern 
copyright need not stand in your way. Little- 
bury's Herodotus is better than Beloe's, and Gor- 
don's Tacitus far superior to Murphy's. Such a 
collection, well annotated, &c, could not fail to 
sell, and might best be published volume by vol- 
ume : if it were carried to the end of the Byz- 
antine history, so much the better both for the 
public and the publishers. This is not a plan in 
which I could bear any part myself, but it is worth 
your consideration. 

" The Spanish Joinville, I fear, perished at 
Hafod. If, however, by good fortune, it should 
have been returned to you before the fire, have 
the goodness to inclose it in the next parcel. I 
wait the arrival of one, expected by every car- 
rier, to make up a bundle for Dr. Aikin : the rea- 
son is this ; one of the books which I sent for im- 
plies by the title that I have been deceived in one 
of the Omniana articles, and I ordered the book 
for the sake of ascertaining the truth and cor- 
recting the error. 

* Ecclesiastcs, ix., 10. 



"Is there not a new edition of Whitehead's 
Life of Wesley ? If you will send me it, and 
with it the life published by Dr. Coke for the con- 
ference, I will either review it for you, or make 
a life myself for the Athenaeum, having Thomp- 
son's here, and also a complete set of Wesley's 
journals, which I have carefully read and marked 
for the purpose. 

" Yours truly, R. Southey. 

" I hope you will accommodate matters with 
Jeffrey ; for if there should be two Edinburgh 
Reviews, or if he should set up another under a 
new title, you would probably be the sufferer, 
even though yours should manifestly be the best 
— such is the force of prejudice." 

The following playful effusion was addressed 
to Hartley Coleridge, who is often referred to in 
the earlier letters by the name of Moses, it being 
my father's humor to bestow on his little play- 
fellows many and various such names. When 
those allusions and this letter were selected for 
publication, my cousin was yet among us, and I 
had pleasantly anticipated his half-serious, half- 
playful remonstrances for thus bringing his child- 
hood before the public. Now he is among the 
departed ; and those only who knew him inti- 
mately can tell how well-stored and large a 
mind has gone with him, much less how kind a 
heart and how affectionate a disposition. He has 
found his last peaceful resting-place (where Dr. 
Arnold so beautifully expresses a wish that he 
might lie) " beneath the yews of Grasmere 
church-yard, with the Rotha, with its deep and 
silent pools, passing by ;" but his name will long 
be a "living one" among the hill-sides and glens 
of our rugged country, 

" Stern and wild, 
Meet nurse for a poetic child." 

To Hartley Coleridge. 

"Keswick, June 13, 1807. 
" Nephew Job, 

" First, I have to thank you for your letter 
and your poem ; and, secondly, to explain why I 
have not done this sooner. We were a long 
time without knowing where you were, and, 
when news came from Miss Barker that you 
were in London, by the time a letter could have 
reached you you were gone ; and, lastly, Mr. 
Jackson wrote to you to Bristol. I will now 
compose an epistle which will follow you fur- 
ther west. 

" Bona Marietta hath had kittens ; they were 
remarkably ugly, all taking after their father 
Thomas, who there is reason to believe was ei- 
ther uncle or grandsire to Bona herself, the pro- 
hibited degrees of consanguinity which you will 
find at the end of the Bible not being regarded 
by cats. As I have never been able to persuade 
this family that catlings, fed for the purpose and 
smothered with onions, would be rabbits to all 
eatable purposes, Bona Marietta's ugly progeny 
no sooner came into the world than they were 
sent out of it ; the river nymph Greta conveyed 
them to the river god Derwent ; and if neither 



224 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^tat. 33. 



the eels nor the ladies &f the lake have taken a 
fancy to them on their way, Derwent hath con- 
signed them to the Nereids. You may imagine 
them converted into sea-cats by favor of Nep- 
tune, and write an episode to be inserted in 
Ovid's Metamorphoses. Bona bore the loss pa- 
tiently, and is in good health and spirits. I fear 
that if you meet with any of the race of Mrs. 
Rowe's cat at Ottery, you will forget poor Ma- 
rietta. Don't bite your arm, Job. 

" We have been out one evening in the boat 
— Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Wilson, and the children — 
and kindled our fire upon the same place where 
you drank tea with us last autumn. The boat 
has been painted, and there is to be a boat-house 
built for it. Alterations are going on here upon 
a great scale. The parlor has been transmog- 
rified. That, Hartley, was one of my mother's 
words ; your mother will explain it to you. The 
masons are at work in my study ; the garden is 
inclosed with a hedge ; some trees planted be- 
hind it, a few shrubs, and abundance of currant- 
trees. We must, however, wait till the autumn 
before all can be done that is intended in the 
garden. Mr. White, the Belligerent, is settled 
in the general's house. Find out why I give 
him that appellation. 

" There has been a misfortune in the family. 
We had a hen with five chickens, and a gleed 
has carried off four. I have declared war against 
the gleed, and borrowed a gun; but since the 
gun has been in the house, he has never made 
his appearance. Who can have told him of it? 
Another hen is sitting, and I hope the next brood 
will be luckier. Mr. Jackson has bought a cow, 
but he has had no calf since you left him. Edith 
has taken your place in his house, and talks to 
Mrs. Wilson by the hour about her Hartley. She 
grows like a young giantess, and has a dispo- 
sition to bite her arm, which, you know, is a 
very foolish trick. Herbert is a fine fellow; I 
call him the Boy of Basan, because he roars like 
a 3 7 oung bull when he is pleased ; indeed, he 
promises to inherit his father's vocal powers. 

" The weather has been very bad — nothing 
but easterly winds, which have kept every thing 
back. We had one day hotter than had been 
remembered for fourteen years : the glass was 
at 85° in the shade, in the sun in Mr. Calvert's 
garden at 118°. The horses of the mail died 
at Carlisle. I never remember to have felt such 
heat in England, except one day fourteen years 
ago, when I chanced to be in the mail-coach, 
and it was necessary to bleed the horses, or they 
would have died then. In the course of three 
days the glass fell forty degrees, and the wind 
was so cold and so violent that persons who at- 
tempted to cross the Fells beyond Penrith were 
forced to turn back. 

"Your friend Dapper, who is, I believe, your 
god-dog, is in good health, though he grows 
every summer graver than the last. This is the 
natural effect of time, which, as you know, has 
made me the serious man I am. I hope it will 
have the same effect upon you and your mother, 
and that, when she returrs, she will have left 



off* that evil habit of quizzing me and calling me 
names : it is not decorous in a woman of her 
years. 

" Remember me to Mr. Poole, and tell him I 
shall be glad when he turns laker. He will find 
tolerable lodgings at the Hill; a boat for fine 
weather, good stores of books for a rainy day, 
and as hearty a shake by the hand on his arrival 
as he is likely to meet with between Stowey and 
Keswick. Some books of mine will soon be 
ready for your father. Will he have them sent 
any where ? or will he pick them up himself 
when he passes through London on his way 
northward ? Tell him that I am advancing well 
in South America, and shall have finished a vol- 
ume by the end of the year. The Chronicle of 
the Cid is to go to press as soon as I receive 
some books from Lisbon, which must first be ex- 
amined. This intelligence is for him also. 

"I am desired to send you as much love as 
can be inclosed in a letter : I hope it will not 
be charged double on that account at the post- 
office ; but there is Mrs. Wilson's love, Mr. Jack- 
son's, your Aunt Southey's, your Aunt Lovell's, 
and Edith's; with a purr from Bona Marietta, 
an open-mouthed kiss from Herbert, and three 
wags of the tail from Dapper. I trust thev will 
all arrive safe, and remain, 

" Dear nephew Job, 

" Your dutiful uncle, 

"Robert Southey." 

To the Messrs. Longman mid Co. 

"June 29, 1807. 
"Dear Sirs, 
" I have been told by persons most capable of 
judging, that the old translation of Don Quixote 
is very beautiful. The book has never fallen in 
my way. If it be well translated, the language 
of Elizabeth's reign must needs accord better 
with the style of Cervantes than more modern 
English would do, and I should think it very 
probable that it would be better to correct this 
than to translate the work anew. As for my 
undertaking any translation, or, indeed, any re- 
vision, which might lead to the labor, or half the 
labor, which Palmerin cost me, it is out of the 
question ; but if Mr. Heber can lend you this 
translation, I will give you my opinion upon it ; 
and I will do for you, k you want it, what you 
would find much difficulty in getting done by 
any other person — add to a Life of Cervantes an 
account of all his other writings, and likewise 
of the books in Don Quixote's library, as far as 
my own stores will reach, and those which we 
may find access to, and make such notes upon 
the whole book as my knowledge of the history 
and literature of Spain can supply. I believe a 

new translation has been announced by Mr. , 

whose translation of Yriarte proved that either 
he did not understand the original, or that of all 
translators he is the most impudent. Such pre- 
liminaries as these which I propose might fill 
half a volume, or extend to a whole one, just as 
might be judged most expedient. It gives me 
very great pleasure to hear that you have en- 



jEtAT. 34. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



225 



gaged for a genuine version of the Arabian 
Nights, which I consider as one of the greatest 
desideratums in modern Oriental literature. We 
have a number of imitations in our language, 
which I am still boy enough to delight in ; and 
were you, as the French have done, to publish a 
complete collection of them, I, for one, should be 
glad of the opportunity of buying them. If you 
published them volume by volume, with good 
prints, like your Theatre, school-boys would take 
off half an edition. 

"As the new Joinville is, beyond all compar- 
ison, the most unreasonably dear book I ever 
saw, so is your Holinshed the cheapest; and I 
shall keep the copy you have sent accordingly. 
Dear books may not deter the rich from purchas- 
ing, but here is proof for you that cheap ones 
tempt the poor. 

"Co-morrow I will make up my parcel for 
the Athenaeum. At Dr. Aikin's request, I have 
undertaken (long since) the Spanish and Portu- 
guese literary part of his Biography. Some ar- 
ticles appeared in the last volume, and, few as 
they are, I suppose they entitle me to it. Will 
vou ask Dr. A. if this be the case ? 

" Yours truly, II . Southey." 

To the Messrs. Longman and Co. 

"August 25, 1807. 
"Dear Sirs, 

" The motives which induced me to propose 
selling an edition of the Cid may be very soon 
explained. I have been settling myself here in 
a permanent place of abode, and, in consequence, 
many unavoidable expenses have been incurred. 
Among others, that of removing from Bristol a 
much larger library than perhaps any other man 
living, whose means are so scanty, is possessed 
of. I thank you for the manner in which you 
have objected to purchasing it, and am more 
gratified by it than I should have been by your 
acceptance. The sale of this book can not be 
so doubtful as that of a poem. A part of it shall 
be sent up in a few days, and the sooner it is put 
to press the' better. If it suit you, I should much 
like to let Pople print it. He has not made all 
the haste he could with Palmerin, but he has 
taken great pains with it ; for never had printer 
a more perplexed copy to follow, and he has 
been surprisingly correct. 

" I do not know what the state of my account 
with you is. Mr. Aikin has sent me no returns 
either for this year's reviewing or the last. I 
suppose, however, that the edition of Espriella 
will about balance it ; and if I may look to you 
for about <5£l50 between this and the end of the 
year, my exigencies will be supplied. Mean- 
time I am desirous that my exertions should be 
proportionate to my wants. The old edition of 
Don Quixote, if carefully collated and corrected, 
will, I believe, be very superior to any other. 
As soon as the original arrives, with the re- 
mainder of my books, from London, I shall be 
able to speak decisively ; but I have little or no 
doubt but it will prove as I expect. If this be the 
case, I am ready to undertake it, to supply such 



preliminaries as I formerly stateo, and to add 
notes. 

" The ' Catalogue Raisonne' can not be exe- 
cuted by a single person. I could do great part 
of it — probably all except the legal and scientific 
departments. Upon this matter I will think, 
and write to you in a few days. 

"What is this History of South America 
which I am told is announced ? I am getting 
on with my own Brazil and the River Plata, and 
it is not possible that any man in England can 
have one tenth part of the materials which 1 
possess for such a work. Were you to see the 
manuscripts which I possess, you would be fully 
convinced of this, and without seeing them you 
can hardly form an estimate of their value and 
importance. * # ■* * * * * 
" Yours truly, R. Southey." 

To the Messrs. Longman and Co. 

"Sept. 20, 1807. 
"Dear Sirs, 

"I have been considering and reconsidering 
the plan of a Critical Catalogue. On the scale 
which you propose, it approaches so nearly t® 
what we had formerly projected as a complete 
Bibliotheca Britannica, that I should be loth to 
go so near it and yet stop short. On the pres- 
ent scale (and were you disposed to extend it 
to the original extent, it would be quite impos- 
sible for me till my historical labors are closed), 
the opinions given must necessarily be so short, 
that in most instances the main business would 
be to copy title-pages. Now it would take an 
amanuensis more time ten-fold to hunt out the 
book than to do this ; and yet, as you say, my 
time may be employed more satisfactorily for 
myself, and probably more to your advantage as 
well as my own, than in mere transcription. 

" Of the possible size of such a work I can 
not form even a decent conjecture. Scarce books 
are more numerous than good ones, have longer 
titles, and require sometimes a long description. 
Perhaps the best way would be to begin with a 
chronological list of all that have been printed 
before the accession of Henry VIII., when print- 
ing may be said to have become common. All 
these books have a great value from their scar- 
city — indeed, their main value — and had better 
be classed together than under any separate 
heads. A complete list might be furnished by 
Mr. Dibdin, who must already have collected all 
the necessary knowledge for his edition Gf Ames. 
Mr. Park could supply the poets, and, indeed, 
manage the whole better than any other person. 
I could give a better opinion of works than he 
could, and believe that I knoio more of them ; 
but there is a sort of title-page and colophon 
knowledge — in one word, bibliology — which is 
exactly what is wanted for this purpose, and in 
which he is very much my superior. The way 
in which I could be best employed would be in 
looking over the MS., adding to it any thing in 
my knowledge, if any thing there might be, 
which had escaped him, and supplying a brief 
criticism where it was wanted, and I could give it. 



226 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 34. 



" Any such assistance I should willingly give ; 
but upon slow and frequent consideration, I cer- 
tainly think the whole may be better executed 
in London than here, and by many others than 
by me , for of all sorts of work, it is that in 
which there must be most transcription, and in 
which it will be most inconvenient to employ an 
amanuensis. 

" The extent of such a book will probably be 
wholly immaterial to its sale. None but those 
who have libraries will buy it, and those may 
almost be calculated upon. There will also be 
some sale for it abroad, more than is usual for En- 
glish books. The one thing in which it seems 
possible to improve upon the best catalogue is, by 
arranging the books in every subdivision chrono- 
logically, according to the time when they were 
written. 

" Yours truly, R. Southey." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Keswick, Sept. 27, 1807. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I have desired Longman to send you a copy 
of Palmerin of England, knowing that you. who 
love to read as well as to sing of knights' and 
gentle ladies' deeds, will not be dismayed at the 
sight of four volumes more corpulent than vol- 
umes are wont to be in these degenerate days. 
The romance, though not so good as Amadis, is 
a good romance, and far superior to any other of 
the Spanish school that I have yet seen. I know 
not whether you will think that part of the pref- 
ace satisfactory, in which it is argued that Mo- 
raes is the author. It is so to myself.* 

" I rejoice to hear that we are to have another 
Lay, and hope we may have as many Last Lays 
of the Minstrel as our ancestors had Last Words 
of Mr. Baxter. My own lays are probably at an 
end. That portion of my time which I can af- 
ford to employ in laboring for fame is given to 
historical pursuits ; and poetry will not procure 
for me any thing more substantial. This motive 
alone would not, perhaps, wean me from an old 
calling, if I were not grown more attached to 
the business of historical research, and more dis- 
posed to instruct and admonish mankind than to 
amuse them. 

" The Chronicle of the Cid is just gone to 
press — the most ancient and most curious piece 
of chivalrous history in existence — a book after 
your own heart. It will serve as the prologue 
to a long series of labors, of which, whenever 
you will take Keswick in* your way to or from 
London, I shall be very glad to show you some 
samples. I am now settled here, and am get- 
ting my books about me; you will find a boat 
for fine weather, and a good many out-of-the- 
way books for a rainy day. 

" I beg to be remembered to Mrs. Scott. 
" Yours very truly, 

"Robert Southey." 



* It has since been proved that the real author of Pal- 
merin was Luis Hurtado. a Spaniard. See Quarterly Re- 
view, vol. lxxii., p 10 



To Messrs. Longman and Co. 

" Nov. 13, 1807. 
"Dear Sirs, 

" We have certainly some reason to complain 
of Cadell and Davies ; poor Cervantes, however, 
has more. # * # Their splendid 

edition will be sure to sell for its splendor. I 
would have made such a work as should have 
been reprinted after the plates were worn out. 
I thank you for offering to engage in it, but my 
nature is as little disposed to this kind of warfare 
as yours ; and I have as many plans to execute 
as I shall ever find life to perform. Let it pass. 
Morte d' Arthur is a book which I shall edit with 
peculiar pleasure, because it has been my delight 
since I was a school-boy. There is nothing to 
be done in it but to introduce it with a preface 
and accompany it with notes. No time need be 
lost. As soon as you can meet with a cofty, it 
may be put into Pople's hands ; and by the time 
he has got through it, the introduction and an- 
notations will be ready. I will send back Heber's 
books (which I have detained, expecting to use 
them for the D. Quixote) . For the Athenaeum, 
it will be sufficient to say that I am preparing 
an edition of Morte d' Arthur, with an introduc- 
tion and notes. 

" I have materials for a volume of Travels in 
Portugal, which the expulsion of the English from 
that country, and the consequent impossibility 
of my returning there to visit the northern prov- 
inces, as was my intention, induces me to think 
of preparing for the press. In what form are 
such works most profitable ? If in quarto with 
engravings, I can procure some sketches and 
some finished drawings. If you judge it expedi- 
ent to reprint my former volume, it must under- 
go some corrections ; for, though it has pleased 
the public to receive my first publications far 
more favorably than my later ones, I am fully 
sensible of their faults, and look upon them with 
sufficient humiliation. 

The D. Quixote shall be returned .in my first 
parcel. The only reason I have for regretting 
that Mr. Balfour has elbowed me out of an office 
to which he certainly has no pretensions what- 
ever is, that I wished to do something, the emolu- 
ment of which should be certain, for I can not 
be anticipating uncertain profits without feeling 
some anxiety. I have translations enough al- 
most to make a little volume like Lord Strang- 
ford's, but then I am not a lord. I have ballads 
enough for half a volume, but people are more 
ready to ask copies of them now than they would 
be to buy them ; and were I to. write as many 
more, according to all likelihood I should not get 
more by publishing them than any London news- 
paper would give me for any number of verses, 
good, bad, or indifferent, sold by the yard, and 
without the maker's name to warrant them. 
What I feel most desirous to do is to send Espri- 
ella again on his travels, and so complete my 



fancy of the public. 

" Yours truly, 



R. Southey. 



/Etat. 34. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



227 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Nov. 15,1807. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I do not know that I should have taken up 
my pen with the intention of inflicting a letter 
upon you, if it had not been for a suspicion, pro- 
duced by ypur last letter, that you expect me in 
London sooner than it is any ways possible for 
me to be there, and that peradventure, therefore, 
you may think it is not worth while to look after 
my pension till I arrive in proper person to re- 
ceive it. Now, Mr. Bedford, touching this mat- 
ter there are two things to be said. My going 
to London seems to me no very certain thing. 
It depends something on ray uncle's movements, 
of whose arrival from Lisbon I daily expect to 
hear ; and, of oourse, if I go, my journey must be 
so timed as to meet him. It depends, also, some- 
thing on ray finances ; and I begin to think that 
I can not afford the expense of the journey, fori 
have had extraordinary goings-out this year in 
settling myself, and no extraordinary comings-in 
to counterbalance them. The Constable is a 
leaden-heeled rascal, and if I do not take care, 
will be left confoundedly behind. I must work 
like a negro the whole winter to set things right, 
and the nearer the time for my projected journey 
approaches, the less likely is it that I can spare 
it. My object in going would be to consult cer- 
tain books for the preliminaries and notes for the 
Cid ; and these books I should assuredly feel my- 
self bound to consult if it required no other sacri- 
fices than those of time and trouble. But if the 
necessary expense can not prudently and justi- 
fiably be afforded, I must be content to do the 
best I can, which will be quite good enough to 
satisfy every body except myself. In the second 
place, if ) r ou can, by any interest, get my pension 
paid, I pray you exert it. I foresee that I shall 
be kept in hot water by it till I am lucky enough 
to get som« little prize in the lottery of life, which 
will enable me to wait without inconvenience for 
arrears. At present, the only chance for this is 
in the sale of Espriella. Should that go through 
two or three editions, it will set me fairly afloat. 

u I thought to have brought up my lee-way by 
doing a specific piece of job-work, of which I 
have been rather unhandsomely disappointed. 
The story is simply this : Smirke has projected 
a splendid edition of Don Quixote with Cadell 
and Davies. They proposed to Longman to take 
a share in it, and he was authorized by them to 
ask me to translate it. While I was correspond- 
ing with them upon the fitness of revising the 
first translation in preference, and forming such 
a plan for preliminaries and annotations as would 
have made a great body of Spanish learning, 
Cadell and Davies, unknown to them, struck a 
bargain with a Mr. Balfour, who is no more able 
to translate Don Quixote than he would have been 
to write it. This is some disappointment, to me, 
as I should have been paid a specific sum for my 
work, and could have calculated upon it. The 
Longmans behave as they ought to do in the 
business. They refuse to take any share in the 
work in consequence of this unhandsome dealing 



toward me, and offer to publish my edition upon 
our ordinary terms of halving the profits. This, 
however, would not serve my purpose. 

" My affairs are not in a bad train, except for 
the present. The profits of the current edition 
of Espriella, and of the unborn one of the Cid, 
are anticipated and gone. Those of the Speci- 
mens, of the small edition of Madoc, and of Pal- 
merin, are untouched. But if the three send me 
in £100 at the end of the year's sale, it will be 
more than I expect. The fir,st volume of Brazil 
will be ready for the press next summer. I think 
also of publishing my travels in Portugal, for 
which good materials have long lain by me, and 
we are now talking of editing Morte d' Arthur. 
Reviewing comes among the ordinaries of the 
year ; in my conscience I do not think any body 
else does so much and gets so little for it. 
Have I told you that my whole profits upon 
Madoc up to Midsummer last amount to £25 ? 
and the whole it is likely to be, unless the re- 
maining 134 copies be sold as waste paper. 

" I shall do yet; and if there be any thing like 
a dispirited tone in this letter, it is more because 
my eyes are weak than for any other cause. It 
is likely that Espriella will bear me out — I must 
be more than commonly unlucky if it does not — 
and if it does not, I will seek more review em- 
ployment, write in more magazines, and scribble 
verses for the newspapers. As long as I can 
keep half my time for labors worthy of myself 
and of posterity, I shall not feel debased by sacri- 
ficing the other, however unworthily it may be 
employed. You will say, why do you not write 
for the stage? The temptations to it are so 
strong, and I have made the resolution so often, 
that not to have done it yet is good proof of a 
self-conviction that it would not be done well ; 
besides, I have not leisure from present urgencies. 

" Now do not fancy me bent double like the 
Pilgrim, under this load upon my back ; I am as 
bolt upright as ever, and in as wholesome good 
spirits, and, as soon as this letter is folded and 
sent off, shall go on with reviewing Buchanan's 
Travels, and forget every thing except what I 
know concerning Malabar. 

"God bless you! R. S " 

To Richard Hcber, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 16, 1807. 
".My dear Sir, 
"I am now about to edit Morte d' Arthur. 
My Round-table knowledge is as extensive as 
that of any, perhaps, but my Round-table library 
is scanty : of old books it contains none except 
the English Geoffrey of Monmouth and the two 
long Poems of Luigi Alemanni. My plan is, to 
give the history of Arthur, and collect, by the 
aid of Turner, Owen, and Edward Williams, all 
that the Welsh themselves can supply, and then 
the critical bibliography of the Round Table. 
The notes will refer to the originals from which 
this delightful book has been compiled, and give 
all the illustrations that I can supply. Once 
more, therefore, I must beg your assistance, and 
ask you to send me as many books as you havo 



228 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 34. 



which bear upon this subject. A Mr. Goldsmid 
sent me a list of his romances some time ago, 
and his collection will probably contain what 
yours may want. Will you add to them your 
copy of Oviedo's History of the New World ? 

" The printer's copy of Palmerin was, I hope, 
returned to you, according to your desire and my 
directions. It will show you that I am not an 
idle editor, whatever those unhappy Specimens 
may have induced you to think. Should this 
Palmerin sell, I would gladly follow it with the 
third part, if the original could be procured ; but 
the only chance of meeting with one would be 
in the king's library, and there, of course, it 
would be useless. 

"I have many things in hand. The Chroni- 
cle of the Cid will be likely to please you. It 
will soon be followed by the History of Brazil, 
and that by the other part of the History of Por- 
tugal and its Conquests. With poetry I must 
have done, unless I could afford another Madoc 
for five-and-twenty pounds, which is all that it 
has pleased the public to let me get by it. I 
feel some pride in having done well, but it is 
more than counterbalanced by the consciousness 
that I could do better, and yet am never likely 
to have an opportunity. St. Cecilia herself could 
not have played the organ if there had been no- 
body to blow the bellows for her. Drafts upon 
posterity will not pass for current expenses. My 
poems have sold exactly in an inverse ratio to 
their merit ; and I can not go back to boyhood, 
and put myself again upon a level with the taste 
of the book-buying readers. My numerous plans 
and collections for them will figure away w T hen 
I am dead, and afford excellent occasion for ex- 
clamations of edifying regret from those very 
persons who w T ould have traduced what they will 
think it decorous to lament. 

" You will see, in the preface to Palmerin, 
that I have tracked Shakspeare, Sydney, and 
Spenser to Amadis of Greece. I have an im- 
perfect copy of Florisel of Nequea, the next in 
the series, and there I find the mock execution 
of Pamela and Philoclea, and Amoret with her 
open wound. 

"Yours very truly, Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 24. 1807. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" Mine is a strong spirit, and I am very de- 
sirous that you should not suppose it to be more 
severely tried than it is. The temporary incon- 
venience which I feel is solely produced by un- 
avoidable expenses in settling myself, which will 
not occur again ; and if Esprielia slides into a 
good sale, or if one edition of our deplorable 
Specimens should go off, I shall be floated into 
smooth water. Bear this in mind, also, that I 
can command an income, fully equivalent to all 
my wants, whenever I choose to write for money, 
and for nothing else. Our Fathers in the Row 
would find me task-work to any amount which 
I might -wish to undertake, and I could assuredly 
make c£300 a year as easily as I now make half | 



that sum, simply by writing anonymously, and 
doing what five hundred trading authors could 
do just as well. This is the worst which can 
befall me. 

" Old John Southey dealt unjustly by me ; but 
it was what I expected, and his brother will, 
without doubt, do just the same. In case of 
Lord Somerville's death without a son, a consid- 
erable property devolves to me or my represent- 
atives — encumbered, however, with a lawsui* 
to recover it ; and, as I should be compelled to 
enter into this, I have only to hope his lordship 
will have the goodness to live as long as Ifdo 
and save me from the disquietude which this 
would occasion. I used to think that the repu 
tation which I should establish would ultimately 
turn to marketable account, and that my books 
would sell as well as if they were seasoned with 
slander or obscenity. In time they will — it will 
not be in my time. I have, however, an easy 
means of securing some part of the advantage to 
my family, by forbearing to publish any more 
corrected editions during my lifetime, and leav 
ing such corrections as will avail to give a sec 
ond lease of copyright, and make any book-sell 
er's editions of no value. As for my family, ] 
have no fears for them ; they would find friends 
enough when I am gone ; and having this confi 
dence, you may be sure that there is not a light 
er-hearted man in the world than myself. 

" Basta — or, as we say in Latin, Ohe jam 
satis est. My eyes are better, which I attribute 
to an old velvet bonnet of Edith's, convertec 
without alteration into a most venerable study 
ing cap for my worship : it keeps my ears warra 
and I am disposed to believe that having the 
sides of my head cold, as this Kamtschatka 
weather needs must make it, affected the eyes. 
Mr. Bedford, you may imagine what a venera- 
ble, and, as the French say, penetrating air this 
gives me. Hair, forehead, eyebrow^, and eyes 
are hidden ; nothing appears but nose ; but that 
is so cold that I expect every morning when I 
get out of bed to see the snow lie on the summit 
of it. This complaint was not my old Egyptian* 
plague, but pure weakness, which makes what 
I have said probable. # # # =* 

" We had an interesting guest here a few 
evenings ago, who came to visit Tom — Captain 
Guillem, Nelson's first lieutenant at Trafalgar, 
a sailor of the old Blake and Dampier breed, who 
has risen from before the mast, was in Duncan's 
action, and at Copenhagen, &c. He told us more 
of Nelson than I can find time to write. * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Dec 5, 1807. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

Our Fathers inform me that about 300 copies of 
Esprielia remain unsold, and that probably it 
would be expedient to begin reprinting it in 



* A species of ophthalmia, from which he formerly suf- 
fered. 



^Etat. 34. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



229 



■ about a month. You may have heard or seen 

■ that D. Manuel has a friend in the Courier and 
in the Morning Post. This is Stuart's doing, 
who will befriend him still more by giving me 
some facts for what further is to be added to 
complete the object of the book. As for the 
Specimens, I am perfectly satisfied that it will 
be very easy to metamorphose them into a good 
Nook, if ever there should be a second edition. 

"I have seen only one reviewal of it, which 
was in the Monthly Magazine some months ago, 
ind then the author contrived to invalidate all 
the censure which he had cast upon it by abusing 
me in toto as a blockhead, coxcomb, &c, &c. 

" I am a good deal surprised at your saying 
that the dunces of 1700 were like the dunces of 
1800. Surely you have said this without think- 
ing what you were saying : they are as different 
as the fops of the two periods. You are wrong, 
also, in your praise of Ellis's book : his is a very 
praiseworthy book, as far as matter of fact, his- 
tory, and arrangement go ; but the moment that 
ends, and the series of specimens begins, all 
views of manner, and all light of history, disap- 
pear, and you have little else than a collection 
of amatory pieces selected with little knowledge 
And less taste. 

^r ^ ^ ^Jr ^r tt ^ 

" Captain Guillem is at home in the Isle of 
Man, having realized from ten to fifteen thousand 
pounds. He has no chance of being employed, 
having no interest to get a ship, and, what is 
better, no wish to have one. Yet he is precisely 
such a man as ought to be employed — a true- 
bred English sailor. Let him be at sea forty 
years, and there would be no mutiny on board 
his ship ; boy-captains are the persons who make 
mutinies. Oh, Grosvenor Bedford, what a pamph- 
let would I write about the navy if my brother 
were not in it ! 

" I do not send you Henry White's Remains, 
because, though as many copies were offered me 
as I should choose to take, I declined taking any 
more than one for myself. I hope they will sell, 
and believe so ; his piety will recommend the 
book to the Evangelicals, and his genius to men 
of letters. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

My father's acquaintance with Sir Walter 
Scott, commenced by the short visit he had made 
to Ashestiel in the autumn of 1805, and con- 
tinued, as we have seen, by letter, now began to 
assume a closer character, and, through his 
friendly mediation, some overtures were now 
made to him to take service in the corps of his 
opponent Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review. 
" As you occasionally review," Sir Walter wrote 
to him at this time (November, 1807), " will you 
forgive my suggesting a circumstance for your 
consideration, to which you will give exactly the 
degree of weight you please ? I am perfectly 
certain that Jeffrey would think himself both 
happy and honored in receiving any communica- 
tions which you might send him, choosing your 
books and expressing your own opinions. The 



terms of the Edinburgh Review are ten guineas 
per sheet, and will shortly be advanced consid- 
erably. I question if the same unpleasant sort 
of work is any where else so well compensated. 
The only reason which occurs to me as likely to 
prevent your rendering the Edinburgh some crit- 
ical assistance, is the severity of the criticisms 
upon Madoc and Thalaba. I do not know if 
this will be at all removed by my assuring you, 
as I do upon my honor, that Jeffrey has, not- 
withstanding the flippancy of these attacks, the 
most sincere respect both for your person and 
talents. The other day I designedly led the con- 
versation on that subject, and had the same rea- 
son I always have had to consider his attack as 
arising from a radical difference in point of taste, 
or, rather, feeling of poetry, but by no means 
from any thing approaching either to enmity or 
a false conception of your talents. I do not 
think that a difference of this sort should prevent 
you, if you are otherwise disposed to do so, from 
carrying a portion, at least, of your critical la- 
bors to a better market than the Annual. Pray 
think of this ; and, if you are disposed to give 
your assistance, I am positively certain that I 
can transact the matter with the utmost delicacy 
toward both my friends. I am certain you may 
add d£l00 a year, or double that sum, to your 
income in this way, with almost no trouble ; and, 
as times go, that is no trifle." 

In this letter (which is published in Sir Wal- 
ter Scott's Life) he speaks also of his intention of 
publishing a small edition of the Morte d' Arthur, 
which, as the reader has seen, was ground al- 
ready preoccupied by my father, who, in his re- 
ply, explains this, as well as answers at length 
his friend's proposal. 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 8, 1807. 
" My dear Scott, 
" I am very much obliged to you for the offer 
which you make concerning the Edinburgh Re- 
view, and fully sensible of your friendliness, and 
the advantages which it holds out. I bear as 
little ill-will to Jeffrey as he does to me, and at- 
tribute whatever civil things he has said of me 
to especial civility, whatever pert ones (a truer 
epithet than severe would be) to the habit which 
he has acquired of taking it for granted that the 
critic is, by virtue of his office, superior to every 
writer whom he chooses to summon before him. 
The reviewals of Thalaba and Madoc do in no 
degree influence me. Setting all personal feel- 
ings aside, the objections which weigh with me 
against bearing any part in this journal are these : 
I have scarcely one opinion in common with it 
upon any subject. Jeffrey is for peace, and is 
endeavoring to frighten the people into it : I am 
for war as long as Bonaparte lives. He is for 
Catholic emancipation : I believe that its imme- 
diate consequence would be to introduce an Iri^h 
priest into every ship in the navy. My feelings 
are still less in unison with him than my opin- 
ions. On subjects of moral or political import- 
ance, no man is more apt to speak in the very 



230 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 34 



gall of bitterness than I am, and this habit is 
likely to go with me to the grave ; but that sort 
of bitterness in which he indulges, which tends 
directly to wound a man in his feelings, and in- 
jure him in his fame and fortune (Montgomery 
is a case in point), appears to me utterly inex- 
cusable. Now, though there would be no ne- 
cessity that I should follow this example, yet ev- 
ery separate article in the Review derives au- 
thority from the merit of all the others ; and, in 
this way, whatever of any merit I might insert 
there would aid and abet opinions hostile to my 
own, and thus identify me with a system which 
I thoroughly disapprove. This is not said hasti- 
ly. The emolument to be derived from writing 
at ten guineas a sheet, Scotch measure, instead 
of seven pounds, Annual, would be considerable ; 
the pecuniary advantage resulting from the dif- 
ferent manner in which my future works would 
be handled, probably still more so. But my 
moral feelings must not be compromised. To 
Jeffrey as an individual I shall ever be ready to 
show every kind of individual courtesy ; but of 
Judge Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review I must 
ever think and speak as of a bad politician, a 
worse moralist, and a critic, in matters of taste, 
equally incompetent and unjust. 

" Your letter was delayed a week upon the 
road by the snow. I wish it had been written 
sooner, and had traveled faster, or that I had 
communicated to you my own long-projected 
edition of Morte d ; Arthur. I am sorry to have 
forestalled you, and you are the only person whom 
I should be sorry to forestall in tbis case, because 
you are the only person who could do it certain- 
ly as well, and perhaps better, with less labor 
than myself. My plan is to give the whole bib- 
liology of the Round Table in the preliminaries, 
and indicate the source of every chapter in the 
notes. 

" The reviewal of Wordsworth I am not likely 
to see, the Edinburgh very rarely lying in my 
way. My own notions respecting the book agree 
in the main with yours, though I may probably 
go a step further than you in admiration. There 
are certainly some pieces there which are good 
for nothing (none, however, which a bad poet 
could have written), and very many which it was 
highly injudicious to publish. That song to Lord 
Clifford, which you particularize, is truly a noble 
poem. The Ode upon Pre-existence is a dark 
subject darkly handled. Coleridge is the only 
man who could make such a subject luminous. 
The Leech-gatherer is one of my favorites ; there 
he has caught Spenser's manner, and, in many 
cf the better poemets, has equally caught the 
best manner of old Wither, who, with all his long 
fits of dullness and prosing, had the heart and 
soul of a poet in him. The sonnets are in a grand 
style. I only wish Dundee had not been men- 
tioned. James Grahame and I always call that 
man Claverhouse, the name by which the devils 
know him below. 

:; Marmion is expected as impatiently by me 
as he is by ten thousand others. Believe me, 
Scott, no man of real genius was ever yet a pu- 



ritanical stickler for correctness, or fastidious 
about any faults except this own. The best art- 
ists, both in poetry and painting, have produced 
the most. Give me more lays, and correct them 
at leisure for after editions — not laboriously, but 
when the amendment comes naturally and un- 
sought for. It never does to sit down doggedly 
to correct. 

" The Cid is about half through the press, and 
will not disappoint you. It is much in the lan- 
guage of Amadis, both books having been writ- 
ten before men began to think of a fine style. 
This is one cause why Amadis is so far superior 
to Palmerin. There are passages of a poet's 
feeling in the Cid, and some of the finest circum- 
stances of chivalry. I expect much credit from 
this work. 

" To recur to the Edinburgh Review, let me 
once more assure you that, if I do not grievous- 
ly deceive myself, the criticisms upon my own 
poems have not influenced me ; for, however un- 
just they were, they were less so, and far less 
uncourteous, than what I meet with in other 
journals ; and, though these things injure me 
materially in a pecuniary point of view, they 
make no more impression upon me than the bite 
of a sucking flea would do upon Garagantua. 
The business of reviewing, much as I have done 
in it myself, I disapprove of, but, most of all, 
when it is carried on upon such a system as Jef- 
frey's. The judge is criminal who acquits the 
guilty, but he is far more so who condemns the 
innocent. In the Annual I have only one coadju- 
tor, all the other writers being below contempt. 
In the Edinburgh I should have had many with 
whom I should have felt it creditable to myself 
to have been associated, if the irreconcilable dif- 
ference which there is between Jeffrey and my- 
self upon every great principle of taste, morali- 
ty, and policy did not occasion an irremovable 
difficulty. Meantime, I am as sincerely obliged 
to you as if this difference did not exist, and I 
could have availed myself of all its advantages, 
to the importance of which I am fully sensible. 

" I am very curious for your Life of Dry den, 
that 'I may see how far your estimate of his mer- 
its agrees with my own. In the way of editing, 
we want the yet unpublished metrical romances 
from the Auchinleck MS., of which you have 
just given such an account as to whet the pub- 
lic curiosity, and a collection of the Scotch poets. 
K. James, who is the best, has not been well ed- 
ited ; Blind Harry but badly : Dunbar, and many 
others, are not to be procured. Your name would 
make such a speculation answer, however ex- 
tensive the collection might be. I beg my re- 
spects to Mrs. Scott, and am, 
"Yours very truly, 

Robert Southey." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

BRAZILIAN AFFAIRS DISLIKE OF LEAVING HOME 

CONDEMNS THE IDEA OF MAKING PEACE WITH 

BONAPARTE THE INQUISITION THE SALE OK 



^TAT. 34. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



231 



HIS WORKS GRATEFUL FEELINGS TOWARD MR. 

COTTLE THOUGHTS ON THE REMOVAL OF HIS 

BOOKS TO KESWICK MEETING WITH THE AU- 
THOR OF GEBIR REMARKS ON MARMION PO- 
LITICAL OPINIONS KEHAMA HIS POSITION AS 

AN AUTHOR ON METERS POPULATION OF 

SPAIN CONDUCT OF THE FRENCH AT LISBON 

REMARKS ON DISEASES PHYSICAL PECULIARI- 
TIES SPANISH AFFAIRS PRESENT OF BOOKS 

FROM MR. NEVILLE WHITE ACCOUNT OF FLOAT- 
ING ISLAND IN DERWENTWATER HE PREDICTS 

THE DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH IN THE PENIN- 
SULA PORTUGUESE LITERATURE INFANCY OF 

HIS LITTLE BOY POETICAL DREAMS CHRONI- 
CLE OF THE CID DOUBTS ABOUT GOING TO 

SPAIN ANECDOTE OF AN IRISH DUEL LITER- 
ARY EMPLOYMENTS ADVICE TO A YOUNG AU- 
THOR THE CONVENTION OF CINTRA SPANISH 

BALLADS POLITICS OF THE EDINBURGH RE- 
VIEW THE QUARTERLY REVIEW SET ON FOOT 

THE CHRONICLE OF THE CID KEHAMA 

ARTICLES IN THE QUARTERLY REVIEW SPAN- 
ISH AFFAIRS. 1808. 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Jan. 11, 1808. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

I have seen both the Scotch and the more ras- 
cally British Reviews of our Specimens — both 
a good deal worse than the book itself, which 
is a great consolation; for they have really not 
discovered its defects, and have imputed faults 
to it which it does not possess. If the first edi- 
tion can be got off, I will make it a curious and 
good book. 

" How soon I may see you, Heaven knows : 
the sooner the better. My uncle is in town, 
and applications are made to him from all quar- 
ters for that information which Lord G. rejected 
last year, as relating to the wrong side of South 
America — a strong fact, between you and I, 
against his statesmanship. I am in hopes he 
will draw up an account of the present state of 
Brazil (which no other person living can do so 
well) , while I proceed w r ith the history. This 
removal of the Braganza family is a great event, 
though it has been done not merely without that 
dignity which might have been given to it, but 
even meanly and pitifully. # # # 

Still, the event itself is a great one; and if I 
could transfuse into you all the recollections, 
&c, which it brings with it to me, you would 
feel an interest in it which it is not very easy to 
describe. 

" I am hard at work, and shall be able to send 
my first volurre to press as soon as I return 
from London. Meanwhile, the thought of the 
journey plagues me — the older I grow the more 
do I dislike going from home. Oh dear ! oh 
dear ! there is such a comfort in one's old coat 
and old shoes, one's own chair and own fireside, 
one's own writing-desk and own library, with a 
little girl climbing up to my neck, and saying, 
'Don't go to London, papa; you must stay with 
Edith ;' and a little boy, whom I have taught to 



speak the language of cats, dogs, cuckoos, and 
jackasses, &c, before he can articulate a word 
of his own — there is such a comfort in all these 
things, that transportation to London for four or 
five weeks seems a heavier punishment than any 
sins of mine deserve. Nevertheless, I shall be 
heartily glad to see Grosvenor Bedford, provided 
Grosvenor Bedford does not look as if his liver 
were out of order. # =* * # 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 11, 1808. 
" My dear Scott, 

" I should long ago have thanked you for your 
offer of Sir Lancelot, but as I had written to 
Heber requesting from him all his Round-table 
books, I waited, or rather have been waiting, to 
see whether or not it would be among them. It 
is above two months since news came that He- 
ber would look them out for me ; but as they 
are not yet arrived, and my appearance in Lon- 
don has been expected for the last two or three 
weeks, it is probable that he is waiting to let me 
look them out for myself. I go for London next 
week, my family having just been increased by 
the birth of another girl — an event for which I 
have been waiting. 

" Wordsworth has completed a most masterly 
poem upon the fate of the Nortons ; two or three 
lines in the old Ballad of the Rising in the North 
gave him the hint. The story affected me more 
deeply than I wish to be affected ; young read- 
ers, however, will not object to the depth of the 
distress — and nothing was ever more ably treat- 
ed. He is looking, too, for a narrative subject 
to be pitched in a lower key. I have recom- 
mended to him that part of Amadis wherein he 
appears as Beltenebros — which is what Bernardo 
Tasso had originally chosen, and w T hich is in it- 
self as complete as could be desired. This re- 
minds me that to-day I met with the name of 
Amadis as a Christian name in Portugal, in the 
age between Lobeira and Montaloo. Having 
found Oriana, Briolania, Grimanesa, and Lisuarte 
there before, they may be looked upon as five 
good witnesses that the story is originally Port- 
uguese. 

"My Chronicle of the Cid is printed, and waits 
for the introduction and supererogatory notes, 
both which will be of considerable length, and 
must be completed at Holland House, where ] 
shall find exactly those books which were out of 
reach of my means. The History of Brazil will 
be in the press as soon as this is out of it. What 
an epoch in history will this emigration of the 
Braganzas prove, if we are not frightened by 
cowardly politicians into making peace, and ca- 
joling them back again to Portugal ! Such men 
as these have long since extinguished all politi- 
cal morality and political honesty among us, and 
now they would extinguish national honor, which 
is all we have left to suppy their place ! My 
politics would be, to proclaim to France and to 
the world that England will never make peace 
with Napoleon Bonaparte, because he has proved 



232 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 34. 



nimself to be one whom no treaties and no ties can 
bind, and still more because he is notoriously a 
murderer, with whom it is infamous to treat. Send 
this language into France, and let nothing else 
go into it that our ships can keep out, and the 
French themselves would, in no very long time, 
rid the world of a tyrant. The light of Prince 
Arthur's shield would bring Orgoglio to the 
ground. God bless you ! 

" Yours very truly, R. Southey." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" Feb. 12, 1808. 
"My dear Coleridge, 

" De Origine et Progressu Officii S. Inquisi- 
tionis, ejusque dignitate et utilitate, Antone Lu- 
dovico a Panamo, Boroxense, Archidiaconio et 
Canonico Legionense. . . . 1598, folio. The 
book is in the Red Cross Street Library. I read 
it six years ago, and sent up an account of it 
within the last six weeks for Dr. Aikin's Biog- 
raphy, where it will be in villainously bad com- 
pany. You will find there that God was the 
first Inquisitor, and that the first Auto da Fe 
was held upon Adam and Eve. You will read 
enough to show you that Catholic writers defend 
the punishment of heretics, and quite sufficient 
to make your blood run cold. I have the His- 
tory of the Portuguese Inquisition to write, and 
look on to the task with absolute horror. I am 
decidedly hostile to what is called Catholic 
Emancipation, as I am to what is called peace. 

" I have had a correspondence with Clarkson 
concerning the best mode of publishing my Bra- 
zilian history ; and what he points out as the best 
plan is little better than the half-and-half way, 
and involves a great deal of trouble, and, what 
is worse, a great deal of solicitation. I am a 
bad trading author, and doomed always to be so, 
but it is not the bookseller's fault ; the public do 
not buy poetry unless it be made fashionable ; 
mine gets reviewed by enemies who are always 
more active than friends ; one reviewer envies 
me, another hates me, and a third tries his hand 
upon me as fair game. Thousands meantime 
read the books, but they borrow them; even 
those persons who are what they call my friends, 
and who know that I live by these books, never 
buy them themselves, and then wonder that they 
do not sell. Espriella has sold rapidly, for which 
I have to thank Stuart ; the edition is probably 
by this time exhausted, and, I verily believe, 
half the sale must be attributed to the puffs in 
the Courier. The sale of a second edition would 
right me in Longman's books. Puff me, Cole- 
ridge ! if you love me, puff me ! Puff a couple 
of hundreds into my pocket ! 

" As for the booksellers, I am disposed to dis- 
tinguish between Longman and Tradesman na- 
ture (setting human nature out of the question) : 
now Tradesman nature is very bad, but Long- 
maw nature is a great deal better, and I am in- 
clined to believe that it will get the better of 
the evil principle, and that liberal dealing may 
even prove catching. It is some proof of this 
that his opinion of me and conduct toward me 



alter not, notwithstanding the spiders spin their 
webs so securely over whole piles of Madoc and 
Thalaba. # # # # 

" I am strongly moved by the spirit to make 
an attack upon Jeffrey along his whole line, be- 
ginning with his politics. Stuart wouid not be 
displeased to have half a dozen letters. Nothing 
but the weary work it would be to go through 
his reviews for the sake of collecting the blun- 
ders in them, prevents me. He, and other men 
who are equally besotted and blinded by party, 
will inevitably frighten the nation into peace, 
the only thing which can be more mischievous 
and more dishonorable than our Danish expedi- 
tion. I wish to God you would lift up your 
voice against it. Alas ! Coleridge, is it to be 
wondered at that we pass for a degenerated race, 
when those who have the spirit of our old wor- 
thies in them let that spirit fret itself away in 
silence ? 

" Lamb's book I have heard of, and know not 
what it is. If co-operative labor were as prac- 
ticable as it is desirable, what a history of En- 
glish literature might he, and you, and I set 
forth! * # * # * * 



" God bless you 



R. S.' 



To Joseph Cottle, Esq. 

" Greta Hall, April 20, 1808. 
"My dear Cottle, 

" On opening a box to-day, the contents of 
which I had not seen since the winter of 1799, 
your picture made its appearance. Of all Robert 
Hancock's performances it is infinitely the best. 
I can not conceive a happier likeness. I have 
been thinking of you and of old times ever since 
it came to light. I have been reading your Fall 
of Cambria, and in the little interval that re- 
mains before supper must talk to you in reply to 
your letter. 

" What you say of my copyrights affected me 
very much. Dear Cottle, set your heart at rest 
on that subject. It ought to be at rest. These 
were yours, fairly bought, and fairly sold. You 
bought them on the chance of their success, 
which no London bookseller would have done ; 
and had they not been bought, they could not 
have been published at all. Nay, if you had 
not purchased Joan of Arc, the poem never 
would have existed, nor should I, in all probabil- 
ity, ever have obtained that reputation which is 
the capital on which I subsist, nor that power 
which enables me to support it. 

" But this is not all. Do you suppose, Cottle, 
that I have forgotten those true and most essen- 
tial acts of friendship which you showed me 
when I stood most in need of them? Your 
house was my house when I had no other. The 
very money with which I bought my wedding- 
ring and paid my marriage fees was supplied by 
you. It was with your sisters I left Edith dur- 
ing my six months' absence, and for the six 
months' after my return it was from you that I 
received, week by week, the little on which we 
lived, till I was enabled to live by other means. 
It is not the settling of a cash account that can 



Mr at. 34. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



233 



cancel obligations like these. You are in the 
habit of preserving- your letters, and if you were 
not, I would entreat you to preserve this, that it 
might be seen hereafter. Sure I am, there never 
was a more generous or a kinder heart than 
yours ; and you will believe me when I add that 
there does not live that man upon earth whom 
I remember with more gratitude and more af- 
fection. My head throbs and my eyes burn with 
these recollections. Good-night ! my dear old 
friend and benefactor. R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 26, 1803. 
" Dear Grosvexor, 

"From one scene of confusion to another. 
You saw me in London everlastingly at work in 
packing my books, and here they are now lying 
in all parts about me, up to my knees in one 
place, up to my eyes in another, and above head 
and ears in a third. I can scarcely find step- 
ping-places through the labyrinth, from one end 
of the room to the other. Like Pharaoh's frogs, 
they have found their way every .where, even 
into the bed-chambers. # =& # # 
And now, Grosvenor, having been married above 
twelve years, I have for the first time collected 
all my books together. What a satisfaction this 
is you can not imagine, for you can not conceive 
the hundredth part of the inconvenience and 
vexation I have endured for want of them. But 
the joy which they give me brings with it a 
mingled feeling — the recollection that there are 
as many materials heaped up as I shall ever find 
life to make use of; and the humiliating reflec- 
tion how little knowledge can be acquired in the 
most laborious life of man, that knowledge be- 
coming every age less and less, in proportion to 
the accumulation of events. For some things I 
have been born too late. Under the last reign, 
for instance, as in the first half of this, my pen- 
sion would have been an income adequate to my 
wants, and my profits as a writer would have 
been at least quadrupled. On the other hand, 
bad as these times are, they are better than those 
which are coming. 

" At Bristol I met with the man of all others 
whom I was most desirous of meeting — the only 
man living of whose praise I was ambitious, or 
whose censure would have humbled me. You 
will be curious to know who this could be. Sav- 
age Landor. the author of Gebir, a poem which, 
unless you have heard me speak of it, you have 
probably never heard of at all. I never saw any 
one more unlike myself in eveiy prominent part 
of human character, nor any one who so cordially 
and instinctively agreed with me on so many of 
the most important subjects. I have often said, 
before we met, that I would walk forty miles to 
see him, and, having seen him, I would gladly 
walk fourscore to see him again. He talked of 
Thalaba, and I told him of the series of mytho- 
logical poems which I had planned — mentioned 
some of the leading incidents on which they were 
to have been formed, and also told him for what 
reason they were laid aside — in plain English, 



that I could not afford to write them. Landor's 
reply was, ' Go on with them, and I will pay for 
printing them, as many as you will write, and 
as many copies as you please.' I had reconciled 
myself to my abdication (if the phrase may be 
allowable), and am not sure that this princely 
offer has not done me mischief; for it has awak- 
ened in me old dreams and hopes which had 
been laid aside, and a stinging desire to go on, 
for the sake of showing him poem after poem, 
and saying, ' I need not accept your offer, but I 
have done this because you made it.' It is 
something to be praised by one's peers ; ordinary 
praise I regard as little as ordinary abuse. God 



bless 



R. S. 



To Walter Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 22, 1808. 
" My dear Scott, 

" Your letter followed me to London. The 
hope which it held out that we might meet here, 
and the endless round of occupations in which I 
was involved during the whole nine weeks of my 
absence, prevented me from thanking you for 
Marmion so soon as I ought, and should other- 
wise have done. 

" Half the poem I had read at Heber's before 
my own copy arrived. I went punctually to 
breakfast with him, and he was long enough 
dressing to let me devour so much of it. The 
story is made of better materials than the Lay, 
yet they are not so well fitted together. As a 
whole, it has not pleased me so much ; in parts 
it has pleased me more. There is nothing so 
finely conceived in your former poem as the 
death of Marmion ; there is nothing finer in its 
conception any where. 

" The introductory epistles I did not wish 
away, because as poems they gave me great 
pleasure, but I wished them at the end of the 
volume or at the beginning — any where except 
where they were. My taste is perhaps peculiar 
in disliking all interruptions in narrative poetry. 
When the poet lets his story sleep, and talks 
in his own person, it is to me the same sort of 
unpleasant effect that is produced at the end of 
an act ; you are alive to know what follows, and 
lo — down comes the curtain, and the fiddlers 
begin with their abominations. The general 
opinion, however, is with me in this particular 
instance. 

" I am highly gratified by the manner in which 
you speak of Kirke White's Remains. That 
book has been received to my heart's desire. 
The edition (750) sold in less than three months, 
and there is every probability that it will obtain 
a steady sale, so as to produce something con- 
siderable to his mother and sisters. 

" I saw Frere in London, and he has promised 
to let me print his translations from the Pocma 
del Cid. They are admirably done — indeed, I 
never saw any thing so difficult to do, and done 
so excellently, except your supplement to Sir 
Tristrem. I do not believe that many men have 
a greater command of language and versification 
than myself, and yet this task of giving a speci- 



231 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



!tat. 34 



men of that woaderful poem I shrunk from, fear- 
ing the difficulty. At present I am putting to- 
gether the materials of my introduction, which, 
with the supplementary notes, will take about 
three months in printing ; at least, it will be as 
long before the book can be published. The 
price of paper stops all my other press-work for 
the present. 

" So much of my life passes in this blessed re- 
tirement, that when I go to London the effect is 
a little like what Nourjahad used to find after 
one of his long naps. I find a woeful difference 
of political opinion between myself and most of 
those persons who have hitherto held the same 
feelings with me ; and yet it should seem that 
they have been sleeping over the great events 
of these latter years, not I. There is a base and 
cowardly feeling abroad, which would humble 
this country at the feet of France. This feeling 
I have every where been combating with vehe- 
mence ; but, at the same time, I have execrated 
with equal vehemence the business of Copenha- 
gen : Ishmael-like, my hand has been against ev- 
ery body, and every body's hand against me. 
Wordsworth is the only man who agrees with 
me on both points. I require, however, no oth- 
er sanction to convince me that I am right. Cole- 
ridge justifies the attack on Denmark, but he justi- 
fies it upon individual testimony of hostile inten- 
tions on the part of that court, and that testi- 
mony by no means amounts to proof in my judg- 
ment. But what is done is done ; and the end- 
less debates upon the subject, which have no 
other meaning and can have no other end than 
that of harassing the ministry, disgust me, as 
they do every one who has the honor of England 
at heart. Such a system makes the publicity of 
debate a nuisance, and will terminate in putting 
a stop to it. 

" Is there any hope of seeing you this year at 
the Lakes ? I should much like to show you Ke- 
hama. During my circuit I fell in with Savage 
Landor, the author of Gebir, to whom I spoke 
of my projected series of mythological poems, 
and said also for what reason the project had 
been laid aside. He besought me to go on with 
them, and said he would print them at his expense. 
Without the least thought of accepting this prince- 
ly offer, it has stung me to the very core ; and 
as the bite of the tarantula has no cure but danc- 
ing, so will there be none but singing for this. 
Great poets have no envy ; little ones are full of 
it. I doubt whether any man ever criticised a 
good poem maliciously, unless he had written a 
bad one himself. 

" Yours truly, 

R. SoUTHEY." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" May 2, 1808. 
" I have sent you all that is written of the 
Curse of Kehama : you offered to print it for me ; 
if ever I finish the poem it will be because of that 
offer, though without the slightest intention of 
accepting it. Enough is written to open the story 
of the poem, and serve as a specimen of its man- 



ner, though much of what is to follow would bo 
in a wilder strain. Tell me if your ear is of- 
fended with the rhymes when they occur, or if 
it misses them when they fail. I wish it had 
never been begun, because I like it too well to 
throw it behind the fire, and not well enough to 
complete it without the ' go on' of some one 
whose approbation is worth having. 

"My history as an author is not very honor- 
able to the age in which we live. By giving up 
my whole time to worthless work in reviews, 
magazines, and newspapers, I could thrive, as by 
giving up half my time to them I contrive to live. 
In the time thus employed every year I could 
certainly produce such a poem as Thalaba, and 
if I did I should starve. You have awakened in 
me projects that had been laid asleep, and re- 
called hopes which I had dismissed contentedly, 
and, as I thought, forever. If you think Keha- 
ma deserves to be finished, I will borrow hours 
from sleep, and finish it by rising two hours be- 
fore my customary time ; and when it is finished 
I will try whether subscribers can be procured 
for five hundred copies, by which means I should 
receive the whole profit to myself. The book- 
seller's share is too much like the lion in the fa- 
ble : 30 or 33 per cent, they first deduct as book- 
sellers, and then half the residue as publishers. 
I have no reason to complain of mine : they treat 
me with great respect and great liberality, but I 
wish to be independent of them ; and this, if it 
could be effected, would make me so. 

" The will and the power to produce any thing 
great are not often found together. I wish you 
would write in English, because it is a better 
language than Latin, and because the disuse of 
English as a living and literary language would 
be the greatest evil that could befall mankind. 
It would cost you little labor to write perspicu- 
ously, and thus get rid of your only fault. * 
# # # # # 

" Literary fame is the only fame of which a 
wise man ought to be ambitious, because it is 
the only lasting and living fame. Bonaparte 
will be forgotten before his time in purgatory is 
half over, or but just remembered like Nimrod, 
or other cut-throats of antiquity, who serve us 
for the common-places of declamation. If you 
made yourself King of Crete, you would differ 
from a hundred other adventurers only in chro- 
nology, and in the course of a millennium or two, 
nothing more would be known of your conquest 
than what would be found in the stereotype Ge- 
bir prefixed as an account of the author. Pour 
out your mind in a great poem, and you will ex- 
ercise authority over the feelings and opinions of 
mankind as long as the language lasts in which 
you write. 

TV TV TV TV TV TV TV/ 

" Farewell ! I wish you had purchased Lowes- 
water instead of Llantony. I wish you were 
married, because the proverb about a rolling 
stone applies to a single heart, and I wish you 
were as much a Quaker as I am. Christian sto- 
icism is wholesome for all minds ; were I your 
confessor, I should enjoin you to throw aside 



jEtat. 34. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



235 



Rousseau, and make Epictetus your manual. 
Probatum est. 

." Yours truly, Robert Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" May 20, 1808. 

" You have bound me to the completion of 
Kehama, and, if I have health and eyesight, com- 
pleted it will be within twelve months. Want 
of practice has not weakened me : I have ascer- 
tained this, and am proceeding. 

Ci I will use such materials as have stood the 
test; those materials are the same in all lan- 
guages, and we know what they are. With re- 
spect to meter it is otherwise : there we must 
look to English only, and in English we have no 
other great poem than the Paradise Lost. Blank 
verse has long appeared to me the noblest meas- 
ure of which our language is capable, but it 
would not suit Kehama. There must be quick- 
er, wilder movements ; there must be a gor- 
geousness of ornament also — Eastern gem-work, 
and sometimes rhyme must be rattled upon rhyme, 
till the reader is half dizzy with the thundering 
echo. My motto must be, 

Hockl?.ov 'eldog tpv, tin -kolklKov vjivov dcpdaau. 

This is not from any ambition of novelty, but 
from the nature and necessity of the subject. I 
am well aware that novelty in such things is an 
obstacle to success ; Thalaba has proved it to be 
so. The mass of mankind hate innovation : they 
hate to unlearn what they have learned wrong, 
and they hate to confess their ignorance by sub- 
mitting to learn any thing right. I would tread 
in the beaten road rather than get among thorns 
by turning out of it ; but the beaten road will 
not take me where I want to go. What seems 
best to be done is this, to write mostly in rhyme, 
to slip into it rather than out of it, and then gen- 
erally into some meter so strongly marked as to 
leave the ear fully satisfied. 

" One inference, I think, must be drawn from 
the obscurity of Pindar's meter — that, be it what 
it may, the pleasure which it gave did not result 
from rhythm. Indeed, the whole system of clas- 
sical meters seems to have been that of creating 
difficulty for the sake of overcoming it. We 
mis-read Sapphics without making them worse ; 
we mis-read Pentameters and make them better ; 
and the Hexameter remains the most perceptible 
of all measures, though in our pronunciation we 
generally distort four feet out of the six. 

" A great deal more may be done with rhyme 
than has yet been done with it. There is a 
crypto-rhyme, which may often be introduced 
with excellent effect : the eye has nothing to do 
with it, but the ear feels it, without, perhaps, 
perceiving any thing more than the general har- 
mony, and not knowing how that harmony is pro- 
duced. Sometimes the sparing intermixture of 
rhymes in a paragraph may be so managed as to 
satisfy the ear, and give greater effect to their 
after profusion. These are not things which one 
thinks of in composition, but they are thought of 
in correcting ; they are the touches in finishing 



off, when a little alteration produces a great dif- 
ference. 

" Your dislike to the ballad meter is, perhaps, 
because you are sick of a tune which has been 
sung so often and so badly. It is not incapable 
of dignity, but there is a sort of language that 
usually goes with it, and has the effect of mak- 
ing it so. Kehama is pitched in too high a key 
for it ; I shall weed out all uncouth lines, and 
leave the public nothing to abuse except the 
strangeness of the fable, which you may be sure 
will be plentifully abused. The mythology ex- 
plains itself as it is introduced ; yet, because the 
names are not familiar, people will fancy there 
is a difficulty in understanding it. Sir William 
Jones has done nothing in introducing it so coldly 
and formally as he has done. They who read 
his poems do not remember them, and none but 
those who have read them can be expected to 
have even heard of my Divinities. But for pop- 
ularity I care only as regards profit, and for prof- 
it only as regards subsistence. The praise of 
ten would have contented you ; often have I said 
that you did not underrate the number of men 
whose praise was truly desirable. Ten thou- 
sand persons will read my book ; if five hundred 
will promise to buy it, I shall be secure of all I 
want. You shall have it in large portions as fast 
it is written. 

" Yours, Robert Southey.'' 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" June 13, 1808. 
" Dear Coleridge, 
" I have the last census of Spain here, and 
perhaps you may like to give the Courier a state- 
ment of the population of the Northern Provinces, 
as taken in 1797, and published in 1801. 



Asturias . . 
Galicia . . . 

These Provinces C Alava 

are what we < Guipuzcoa 
call Biscay. (, Vizcaya . . 


Population. 


Males from 
the Age ol' 
16 to 50. 


364,238 

1,142,630 

67.523 

104,491 

111,436 


80,554 
225,454 
15,367 
23,343 
25,801 

400,519 



" These are the provinces which have asked as- 
sistance ; but there is probably a French force 
at Ferrol, which may, for a while, keep part of 
Galicia in awe. The people are a hardy race, 
and most of them good shots, because there are 
no game laws, plenty of game, and wolves in 
the country. Probably every man has his gun. 
One hardly dares indulge a hope ; but if Europe 
is to be redeemed in our days, you know it has 
always been my opinion that the work of deliv- 
erance would begin in Spain. And now that its 
unhappy government has committed suicide, the 
Spaniards have got rid of their worst enemy. 
. " This account of Lisbon, which has just 
reached me, may also fitly appear in the Courier, 
for the edification of Roscoe and such politicians : 
1 Every private family has a certain number of 
French officers and soldiers quartered upon them, 
who behave with their accustomed insolence and 



236 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF .Etat. 34. 



brutality. The ladies of one family very natu- 
rally, upon the intrusion of these unwelcome 
guests, retired to their own apartments, where 
they proposed remaining ; but these civilized 
Frenchmen required their presence, and would 
admit of no excuse. Ilfaut que les dames vien- 
nent was the only reply which they made ; and, 
of course, the women were compelled to be sub- 
ject to their ribaldry and impertinence. Whole 
families of the middling class are seen begging 
at the corners of the streets ; and women, who 
had till now borne an unblemished reputation, 
prostitute themselves publicly to gain where- 
withal to buy bread. The soldiers and the 
flower of the peasantry are sent to recruit the 
French armies in distant parts.' Nothing can 
exceed the misery and the despondency of the 
people. 

" Were I minister, I would send half the reg- 
ular army without delay to Spain ; the distance 
is nothing — a week would be but an average 
passage : and these seas are not like the German 
Ocean, where so many brave men have been 
sacrificed in useless expeditions during stormy 
seasons. 

" Of public affairs enough ! We have had a 
bilious fever in the house, which was epidemic 
among the children of the place. Herbert has 
suffered severely from it ; I thought we should 
lose him. The disease has reduced him very 
much, and left him in a state of great debility. 
Keswick is scarcely ever without some kind of 
infectious fever, generally among the children. 
When these things get into a dirty house, they 
hardly ever get out of it ; and I attribute this 
more to the want of cleanliness than to the cli- 
mate. But ague is beginning to reappear, which 
had scarcely been heard of during the last gen- 
eration : this is the case over the whole kingdom, 
I believe. What put a stop to it then, or what 
brought it back now, is beyond the reach of our 
present knowledge. You love the science of 
physic ; and Nature, who seems to have meant 
you for half a dozen different things when she 
made you, meant you for a physician among the 
rest. I will tell you, therefore, two odd pecul- 
iarities of my constitution ; the slightest dose of 
laudanum acts upon me as an aperient ; if I am 
at any time exposed to the sun bareheaded for 
two minutes, I infallibly take cold. This prob- 
ably shows how soon I should be subject to a 
stroke of the sun, and indicates the same over- 
susceptibility which the nitrous oxyd did, a small- 
er dose affecting me than any other person who 
ever breathed it. 

" I have read that play of Calderon's since my 
return : its story is precisely as you stated it, 
and in the story the wonder lies. Are we not 
apt to do with these things as naturalists do with 
insects ? put them in a microscope, and exclaim 
how beautiful ! how wonderful ! how grand ! 
when all the beauty and all the grandeur are 
owing to the magnifying medium ? A shaping 
mind receives the story of the play and makes it 
terrific : in Calderon it is extravagant. The ma- 
chinery is certainly most extraordinary ; and 



most extraordinary must the state of public opin- 
ion be, where such machinery could be received 
with the complacency of perfect faith — as un- 
doubtedly this was, and would be still in Spain. 

"At last I have got aD my books about me, and 
right rich I am in them — above 4000 volumes. 
With your Germans, &c, there is probably no 
other house in the country which contains such 
a collection of foreign literature. My Cid will 
be published in about six weeks. Brazil is not 
yet gone to press — the price of paper has de- 
terred me ; and yet there is little likelihood of 
any reduction — indeed, no possibility, till the 
North is again open to us. 

" This is the moment for uniting Spain and 
Portugal ; and the greater facility of doing this 
in a commonwealth than in a monarchy would 
be reason enough for preferring that form of gov- 
ernment, were there no other. Portugal loses 
something in importance and in feeling by being 
incorporated in the Spanish monarchy ; it would 
preserve its old dignity by uniting in a federal 
republic — a form which the circumstances of 
Spain more especially require, and its provincial 
difference of laws and dialects. Each province 
should have its own cortes, and the general con- 
gress meet at Madrid, otherwise that city would 
soon waste away. No nation has ever had a 
fairer opportunity for reforming its government 
and modeling it anew. But I dare say this 
wretched cabinet will be meddling too much in 
this, and too little in the desperate struggle which 
must be made ; that we shall send tardy and in- 
efficient aid — enough to draw on a heavier 
French force, and not enough to resist the addi- 
tional force which it will occasion. 

" The crown, like the Ahrimanes of the earth, 
will sacrifice any thing rather than see the down- 
fall of royalty. 

" That best of all good women, Mrs. Wilson, 
has borne the winter better than any former one 
since we have known her. 

"I am thinking about a poem upon Pelajo, 
the restorer of Spain. Do you wish to serve 
me ? Puff Espriella, in the Courier, as the best 
guide to the lakes. All well. God bless you ! 

"R. S" 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, June 20, 1808 
"My dear Neville, 
" The box arrived about an hour ago. Sir 
William Jones's works are placed opposite my 
usual seat, and on the most conspicuous shelf in 
the room. * * * I have retired 
to my library to thank you for the most splendid 
set of books it contains. I thank you for them, 
Neville, truly and heartily ; but do not let it hurt 
you if I say that so costly a present gives me 
some pain as well as pleasure. Were you a 
rich man, you could not give me more books than 
I would joyfully accept, for I delight in accumu- 
lating such treasures as much as a miser does 
in keeping together gold ; but, as things are at 
present, no proof was needed of your generous 
spirit, and, from the little you have to spare, 1 



Mtat. 34. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



237 



can not but feel you ave giving me too much. 
You will not be offended at my expressing this 
feeling, nor will you impute it to any unjust pride, 
which blessed be God, I am too poor a man, and 
too trjse a one, to be guilty of in any, even the 
smallest degree. Be assured that I shall ever 
value the books far more than if they had come 
from a wealthier donor, and that I write the do- 
nor's name in them with true respect and es- 
teem. You will be pleased to hear they are 
books of immediate use to me. Seven years ago 
I began a long poem, which Sir William Jones, 
had he been living, would have liked to see, be- 
cause it has the system of Hindoo mythology for 
its basis. I believe you heai'd me mention it at 
Mr. Hill's. I have been stimulated by the ap- 
probation of one of the few men living whose 
approbation could stimulate me, to go on with 
this poem, and am winning time for it by rising 
earlier than was my custom, because I will not 
allow any other part of the day to an employ- 
ment less important than writing history, and far 
less profitable than that of writing any thing else, 
how humble or how worthless soever. In the 
hours thus fairly won for the purpose, I get on 
steadily and well. Now, though I had long ago 
gone through those works of Sir William, and 
made from them such extracts as were neces- 
sary for my purpose, it was still very desirable 
that I should have them at hand. Lord Teign- 
mouth's Life also is new to me. 

"I have not seen the Scotch review of Mar- 
mion, but I have heard that on its appearance 
Walter Scott showed Jeffrey the letter in which 
I had refused to bear a part in his review. * 
* I do not know whether Scott may 
have shown him another letter, in which I spoke 
of the ' Remains.' Scott may perhaps review 
them himself, unless this affair of Marmion, or, 
whatjs more likely, their utter and irreconcila- 
ble difference of political opinion, should make 
him withdraw from the journal altogether. 

;: Henceforward we shall have little business 
to write about. You may supply the place by 
telling me of what you read, and I may some- 
times be able to direct you to books which will 
supply further, or, perhaps, better information 
upon the subjects which interest you, and some- 
times save you time in acquiring knowledge by 
telling you the shortest and nearest road to it. 
God bless you ! R. Southey." 

To John Hickman, Esq. 

"July, 1808. 
" My dear Rickman, 
" I veiy much wish you were here. You may 
have heard that there is an island which some- 
times comes up in this lake, and, after a while, 
goes down again. Five years have I been ex- 
pecting this appearance, and now, sure enough, 
it is above water. It may stay there for some 
weeks — sometimes six or eight — it may already 
have sunk. But Davy ought to put himself in 
the first mail-coach ; and perhaps curiosity may 
induce you to expedite your journey for the sake of 
seeing the oddest thing you are ever likely to see. 



"How it is effected is for Davy to discover; 
but as much of the bottom of the lake as is equal 
to the area of your house has been forced up to 
the surface in several pieces, and in other parts 
you plainly see that there are rents in the bot- 
tom where parts have sunk in, for it is not a deep 
part of the lake. The gas which follows the im- 
mersion of a pole stinks, and over one part of the 
water a thin steam was plainly discernible when 
I was there. As no person was there when it 
rose, we can not tell whether it was accompanied 
by any great agitation of the water, or any noise ; 
but the noise, if any, can not have been very 
great, or it would have been heard here. It is 
possible that the cause may have some connec- 
tion with the sulphureous springs in the neigh- 
borhood, almost certain that it is the same which 
occasions our bottom winds. * 

"A Portuguese sermon has just helped me to 
a discovery which will amuse you. Who was 
the first man that doubled the Cape of Good 
Hope ? The Prophet Jonah. Examine his track 
in the whale, and this proves to be the case ; and 
you will observe that this magnifies the miracle 
prodigiously, for what a passage he had from the 
Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf! 

" My friends the Spaniards and Portuguese are 
justifying the opinion which I have long given 
of them to the astonishment of those whp heard 
me. Bonaparte will, I suppose, pour in upon 
them with his whole force ; so let him. You 
know how little respect I have for what is called 
the spirit of history, or the philosophy of history, 
by those people who want to have every thing 
given them in extracts and essences ; but the 
truth of the present history is, that a great mili- 
tary despotism, in its youth and full vigor — like 
that of France — will and must beat down cor- 
rupt establishments and worn-out governments, 
but that it can not beat down a true love of lib- 
erty and a true spirit of patriotism, unless there 
be an overwhelming superiority of physical force, 
which is not the case here. * * In Spain 
the fire has burst out which will consume. Well 
done ! my friend William Bryan the Prophet ; 
you certainly did prophesy to me in St. Stephen's 
court concerning Spain as truly as Francis Moore 
did, in his almanac last year, concerning the 
Grand Turk. # * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Richard Duppa, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 11, 1808. 
" Dear Duppa, 
" The thought of writing to you — or, rather, 
the thought that I had not written — has very 
often risen in my conscience heavily. Joanna 
Southcote has been the cause. Her books, with 
Sharp's dirty treasure, are now on their way to 
London. It is so much better to say I have done 
a thing than I will do it, that I really have defer- 



* The floating island still appears at intervals. There 
is said to be a bottom wind, when the lake is violently 
agitated without any disturbance in the atmosphere — a 
phenomenon which does not seem yet to have been satis- 
factorily accounted for. 



233 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JETAT. o4. 



red writing for the sake of saying these books 
were actually gone. 

" For the last three weeks I have suffered from 
a blinding and excoriating catarrh — always v ith 
me a very obstinate disease, and more violent 
than I have ever seen it in any person except one 
of my own family. Diseases are the worst things 
a man can inherit, and I am never likely to in- 
herit any thing else. That father's brother of 
mine in Somersetshire — whom I would so gladly 
sell at half price — received me as cordially as 
was in his nature last April, and gave me £25 
— an act of great generosity in a man of £1200 
a year, and remarkable as being all I ever have 
had, or ever shall have, from him, for he has now 
turned his sister out of doors, and desired never 
to see any of the family again. Duppa, my 
breeches' pockets will never be so full as to make 
me stick in Heaven's gate. Three lines of that 
fellow's pen will cut me off from more than all 
the pens I shall ever wear to the stump will 
gain for me, and yet I hope many is the goose 
egg yet unlaid which is to produce quills for my 
service. 

" The Lakers are coming in shoals, and some 
of them find their way here- Among others, I 
have had the satisfaction of seeing Joanna Bail- 
lie : she drank tea with us, and very much pleased 
we were with her — as good-natured, unaffected, 
and sensible a woman as I have ever seen. 

" A month ago you might, perhaps, have been 
gratified by knowing what were my thoughts of 
the state of Spain ; now, I suppose, every body 
thinks alike. But I have alwa3 T s said that, if 
the deliverance of Europe were to take place in 
our da}-s, there was no country in which it was 
so likely to begin as Spain ; and this opinion, 
whenever I expressed it, was received with won- 
der, if not with incredulity. But there is a spirit 
of patriotism, a glowing and proud remembrance 
of the past, a generous shame for the present, 
and a living hope for the future, both in the Span- 
iards and Portuguese, which convinced me that 
the heart of the country was sound, and that those 
nations are likely to rise in the scale, perhaps, 
Duppa, when we are sunk. Not that England 
will sink yet, but there is more public virtue in 
Spain than in any other country under Heaven. 
I have no fears nor doubts concerning that coun- 
try ; the spirit of liberty is not to be extinguish- 
ed : nothing but that spirit could possibly check 
the progress of Bonaparte ; this will check, and, 
it is my firm conviction, eventually destroy him. 
William Bryan prophesied a happy termination 
in Spain when I saw him in London, and I dare 
say, if ever we meet again, he will not fail to re- 
mind me of it. I expect his corrected copy of 
Espriella with some curiosity. 

" God bless you! 

"Yours, Robert Southey." 

To John Adamson, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 6, 1808. 
" Sir, 
" I have never seen the name of Nicola Luiz 
except in Murphy ; and the title "of the Portu- j 



guese Plautus which he gives him, being gener- 
ally applied to Gil Vicente, thought it not un- 
likely that he might have written Richard for 
Robert, as he is apt to do so. Barbosa's great 
Bibliotheca is not in my possession, and I have 
referred in vain to Nicolas Antonio, to the Mappa 
de Portugal, which contains a copious list of 
poets, and to the Catalogue of Authors which the 
Academy printed as the sources from which 
their dictionary was to be compiled. How it 
should be that this name is not to be found in 
either, is to me altogether unaccountable. 

"It is possible that Antonio Ferreira's play 
may have been originally published under this 
fictitious name. I have no other reason for sup- 
posing so than that it seems ahnost certain, if 
the name of Nicola Luiz were a real one, it 
would have been included in one or all of the 
works which I have consulted ; and Ferreira did 
in one instance practice an artifice of this kind, 
yet I think you must have seen his play. It be- 
gins : 

♦ Colhey, colhey alegres, 
Donzellas minhas, mil cheirosas flores.' 

Should this be the tragedy in question, I will, 
with great pleasure, transmit you an account of 
the author, or send you my copy of his works 
(should that be more agreeable), which, when 
you have completely done with it, may be re- 
turned through my brother Dr. Southey, of Dur- 
ham. 

" The tragedy of Domingos dos Reis Quita, 
upon the same story, has been Englished by 
Benjamin Thompson. There are two Spanish 
ones by Geronimo Bermudez (published origin- 
ally under the name of Antonio de Silva), in the 
sixth volume of the Parnaso Espahol. Henry 
K. White had merely begun the first scene of 
his projected play, and that, as was evident from 
the handwriting, at a very early age. 

" The Portuguese have two poems upon the 
same story, the Penasco de las Lagrimas, writ- 
ten in Spanish by Francisco de Franca da Costa, 
and the Saudades de D. Ignes de Castro, by 
Manoel de Azevedo. This latter I have myself 
planned a play upon, The Revenge of Pedro : 
whether it will ever be executed, is very doubt- 
ful, but this part of the story is far fitter for dra- 
matic poetry than the foregoing. 

" I am, sir, yours with respect, 

"Robert Southev." 

To John Adamson, Esq. 

"Aug. 12, 1808. 
"Dear Sir, 
"I thank you for your translation, and will, 
by the first carrier, send off the plays of Ferreira 
and Quita, and the Saudades. 

" You have mistaken the meaning of Xarif- 
alte. Portuguese orthography is very loose in 
any but modern authors, and it is sometimes 
necessary to hunt a word through every possible 
mutation of labial or guttural letters. Under 
gerafalte it is to be found, which is the ger-fal- 
con of our ancestors. 

" The story of Inez is, in any point o'f view. 



jEtat. 35. 



ROBERT SOU THEY 



239 



sufficiently atrocious, but the poets have not been 
true to history. It is expressly asserted by Fer- 
nan Lopez that Pedro denied his marriage dur- 
ing his father's life, and never affirmed it till 
some years afterward ; what is still worse, that 
Affonso repeatedly asked him if she were his 
wife, and said that if she were he would ac- 
knowledge her as such. I am myself decidedly 
of opinion that she w T as not. The arguments 
against the fact of the marriage which Joam das 
Regas used at the election of King Joam I., are 
to me as satisfactory as those which he brought 
against its legality, if the. fact had been proved, 
would have been in these days. I am sorry, 
also, to disbelieve the coronation of the dead 
body : there is not a word of it in the Chronicler, 
though he fully describes its removal from Co- 
imbra, and the Portuguese nobles were not men 
who would have submitted to such a ceremony. 

" If your play be of modern date, Nicola Luiz 
is probably a modern author, and that removes 
all difficulty concerning him. There w T as a trag- 
edy upon the same subject, published by Dr. 
Simmonds about ten years ago, which obtained 
considerable praise. 

" Your translation, I dare say, does justice to 
the original ; had it been still unprinted, I would 
have noticed a few T instances in which the proper 
names are mis-accented. What pleases me best 
in the play is to perceive that the author has 
avoided the fault of Camoens, and not made his 
heroine talk about Hyrcanian tigers, and such 
other common-places which pass current for pas- 
sion and for poetry. 

" I have seen the Fonte das Lagrimas : Link 
omits to mention that two beautiful cedars brush 
its surface w T ith their boughs. I have also seen 
the tombs of Inez and Pedro : they are covered 
with bass-relief, which ought to be accurately 
copied and engraved. 

" There is a shocking story of one of the 
children of Inez — the Infant D. Joam, who mur- 
dered his wife : it is a worse story than even the 
murder of his mother. If at any time chance 
should bring you this way, I shall have great 
pleasure in showing you all those facts of Portu- 
guese history relating to your subject which 
have occurred to me in the course of long and 
laborious employment upon the history and liter- 
ature of Portugal. 

" I am, sir, yours respectfully, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Dreadnought. 
" Aug. 16, 1808. 
"My dear Tom, 

" is gone to Spain ! to fight as a private 

in the Spanish army, and he has found two En- 
glishmen to go with him. A noble fellow ! This 
is something like the days of old, as we poets 
and romancers represent them — something like 
die best part of chivalry : old honors, old gener- 
osity, old heroism are reviving, and the cancer 
of that nation is stopped, I believe and fully trust, 

now and forever. A man like can not long 

remain without command ; and, of all things in 



this world, I should most rejoice to hear that 
King Joseph had fallen into his hands ; he would 
infallibly hang him on the nearest tree, first, as a 
Bonaparte by blood ; secondly, as a Frenchman 
by adoption ; thirdly, as a king by trade. 

" Miss Seward's criticism has appeared in the 
Gentleman's Magazine. Her verses have not 
been inserted in the Courier, which is rather 
odd. She reads Madoc to all her acquaintance, 
and must be the means of selling several copies. 
"Another island came up on Saturday last, 
which I shall visit the first fine day — probably 
with Jackson and Jonathan Ottley, who is going 
to measure it and catch a bottle of the gas, 
Jonathan being, as you know, our Keswick phi- 
losopher. We are now having a spell of wind 
and rain. 

" We have got the prettiest kitten you ever 
saw — a dark tabby — and we have christened 
her by the heathenish name of Dido. You would 
be very much diverted to see her hunt Herbert 
all round the kitchen, playing with his little bare 
feet, which she just pricks at every pat, and the 
faster he moves back the more she paw T s them, 
at which he cries ' Naughty Dido !" and points 
to his feet and says, " Hurt, hurt, naughty Dido.' 
Presently he feeds her with comfits, which Dido 
plays with a while, but soon returns to her old 
game. You have lost the amusing part of Her- 
bert's childhood — yust when he is trying to talk, 
and endeavoring to say every thing. 

•" * * * * I have been in the 
water very seldom since you went ; but the last 
time I accomplished the great job of fairly swim- 
ming on my back, which is a step equal to that 
of getting one's first commission. 

" I hope that the opening of Pelayo is pretty 
w T ell arranged, but I will not begin upon it till I 
come to a stop in Kehama. You will not, per- 
haps, be surprised to hear that two of my old 
dreams are likely to be introduced, with power- 
ful effect, in this poem — good proof that it was 
worth while to keep even the imperfect register 
that I have. The fear is, that what happened 
to Nebuchadnezzar is perpetually happening to 
me. I forget my dreams, and have no Daniel 
to help out my recollection ; and if by chance I 
do remember them, unless they are instantly 
written down, the impression passes away almost 
as lightly as the dream itself. Do you remem- 
ber the story of Mickle the poet, who always 
regretted that he could not remember the poetry 
which he composed in his sleep? it was, he said, 
so infinitely superior to any thing which he pro- 
duced in his waking hours. One morning he 
awoke, and repeated the lamentation over his 
unhappy fortune, that he should compose such 
sublime poetry, and yet lose it forever ! ' What !' 
said his wife, who happened to be awake, ' were 
you writing poetry ?' ' Yes,' he replied, ' and 
such poetry that I would give the world to re- 
member it.' ' Well, then,' said she, ' I did luck- 
ily hear the last lines, and I am sure I remember 
them exactly : they were, 

" By Heaven, I'll wreak my woes 
Upon the cowslip and the pale primrose " ' 



240 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 35. 



This is one of Sharpe's stories : it is true, and 
an excellently good one it is. I am not such a 
dreamer as Mickle, for what I can remember is 
worth remembering, and one of the wildest 
scenes in Kehania will prove this. God bless 
you! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"August 16, 1808. 

" Are you not half ready to suspect, Gros- 
venor, that I have forsworn letter writing? I 
write as seldom to any of my friends as I do to 
you, and yet letters of business and of common 
courtesy accumulate upon me so fast that they 
occasion a very considerable and even inconven- 
ient expense of time, especially to a man who, 
in the summer, is troubled with an influenza 
called laziness, and all the year round with the 
much more troublesome disease of poverty. 

" It is not to be told how I rejoice at seeing 
my friends the Spaniards and Portuguese prov- 
ing themselves to the eyes of the world to be 
what I have so long said they were. Huzza ! 
Santiago and St. George ! Smite them, as my 
Cid said, for the love of charity. 

' : Grosvenor ! the most deserving of his maj- 
esty's pensioners thinketh of his pension — it is 
low water with him. 

" Have you seen a defense, or rather eulo- 
giura, of Madoc, in the last Gentleman's Maga- 
zine, by Miss Seward ? who preaches up its 
praise wherever she goes. 

K You will have the Cid in about a fortnight. 
The translations in the appendix are by Frere, 
and they are, without any exception, the most 
masterly I have seen. The introduction, to be 
what it ought to be, and what I could have made 
it, would have required a volume to itself, for my 
reading is far more extensive on these subjects 
than almost any person can suppose. It £ a 
rapid sketch — just sufficient to introduce the 
Chronicle, by giving the reader a summary view 
of the previous history and present state of Spain. 
The Chronicle is well done; and the translation 
improves so much on the original, by incorpo- 
rating matter from other sources, as to be unique 
in its kind. There is a good deal of miscella- 
neous matter brought together in the notes. The 
intrinsic value of the work is of a very high or- 
der. Romance has nothing finer than all the 
proceedings at Zamora, and poetry nothing su- 
perior to the living pictures which you will find 
every where. The Cid's speech at the cortes is 
perfect eloquence of its kind. If it be remem- 
bered that all this was written, in all probability, 
before the year 1200 (certainly within half a cen- 
tury sooner or later), I think it must be consid- 
ered as one of the most curious and valuable 
specimens of eai'ly literature — certainly as the 
most beautiful, beyond all comparison. 

" Tom has been lucky in his Admiralty ap- 
pointment, being first in a flag-ship, the Dread- 
nought. He says, and very justly, that our troops 
to Spain might have been conveyed in half the 
time, at half the expense, and without any risk 
at all, by putting as many on board some of our 



large ships of war as they could take (800 or 
1000 they could carry very well), and letting 
each ship make the best of her way to the port 
nearest the scene of action. A convoy may be 
wind-bound for months, and any single transport 
which parts company would fall to the first pri- 
vateer, whereas a ship of the line could beat 
down, take advantage of every start of wind, and 
defy all upon the ocean. There is very good 
sense in this. But transports imply jobs, and 
every thing must be a job in England. 

"Farewell ! I am getting on with South Amer- 
ica. 

" My son is the oddest fellow in the world : I 
wish you could see his bright eyes. * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" September 9, 1808. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" Had I been a single man, I should long ere 
this have found my way into Spain.* I do not 
perceive any possibility of my going now — for 
this plain reason, my pension would not support 
my family during my absence, and there is no 
reason to suppose that any salary which might 
be allotted me would be more than sufficient for 
my* own expenses abroad. So much the better ; 
for if it were otherwise, and the offer were made 
me, I believe I ought to accept it, and this could 
not be done without a great sacrifice. Three 
children, and a fourth in prospect, are not easily 
left, and ought not to be left unless some import- 
ant advantage were to be obtained by leaving 
them. I am obliged to Gifford — very much 
obliged to him : it is likely that Frere, from his 
knowledge of my uncle, would be disposed to 
listen to him ; but that enough could be obtained 
to render my acceptance of it prudent, or even 
practicable, seems out of the question. 

"So far was written last night, immediately 
on the receipt of your letter. In matters of any 
import this is my way — to reply from the instan- 
taneous feeling, and then let the reply lie quietly 
for cooler judgment. You see what my thoughts 
are upon the subject. I should accept an ad- 
vantageous offer, but am so certain of being des- 
perately home-sick during the whole time of ab- 
sence, that I am glad there is so little probable 
chance of any offer sufficiently advantageous. 
Yet, had I d6500 to dispose of, I would go in 
the first packet for Lisbon, expressly to purchase 
books. The French have, without doubt, sold 
off the convent libraries, and perhaps the public 
ones, and such a collection may now be made as 
could never at any other time be within reach. 

" As for a history of the Spanish Revolution, 
Landor is in the country, and if he is disposed 
to do it, there never was that man upon earth 
who could do it better. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



* This letter was in reply to one from Mr. Bedford, 
conveying an offer from Gifford to endeavor to procure 
him an appointment in Spain, that he might write an ac- 
count of the transactions then going forward there. 



Mtat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



241 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 13, 1808. 
u My dear Rickman, 

" Your estimate of Spain is right.* The dif- 
ference between our age and that of Elizabeth 
is, that the bulk of the people are better in no 
respect, and worse in some. The middle classes 
are veneered instead of being heart of oak, and 
the higher ones are better classics, and worse in 
every ether possible point of view. Ours is a 
degrading and dwarfing system of society. I 
believe, as you do, that the Spaniards have dis- 
played more spirit than we should have done, 
and that the peacemongers were ready to have 
sacrificed the honor of England for their looms 
and brew-houses ; yet, in -the end, we should 
have beaten France. Religion has done much 
for Spain ; in what light I regard it, you will see 
by the introduction to the Cid, written six years 
ago, and only remodeled now, and that before 
these late events took place. But much has also 
been done by those awakening recollections of 
the deeds of their forefathers, which every Span- 
iard felt and delighted to feel. The very bal- 
lads of the Cid must have had their effect. 

# # # # # # # 
"I am very idle — boating and walking about, 
and laying in health and exercise for the next 
season of hibernation. Right glad shall I be 
when you come and help me in this laudable and 
needful part of my year's work. The last odd 
thing that has turned up in my reading is, that 
the Merino sheep were originally English, and 
transported from hence into Spain ; ergo, the 
quality of the wool depends upon the climate 
and pasture, and a few generations may be ex- 
pected to bring it back to what it originally 



R. S." 



To Lieutenant Southey, H.M.S. Dreadnought. 
"Greta Hall, Oct. 13, 1808. 
" Dear Tom, 

" An Irishman who was abroad came in one 
day and said that he had seen that morning what 
he had never seen before — a fine crop of ancho- 
vies growing in the garden. ' Anchovies ?' said 
an Englishman, with a half laugh and a tone of 
wonder. And from this the other, according to 
the legitimate rules of Irish logic, deduced a 
quarrel, a challenge, and a duel, in which the 
poor Englishman, who did not believe that an- 
chovies grew in the garden, was killed on the 
spot. The moment he fell, the right word came 
into the challenger's head. ' Och ! what a pity !' 
he cried, ' and I meant capers all the while !' 
Mr. Spence knew the parties, and told this story 
the other day at Calvert's, from whence it trav- 
eled to me. 

"What, think you, was announced the other 



* " I do not know whether you allow credit to my opin- 
ion that the Spanish resistance is all from religion. * 

* * You know I reckon the state of Spain to be about 
like that of England under Elizabeth and James the First 

* * *— J. R. to R. ,?., SeptAO, 1808. 

Q 



was. # # # 


* 


* 


* # # # 


# 


* 


" God bless you ! 







day in the Keswick play -bill ? A tale in verse, 
by R. Sonthy, Esq., to be recited by Mr. Deans. 
There's fame for you ! What the tale was I 
have not heard — most likely the Maid of the 
Inn, which is right worthy of such recitation. 

" It occurred to me last night, 1 know not 
how, that I have never, to the best of my recol- 
lection, seen one of the large house-snails in this 
country, and very few indeed of the smaller kind, 
which are so numerous, and of such beautiful 
varieties, in our part of the kingdom. You know 
what a collector of snail shells I was in my time, 
hoarding up all the empty ones I could find. 
The rocks used to be my hunting-place. That 
amusement has made me familiar with every va- 
riety in that neighborhood, and certain I am that 
the greater number are not to be found here. 
Slugs we have in plenty. By-the-by, I have 
lately seen it mentioned in an old French book 
that frogs eat snails, shells and all. 

" I wish you had the Cid to have shown the 
Spaniards : they would have been pleased to see 
that the Campeador was beginning to have his 
fame here in England, 700 years after his death. 
Unquestionably that Chronicle is one of the fin- 
est things in the world, and so I think it will be 
admitted to be. Coleridge is perfectly delight- 
ed with it. Frere, passionately as he admired 
the poem, had never seen the Chronicle, which 
is remarkable enough. You will see, by com- 
paring the Dumb-ee scene in both, that the 
Chronicle is sometimes the most poetical of the 
two.* I am so fond of this kind of cotempoyary 
history, and so persuaded of the good which it 
is likely to do, by giving us a true knowledge 
of other times, and reviving those high and gen- 
erous feelings which all modern habits of life 
tend to counteract, that I think seriously of trans- 
lating the works of Fernan Lopez as soon as my 
history is completed. There is the Chronicle of 
Pedro the Just, which is a very small volume, 
my great MS., and the Chronicle of Joam I. 
The whole would fill three such quartos as the 
Cid. I should like to do it for the pleasure of 
the thing, as the man said when he was to shoot 
Shepherd's goat. * * * * 

"I am getting on with my Letters from Port- 
ugal. The evenings close in by tea-time, and 
fire and candle bring with them close work at 
the desk, and nothing to take me from it. The 
Long-man of the Row recommends the small 
size in preference to quarto, as producing great- 
er profits, in consequence of its readier sale. To 
this I willingly assent. They will probably ex- 
tend to three such volumes as Espriella. When 
they are done, the fresh letters of Espriella will 
come in their turn ; and so I go on. Huzza ! 
two-and-twenty volumes already ; the Cid, when 
reprinted, will make two more ; and, please God, 
five a year in addition as long as I live. 

u Edith has just been in with her kiss — as 
regular as the evening gun. She wants to know 
when uncle will come home. Sooner, perhaps, 
than he himself thinks, for the glorious revolution 



Cid, book ix., c. xiii. 



242 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Ktat. 35. 



in Spain will bring Bonaparte down. It is mor- 
ally impossible that such a nation can be sub- 
dued. If King Joseph should fall into their 

hands, I pray that may be on the spot ; he 

will take care that no mischief shall happen by 
keeping him prisoner. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. Ebenezer Elliott. 

" October 13, 1808. 
" Sir, 
" A recommendation to the booksellers to look 
at a manuscript is of no use whatever. In the 
way of business they glance at every thing which 
is offered them, and no persons know better what 
is likely to answer their purpose. Poetry is the 
worst article in the market ; out of fifty volumes 
which may be published in the course of a year, 
not five pay the expense of publication : and this 
is a piece of knowledge which authors in gener- 
al purchase dearly, for in most cases these vol- 
umes are printed at their risk. 

"From that specimen of your productions 
which is now in my writing desk, I have no 
doubt that you possess the feeling of a poet, and 
may distinguish yourself; but I am sure that 
premature publication would eventually discour- 
age you. You have an example in Kirke White ; 
his Clifton Grove sold only to the extent of the 
subscription he obtained for it: and the treat- 
ment which it experienced drove him, by his 
own account, almost to madness. My advice to 
you is, to go on improving yourself, without haz- 
arding any thing : you can not practice without 
improvement. Feel your way before you with 
the public, as Montgomery did. He sent his 
verses to the newspapers, and, when they were 
copied from one to another, it was a sure sign 
they had succeeded. He then communicated 
them, as they were copied from the papers, to 
the Poetical Register ; the Reviews selected 
Ihem for praise ; and thus, when he published 
them in a collected form, he did nothing more 
than claim, in his own character, the praise 
which had been bestowed upon him under a fic- 
titious name. Try the newspapers. Send what 
you think one of your best short poems (that is, 
any thing short of 100 lines) to the Courier or 
the Globe. If it is inserted, send others, with 
any imaginary signature. If they please no- 
body, and nobody notices them for praise, no- 
body will for censure, and you will escape all 
criticism. If, on the contrary, they attract at- 
tention, the editor will be glad to pay you for 
more — and they still remain your property, to 
be collected and reprinted in whatever manner 
you may think best hereafter. 

u If, however, you are bent upon trying your 
fortune with the Soldier's Love, can you not try 
it by subscription? 250 names will indemnify 
you for the same number of copies. I will give 
you a fair opinion of your manuscript if you will 
direct Longman to forward it to me, and will 
willingly be of what little use I can. But be 
assured that the best and wisest plan you can 



pursue is to try your strength in the London 
newspapers. 

" Believe me, with the best wishes for your 
welfare and success, yours sincerely, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Humphrey Senhouse, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 15, 1808. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I have had a visit this morning from S 

and C upon the subject of this convention 

in Portugal. They, and some of their friends, 
are very desirous of bringing before the country, 
in some regular form, the main iniquity of the 
business — which has been lost sight of in all the 
addresses — and of rectifying public opinion by 
showing it in its true light.* A military in- 
quiry may or may not convict Sir Hugh Dal- 
rymple of military misconduct. This is the least 
part of his offense, and no legal proceedings can 
attach to the heinous crime he has committed ; 
the high treason against all moral feeling, in 
recognizing Junot by his usurped title, and dead- 
ening that noble spirit from which, and wiiich 
only, the redemption of Europe can possibly pro- 
ceed — by presuming to grant stipulations for the 
Portuguese which no government ever pretend- 
ed to have power to make for an independent 
ally — covenanting for the impunity of the trait- 
ors, and guaranteeing the safety of an army of 
ruffians, all of whom, without his intervention, 
must soon have received their righteous reward 
from the hands of those whom they had oppress- 
ed. He has stepped in to save these wretches 
from the vengeance of an injured people ; he has 
been dealing with them as fair and honorable en- 
emies, exchanging compliments and visits, din- 
ing with them in the palaces from which they 
had driven the rightful lords, and upon the plate 
which they had stolen. He, therefore, has aban- 
doned our vantage ground, betrayed the cause 
of Spain and Portugal, and disclaimed, as far as 
his authority extends, the feelings which the 
Spaniards are inculcating, and in which lie their | 
strength and their salvation, by degrading into a 
common and petty war between soldier and sol- 
dier, that which is the struggle of a nation against 
a foreign usurper, a business of natural life and 
death, a war of virtue against vice, light against 
darkness, the good principle against the evil 
one. 

" It is important to make the country feel this ; 
and these sentiments would appear with most ef- 
fect if they were embodied in a county address, 
of which the ostensible purport might be to thank 



* The feeling of the country seems to have been more 
generally roused on this occasion than almost on any 
other: "The London newspapers joined in one cry of 
wonder and abhorrence. On no former occasion had they 
been so unanimous, and scarcely ever was their language 
so energetic, so manly, so worthy of the English press. 
The provincial papers proved that from one end of the 
island to the other the resentment of this grievous wrong 
was the same. Some refused to disgrace their pages by 
inserting so infamous a treaty ; others surrounded it with 
broad black lines, putting their journals into mourning for 
the dismal information it contained." — Edinburgh Anntlr 
al Register, 1808, p. 368. 



jEtat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



243 



his majesty for having instituted an inquiry, and 
to request that he would be pleased to appoint a 
day of national humiliation for this grievous na- 
tional disgrace. This will not be liable to the 
reproof with which he thought proper to receive 
the city address, because it prejudges nothing — 
military proceedings are out of the question : 
what is complained of is a breach of the law of 
nations, and an abandonment of the moral prin- 
ciple which the words of the convention prove, 
and which can not be explained away by any in- 
quiry whatsoever. 

S and C know many persons who will 

come forward at such a meeting. Coleridge or 
Wordsworth will be ready to speak, and will 
draw up resolutions to be previously approved, 
and brought forward by some proper person. 
We will prepare the way by writing in the 
county papers. Here ends my part of the busi- 
ness, and not a little surprised am I to find my- 
self even thus much concerned in any county 
affairs, when the sole freehold I am ever likely 
to possess is a tenement six feet by three, in 
Crosthwaite church-yard. 

TV TV TV TV * TV TV 

" Believe me, yours very truly, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 6, 1808. 
" My dear Scott, 
" I have sometimes thought of publishing 
translations from the Spanish and Portuguese, 
with the originals annexed, but there was no 
prospect of profit to tempt me ; and as certain- 
ly, if I live, it is my intention to enter fully into 
the literary history of both countries. That 
made me lay aside the thought of any thing on 
a lesser scale. Another reason, perhaps, may 
have been this, that it is not more difficult to 
compose poetry than to translate it, and that, in 
my own opinion, I can make as good as I can 
find. Very, very few of the Spanish ballads are 
good ; they are made in general upon one receipt, 
and that a most inartificial one ; they begin by 
describing the situation of somebody who makes 
a speech which is the end. Nothing like the 
wildness or the character of our ballads is to be 
found among them. It is curious, and at present 
inexplicable to me, how their prose should be so 
exquisitely poetical as it is in the Cid, and their 
poetry so completely prosaical as it is in their 
narrative poems. Nevertheless, I might be 
tempted. Some translations I have by me, and 
many of my books are marked for others. There 
are some high-toned odes in the Spanish, and a 
good many beautiful sonnets. Many of their 
epics would afford good extracts ; and I am 
competent to give critical sketches of biography, 
formed not at second-hand, but from full perusal 
of the authors themselves. My name, however, 
is worth nothing in the market, and the booksell- 
ers would not offer me any thing to make it 
worth my while to interrupt occupations of 
greater importance. I thank you heartily for 



your offer of aid, and should the thing be carried 
into effect, would gladly avail myself of it. 

"I am planning something of great import- 
ance, a poem upon Pelayo, the first restorer of 
Spain : it has long been one of my chosen sub- 
jects ; and those late events, which have warmed 
every heart that has right British blood circulat- 
ing through it, have revived and strengthened 
old resolutions. It will be in regular blank 
verse, and the story will naturally take rather a 
higher tone than Madoc 

" It gives me great pleasure to hear that you 
have done with the Edinburgh Review. Of their 
article respecting Spain, I heard from Coleridge. 
That subject is a fair touchstone whether a man 
has any generous sympathies in his nature. There 
is not in history such another instance of nation- 
al regeneration and redemption. I have been a 
true prophet upon this subject, and am not a lit- 
tle proud of the prophecy. Of the eventual is- 
sue I have never felt a moment's doubt. Such 
a nation, such a spirit, are invincible. But what 
a cruel business has this convention of Cintra 
been. Junot clearly expressed his own feel- 
ings of our commander-in-chief when he recom- 
mended him to take up his quarters at Quintel- 
la's house as he had done : " the man," he said, 
" kept a very good table, and he had seldom had 
reason to find fault with it." My blood boils to 
think that there should be an English general to 
whom this rascal could venture to say this ! In 
one of the Frenchmen's knapsacks, among other 
articles of that property which they bargained 
to take away with them, was a delicate female 
hand with rings upon the fingers. 

" Our ministers do not avail themselves as 
they might do of their strong cause. They 
should throw away the scabbard and publish a 
manifesto, stating why this country never will 
make peace with Bonaparte, and on what plain 
terms it will at any moment make peace with 
France under any other ruler. I fully believe 
that it would be possible to overthrow his gov- 
ernment by this means at this time. 

" A reviewal of my Cid by you will be the 
best aid that it can possibly receive. Five hund- 
red only were printed, and in spite of the tem- 
porary feeling and the wonderful beauty of the 
book, I dare say they will hang upon hand. 

" It will rejoice me to see you here, and show 
you my treasures, and talk of the days of the 
shield and the lance. We have a bed at your 
service, and shall expect you to be our guest. 
Wordsworth, who left me to-day, desires his re- 
membrances. He is about to write a pamphlet 
upon this precious convention, which he will 
place in a more philosophical point of view than 
any body has yet done. I go to press in a few 
weeks with my History of Brazil, and have Thai- 
aba at present in Ballantyne's hands — that poem 
having just reached the end of its seven years' 
apprenticeship. And I have got half way througb 
my Hindoo poem, which, it is to be hoped, wi! 
please myself, inasmuch as it is not likely to 
please any body else. It is too strange, too muc'i 
beyond all human sympathies ; but I shall ctq c 



244 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 35. 



and as, in such a case, I have usually little hut 
my labor for my pains, the certainty that it never 
can be popular will not deter me from gratifying 
my own fancy. 

" Mrs. Southey joins me in remembrances to 
Mrs. Scott. 

" Believe me, yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

The autumn of this year was marked by a 
circumstance which exercised considerable in- 
fluence over my father's future literary labors — 
the setting on foot of the Quarterly Review, in 
which, up to the last few years of his life, he 
bore so constant and prominent a part. At this 
time the Edinburgh Review had the field all to 
itself; and though it had commenced upon prin- 
ciples of " neutrality," or something of the kind 
as to party politics,* its " Whiggery" had grad- 
ually increased until it had become of the deep- 
est dye. We have seen that in the preceding 
year Sir Walter Scott (at that time himself a 
contributor) had endeavored also to enlist my 
father under its banners, with what success the 
reply has shown. Now he had not only himself 
withdrawn his aid, but also his name from the 
subscribers' list,t so highly did he disapprove of 
the political tone it had assumed ; and viewing 
the matter as one of great importance from its 
large circulation (9000 copies being then printed 
quarterly), from there being no periodical to 
compete with it in literary criticism, and from 
the impression which the " flashy and bold char- 
acter of the work" was likely to make upon 
youthful minds, he was especially desirous that 
some counteracting influence should be estab- 
lished. In him, therefore, the idea originated. 
The first intimation of it my father received was 
from his friend Mr. Bedford, who was intimately 
acquainted with Gifford, the appointed future 
editor, and who, knowing how decidedly he was 
opposed to the principles advocated in the Edin- 
burgh, especially as respected "the base and 
cowardly spirit with which they set forth the in- 
vincible power of France, and the necessity of 
sacrificing every thing that is dear and honora- 
ble to obtain her forbearance," now wrote to 
him, giving him an account of the plan upon 
which it was proposed to conduct this Review, 
and wishing him to draw up an account of the 
affairs of Spain for the first number. His reply 
was as follows : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 9, 1808. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" I am ready, desirous, and able to bear a part 
in this said Review. You will, however, think 
it odd, that the very subject on which you think 
me most able is one which I should rather avoid. 
I have not the sort of talent requisite for writing 
a political pamphlet upon the state of Spain; 
these things require a kind of wire-drawing 
which I have never learned to perform, and a 



* See Life of Sir Walter Scott, 2d edit., vol. iii., p. 65. 
t Ibid., 12G-129. 



method of logical reasoning to which my mind 
has never been habituated, and for which it has 
no natural aptitude. What I feel about Spain 
you know; what I think about it is tins — the 
country has much to suffer, in all probability 
there will be many and dreadful defeats of the 
patriots, and such scenes as have neVer been wit- 
nessed in Europe since the destruction of Sagun- 
tum and Numantia may perhaps be renewed 
there. Joseph will very likely be crowned at 
Madrid, and many of us may give up the cause 
of Spanish independence as lost. But so surely 
as God liveth, and as the spirit of God liveth and 
moveth in the hearts of men, so surely will that 
country eventually work out its own redemption. 

" Now, Grosvenor, understand me clearly. I 
could not fill half a score of pages by dilating 
and diluting this — that is, I should be a sorry 
pamphleteer ; but I believe myself to be a good 
reviewer in my own way, w T hich is that of giv- 
ing a succinct account of the contents of the book 
before me, extracting its essence, bringing my 
own knowledge to bear upon the subject, and, 
where occasion serves, seasoning it with those 
opinions which in some degree leaven all my 
thoughts, words, and actions. If you had read 
the Annual Reviews, you would comprehend this 
better by example than I can make you in a let- 
ter. Voyages and travels I review better than 
any thing else, being well read in that branch of 
literature ; better, indeed, than most men. Biog- 
raphy and history are within my reach; upon 
any of these topics I will do my best. * * 
* * * * You know my way of 
thinking upon most subjects. I despise all par- 
ties too much to be attached to any. I believe 
that this country must continue the war while 
Bonaparte is at the head of France, and while 
the system which he has perfected remains in 
force ; I therefore, from my heart and soul, exe- 
crate and abominate the peaceraongers. I am 
an enemy to any further concessions to the Cath- 
olics ; I am a friend to the Church establishment. 
I wish for reform, because I can not but see that 
all things are tending toward revolution, and 
nothing but reform can by any possibility pre- 
vent it. 

" Thus much is said to you that it may be 
said through you. To yourself I add that the 
pay proposed will be exceedingly suitable to my 
poor finances, and that the more books of travels 
they send me the better. I had almost forgot- 
ten to say, that if a fit text be sent me, the sub- 
ject of converting the Hindoos is one upon which 
I am well prepared. 

" Farewell, and God bless you ! R. S." 

Very shortly after the date of this letter, some 
further doubts crossed my father's mind as to the 
projected Review being sufficiently independent 
in its politics for him to contribute to it with per- 
fect satisfaction. The circumstance of there be- 
ing reason to expect "political information to 
be communicated from authentic sources" seem- 
ed to him to imply that silence would be ob- 
served on such points as it might be unpleasing 



^Etat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



245 



to the ministry to have strongly animadverted 
upon, and he consequently expresses these fears 
to Mr. Bedford in the strong language he natu- 
rally used to a familiar correspondent. This 
produced a further exposition of the principles 
upon which the Review was to be conducted ; 
and his reply will show that, notwithstanding 
these passing doubts, he entered at the first 
heartily and zealously into the plan. 

It is, however, right to state, that at no period 
could the Quarterly Review be said fairly to 
represent my father's opinions, political or other- 
wise, and great injustice was often done him both 
by imputing articles to him which he never 
wrote, and also by supposing that, in those known 
to be his, all his mind had appeared. The truth 
was, as his letters will show, that his views on 
most subjects, while from this time they gradu- 
ally drew nearer to those of the Tory party, yet 
occasionally differed widely from them, and most 
certainly were never those of a blind, time-serv- 
ing, and indiscriminating allegiance. In his con- 
tributions to the Quarterly Review these differ- 
ences of opinion were broadly stated, and meas- 
ures often recommended of a very different char- 
acter to those which that party adopted. This 
might be, and probably was, sometimes done in 
a manner which admitted, and, perhaps, required 
the editor's correction ; but it would seem that 
Gilford had a heavy and unsparing hand in these 
matters, and my father frequently and bitterly 
complains of the mutilation of his papers, and 
of their being tamed down to the measure of the 
politics the Review was intended to represent, 
and gauged often by ministerial timidity. This, 
it appears, from the following letter, he appre- 
hended would sometimes be the case, but not to 
the extent to which it was subsequently carried. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Nov. 17, 1808. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" You have taken what I said a little too se- 
riously ; that is, you have given it more thought 
than it deserved. The case stands thus : you 
wish to serve the public, ministers wish to serve 
themselves ; and so it happens that, just at this 
time, the two objects are the same. I am very 
willing to travel with them as far as we are go- 
ing the same way, and, when our roads separate, 
shall of course leave them. Meantime, that sup- 
pression which there certainly will be upon cer- 
tain points is of little consequence to me, who 
shall have nothing to do with those points. Mur- 
ray has sent me materials for the missionary ar- 
ticle, in which Gifford wishes me to enter upon 
the subject generally. My intent was to have 
confined myself to the Hindoo question ; but I 
am master of the whole subject, and will there- 
fore take the wider view. There are three re- 
viewals of mine upon this very topic in the three 
first Annuals, and these were the first which ever 
appeared concerning them. I am strong here, 
and shall do well, God willing ; yet how much 
better could I do if nobody but Robert Southey 
were responsible for the opinions expressed. 



" I know from Walter Scott that he reviews 
the Cid ; it is not a text for entering directly 
upon the present Spanish affairs, though a fine 
one for toivching upon them. Two things are 
required for the review of that book which will 
not be found in one person — a knowledge of 
Spanish literature, and of the manners of chival- 
ry, so as to estimate the comparative value of 
my Chronicle. The latter knowledge Scott pos- 
sesses better than any body else. 

" About Cevallos you best know your own 
stock of materials. Authors may be divided into 
silk- worms and spiders — those who spin because 
they are full, and those who spin because they 
are empty. It is not likely that there are any 
facts of importance which are not known to the 
public ; and, indeed, if I undertook the task, I 
should have little to do with the past history of 
these transactions, but state as summarily and 
strongly as I could what the conduct of France 
had been ; hold up the war as a crusade on the 
part of us and the Spaniards (I love and vindicate 
the Crusades) ; show why I expected this from 
their character, and also why I now expect in 
full faith a glorious termination at last, though 
prepared to hear of heavy reverses for a time, 
possibly the recoronation of Joseph at Madrid. 
Finally, I would represent the thought of peace 
with Bonaparte as high treason against all hon- 
orable feelings and all liberty. Of the Spanish 
frigates I would say nothing ; would to God that 
they who issued orders for their capture were 
buried in the deep with them ! There is a sort 
of methodical writing, carrying with it an air of 
official imposingness which does better in such 
cases than better things (though I would not be 
supposed to imply that it necessarily excludes 
them) 5 and of this style I should guess that Her- 
ries is master. 

" Elmsley may be applied to, and, I think, 
with success. As for Davy, I know not whether 
the prize which he received from Bonaparte 
sticks to his fingers or no ; I would sooner have 
cut mine off than accepted it. It is likely to 
co-operate with some of his Royal Institution as- 
sociates in making him cry out for peace : yet 
Davy's heart is sound at the core, and his all- 
grasping, all-commanding genius must have re- 
deemed him. The best channel to him is through 
Sotheby, a man on whom you may calculate. I 
am particularly anxious that my hint about Poole 
should be adopted. One article from him about 
the poor will be worth its weight in gold. I 
hope Malthus will not be a contributor. By that 
first book moral restraint was pronounced im- 
practicable ; by his second it is relied upon as 
his remedy for the poors' rates, which are to be 
abolished to prevent the poor from marrying ; 
and moral restraint and the parson are to render 
them contented in celibacy. His main principle 
is that God makes men and women faster than 
He can feed them, and he calls upon government 
to stop the breed. As if we did not at this mo- 
ment want men for our battles ! Rickman's 
name should stand in the place of his. Rickman 
has ten-fold his knowledge and his ability. There 



246 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 35. 



is no man living equal to Rickrnan upon the sub- 
ject of political economy. He, too, is a Crusad- 
er as to this war. Malthus will prove a peace- 
monger. 

" It would attract much notice, and carry with 
it much recommendation, if an account of the 
Welsh Archaeology could be procured. Turner 
may be asked for it ; I am afraid he is too busy : 
William Owen, alas ! is one of Joanna South- 
cote's four-and-twenty elders ; and Bard Will- 
iams is, God knows where, and nothing is to be 
got out of him except by word of mouth. There 
is, however, the chance of Turner ; there is Da- 
vies of Olveston, the author of the Celtic Re- 
searches ; there is Wynn's Welshman — Peter 
Roberts. 

" Farewell ! I finish my Annualizing in a 
few days, and shall then set about the Missions. 

" God bless you ! R. S. 

:: Let not Gifford suppose me a troublesome 
man to deal with, pertinacious about trifles, or 
standing upon punctilios of authorship. No, 
Grosvenor, I am a quiet, patient, easy-going 
hack of the mule breed ; regular as clock-work 
in my pace, sure-footed, bearing the burden which 
is laid on me, and only obstinate in choosing my 
own path. If Gifford could see me by this fire- 
Bide, where, like Nicodemus, one candle suffices 
me in a large room, he would see a man in a 
coat ' still more threadbare than his own' when 
he wrote his ' Imitation,' working hard and get- 
ling little — a bare maintenance, and hardly that; 
writing poems and history for posterity with his 
whole heart and soul ; one daily progressive in 
learning, not so learned as he is poor, not so poor 
a^ proud, not so proud as happy. Grosvenor, 
there is not a lighter-hearted nor a happier man 
upon the face of this wide world. 

' : Your godson thinks that I have nothing to do 
bat to play with him, and any body wiio saw 
what reason he has for his opinion would be dis- 
posed to agree with him. I wish you could see 
ray beautiful boy!" 

To John Richnan, E»q. 

" Nov. 20, 1808. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" The earliest chronicle in French is that of 
Geoffrey Vilhardouin, so often quoted by Gibbon, 
wiiich relates the capture of Constantinople by 
the Latins, and is, therefore, long subsequent to 
My Cid. I believe the earliest histories of the 
Normans are in Latin, and believe, also, that all 
Latin chronicles will be found either as you de- 
scribe them, or florid and pedantic. Men never 
write with feeling in any language but their 
own ; they never write well upon subjects with 
which they do not sympathize ; and what sym- 
pathy could there ever be between monks and 
chivalry ? My Cid is the finest specimen of 
chivalrous history : it is so true a book that it 
bespeaks belief for the story of his victory after 
death, and it requires arguments and dates to 
prove that this part is not authentic. 

:i I am brimful of this kind of knowledge, and 
much more of it will appear in the first volume 



of Portuguese History than in the Cid. There 
are two other subjects on which I am as well in- 
formed as those for which you give me credit* 
— savage manners and monastic history ; and 
the latter, not the least curious of the whole, 
certainly the most out-of-the-way. It is a little 
unlucky that the least interesting of all my histo- 
ries must come out first. 

" The Saxon language, you say, ousted the 
Welsh as completely as its possessors. But 
there is reason to believe that a part only of our 
prior population was Celtic, and that we had pre- 
viously hived Teutonic and Cantabrian swarms. 
A Basque dictionary would be a treasure ; none 
of our etymologists have had recourse to it. I 
was told by the only person I ever met with who 
had studied this language, that there was far 
more of it than had been supposed both in the 
Spanish and Portuguese — about as much, prob- 
ably, as we have of Welsh. Bilboa would be 
the place to get Basque books ; but I will try to 
obtain a dictionary through Frere, who has of- 
fered his services to my uncle in this line — a new- 
species of diplomacy of more use than the old. 

" In one point, and only in one, does China 
offer an exception to the evil consequences of po- 
lygamy,! and that is, it has remained an undi- 
vided empire. This, I suppose, is owing to the 
unique circumstance of its having a literary aris- 
tocracy, all subordinate authority being in the 
hands of men w r hose education and whose habits 
of life make them averse to war. Robbers are 
the only rebels there ; the demoralizing effects 
of the system are the same there as every where. 
Shuey-ping-sinJ exemplifies that. I have not as- 
serted that it is a barrier to intellectual improve- 
ment otherwise than as that must be checked by 
public disturbances and private voluptuousness. 
The want of an alphabet in China is certainly 
cause sufficient ; but it is a supererogatory cause, 
for those Orientals who have one are not ad- 
vanced a step further. For an effect so general 
there must be some general cause, operating un- 
der so many varieties of climate and religion ; 
and this is the only one w T hich has universally 
existed. 

" I recommend and exhort you to read Cap- 
tain Beaver's African Memoranda; you will find 
a book and a man after your own heart : I would 
walk to the Land's End to have the satisfaction 
of shaking hands with him. # # * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



* " Two out-of-the-way things you certainly know bet- 
ter than all other men — Eastern fable and European chiv- 
alry and romance ; and this nobody will dispute who has 
read the annotations to Thalaba and My Cid."— J. R. to 
R.S. 

f " In your introduction to My Cid, I was not surprised 
that you insist largely on the evils of polygamy, knowing 
that to be your particular aversion. I myself do not ad- 
mire polygamy, nor much more that idea of Dr. John- 
son's, that happiness would not be less in quantity if all 
marriages were made by law without consulting the in- 
clinations of the couples. However, in taking a general 
view, we must not forget that the largest and most popu- 
lous empire in the world, China, goes on pretty well un- 
der both these inconveniences, for I think in fairness you 
will allow that the want of an alphabet accounts sufficient- 
ly for the frozen limits of Chinese science, without calling 
in the aid of polygamy or of aught else." — J. R. to R. S s 
Oct. 12, 1S08. * i The title of a Chinese novel 



jEtat. 35. 



ROBERT SOU THEY 



21; 



To Lieutenant Southcy, H.M.S. Dreadnought. 
"Keswick, Nov. 22, 1808. 
" My dear Tom, 

" I am not quite sure which deserves the se- 
verest cart's-tailing, you or your admiral ; you 
for what you say of Frere's translation, he for 
what he says of mine. A translation is good 
precisely in proportion as it faithfully represents 
the matter, manner, and spirit of its original : 
this is equally well done in his verse and my 
prose, and I will venture to say never has been, 
and never will be, better done elsewhere. You 
do not like it at all ! With what notion have you 
been reading it ? Not, I am sure, with the rec- 
ollection that it is part of the oldest poem extant 
in any modern language, being of the time of our 
William the Conqueror, the manner and the me- 
ter of which have been represented as accurate- 
ly as possible. In fact, his translation had long 
been the admiration of all who had seen it, and 
I had heard wonders of it from Walter Scott, 
Harry, Heber, and the Hollands, before I saw 
it. Your phrase of ' eking out' is cart's-tailable 
without benefit of clergy. Instead of wanting 
materials, I suppressed half a drawerful of notes, 
besides my own King Ramiro and Garci Fer- 
randcz, 

" Now to the admiral's criticism. He seems 
to suppose that a book ought always to be ren- 
dered into English of the newest fashion ; and, 
if not, that it then should be given in the English 
of its own age — a book of the fifteenth century 
(sixteenth he means) in that of the fifteenth. He 
did not recollect that in the thirteenth century 
there was no such thing as English, which is, I 
think, answer enough. But the fact is, that, 
both in this Chronicle and in Amadis, I have not 
formed a style, but followed one. The original, 
when represented as literally as possible, ran 
into that phraseology, and all I had to do was to 
avoid words, and forms of words, of modern crea- 
tion, and also such as were unintelligibly obso- 
lete. There is, as you must have heard Words- 
worth point out, a language of pure intelligible 
English, which was spoken in Chaucer's time, 
and is spoken in ours ; equally understood then 
and now ; and of which the Bible is the written 
and permanent standard, as it has undoubtedly 
been the great means of preserving it. To that 
beautiful manner of narration which characterizes 
the best Chronicles, this language is peculiarly 
adapted ; and, in fact, it is appropriated to such 
narration by our books of chivalry, and, I might 
almost say, consecrated to it by the historical 
parts of Scripture. It so happens that, of all 
the things which I have ever done, the only one 
for which all the Reviews with one accord com- 
mended me, was for the manner in which I had 
rendered Amadis. I wish he may steer as clear 
of all mischief as I shall of them upon this occa- 
sion. The fault which he finds is, that I have 
translated the Chronicle of the Cid instead of 
writing his History. 

"The new Review is to appear in April. 
Among the persons who are calculated upon to 
write in it, there are Frere ; G. Ellis ; your ad- 



miral's brother, a man of more than common 
talents, and well to be liked; Heber; Cople- 
stone, the Oxford Poetry Professor (a great ad- 
mirer of Madoc) ; Miss Baillie ; Sharon Turner ; 
and Captain Burney. A good many of these 
persons, I know, have the same thorough con- 
viction of the destructive folly it would be to 
make peace that I and Walter Scott have ; for, 
to do Scott justice, all his best and bravest feel- 
ings are alive upon that subject. I think we 
shall do good, and will do my part with a hearty 
good- will. What I said to Bedford was, that as 
long as this government caravan was traveling 
my road, I was content to travel with it ; and 
that, though all my opinions hang together, all 
the hanging which they imply does not imme- 
diately appear. One good thing is, that I shall 
be pretty sure of civil treatment here, and the 
Review will carry great weight with it. 

" has not written to me. There will be 

such a tremendous campaign that the chances 
are much against any individual, especially one 
who will seek the hottest service, as he will do. 
In the field he is but one, and as obnoxious to a 
ball as the merest machine of a soldier ; but, 
should he be in a besieged town, such a man is 
worth a whole regiment there. 

" God protect him, wherever he be ! 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 26, 1808. 

" In the height of our indignation here at the 
infamy in Portugal, one of our first thoughts was 
what yours would be. We in England had the 
consolation to see that the country redeemed 
itself by the general outcry which burst out. 
Never was any feeling within my recollection so 
general ; I did not meet a man who was not boil- 
ing over with shame and rage. 

" The Spaniards will be victorious. I am 
prepared to hear of many reverses, but this has 
from the beginning been as much a faith as an 
opinion with me ; and you, who know the Span- 
iards, will understand on what ground it has 
been formed. I am glad you know them, their 
country, and their language, which, in spite of 
your Romanized ears, becomes a man's mouth 
better than any other in present use, except, 
perhaps, our own. Come and see me when you 
have nothing to call you elsewhere, and the 
wind of inclination may set in this way, and we 
will talk about Spain, and retravel your route, a 
part of which I remember as vividly as I do my 
father's house. 

" Find out a woman whom you can esteem, 
and love will grow more surely out of esteem 
than esteem will out of love. Your soul would 
then find anchorage. There are fountain springs 
of delight in the heart of man, which gush forth 
at the sight of his children, though it might seem 
before to be hard as the rock of Horeb, and dry 
as the desert sands. What I learned from Rous- 
seau, before I laid Epictetus to my heart, was, 
that Julia was happy with a husband whom she 
had not loved, and that Wohncr was more to be 



243 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 35. 



admired than St. Preux. I bid no man beware 
of being poor as he grows old. but I say to all 
men. be"ware of solitariness in age. Rest is the 
object to be sought. There is no other way of 
attaining it here, where we have no convents, 
but bv putting an end to all those hopes and 
fears to which the best hearts are the most sub- 
ject. Experto crede Roberto. This is the holy 
oil which has stilled in me a nature little less 
tempestuous than your own. 

;: I have 1800 lines of Kehama to send you as 
soon as they can be transcribed, which will be 
with all convenient speed. Seven sections. 
cantos, or canticles more will finish the poem. 
The sight of the goal naturally quickens one's 
speed, and I have good hope of completing it 
before the spring. Pelayo. whereof I wrote in j 
my letter to Coruna, is not yet begun, the ma- 
terials not having quite settled into satisfactory I 
order. It is a grand subject, and I feel myself 
equal to it in every thing except topographical 
knowledge. I ought to have seen Gijon and 
Covadonga. Asturian scenery, however, must | 
resemble that of the contiguous parts of Leon 
and Galicia, and I have the whole road from 
Lugo to Astorga in my eye and in my heart. 

""We used our endeavors here to obtain a 
county meeting and send in a petition which 
should have taken up the Convention upon its 
true grounds of honor and moral feeling, keeping 
all pettier considerations out of sight. Words- 
worth — who left me when we found the business 
hopeless — went home to ease his heart in a pam- 
phlet, which I daily expect to hear he has com- 
pleted. Courts of Inquiry will do nothing, and 
can do nothing. But we can yet acquit our 
own souls, and labor to foster and keep alive a 
spirit which is in the country, and which a cow- 
ardly race of hungry place-hunters are endeav- 
oring to extinguish. 

" The ill news is just come, and ministers are 
quaking for Sir John Moore, for whom I do not 
quake, as he and his army will beat twice their 
number of French. The fall of Madrid must be 
looked for, and, perhaps. Zaragoza may be the 
Saguntum of modern history. That may God 
forbid ! but Spain is still unconquerable, and will 
still be victorious, though there should be a 
French garrison in every one of its towns. We, 
as usual, are in fault ; thirty thousand English 
at Bilboa would have secured that side, and En- , 
gland ought to have supplied thrice that number 
if she supplied any. 



,; God bless vou ! 



R. S. 



To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Dec 20, 1808. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
•• Here is my vindication of the Indian Mission 
packed up on the table : but, unluckily, too late 
for to-day's coach, so it can not reach London 
before Monday. It is written with hearty srood- 
will, and requires no signature to show whence 
it comes. Now I wish you would ask Mr. Gif- 
ford — if he thinks it expedient to use the prun- 



ing-knife — to let the copy be returned to me 
when the printer has done with it, because it is 
ten to one that the passages which he would 
curtail — being the most Robert Southeyish of 
the whole — would be those that I should like 
best myself: and, therefore, I would have the 
satisfaction of putting them in again for my own 
satisfaction, if for nobody : s else. I must still 
confess to you, Grosvenor, that I have my fears 
and suspicions as to the freedom of the Review, 
and this article will, in some measure, put it to 
the proof: for it is my nature and my principle 
to speak and write as earnestly, as plainly, and 
as straight to the mark as I think and feel. If 
the editor understands his own interest, he will 
not restrict me. A Review started against the 
Edinburgh will instantly be suspected of being 
a ministerial business, and a sprinkling of my 
free and fearless way of thinking will win friends 
for it among those very persons most likely to 
be prejudiced against it, and to be misled by the 
Scotchmen. The high orthodox men, both of 
Church and State, will always think as they are 
told : there is no policy in writing to them ; the 
Anti- Jacobin and British Critic are good enough 
for their faces of brass, brains of lead, and 
tongues of bell-metal. I shall not offend them, 
though my reasonings appeal to better hearts 
and clearer understandings. I would say this 
to him if I knew him : but I do not desire you to 
say it, because I do not know how far it might 
suit the person to whom it relates. 

; " Spain ! Spain ! * * * were the 
resources of the nation at my command. I would 
stake my head upon the deliverance of that 
country, and the utter overthrow of Bonaparte. 
But, good God ! what blunders, what girlish 
panics, what absolute cowardice are there in our 
measures ! Disembarking troops when we ought 
to be sending ship after ship as fast as they could 
be put on board. It is madness to wait for trans- 
ports : send ships of the line, and let them run 
singly for Lisbon, and Cadiz, and Catalonia. 
Nothing can ruin the Spaniards unless they feel 
the misconduct of England as I am grieved to 
say I feel it. It is the more heart-breaking be- 
cause the heart of England is with those noble 
people. We are not only ready, willing, and 
able to make every effort for them, but even 
eager to do it: and yet all is palsied by plans 
so idiotic that the horse-whip were a fitter in- 
strument of punishment for them than the halter, 
if it were not for their deadly consequences. 
God bless you! R. S." 



CHAPTER XV. 

cowper's translation of Hilton's latin and 
italian poems kehama history of bra- 
zil politics literary advice sketch 

of mr. rickman"'s character pleasure at 

seeing his writings in print spanish af- 
fairs the quarterly review excursion 

to durham freedom of his opinions the 

cid sensitive feelings gebir bad ef- 



Etat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHE Y. 



249 



fect of scientific studies anxiety about 

his little boy mr. canning wishes to 

serve him application for stewardship 

of. greenwich hospital estates mr. 

Wordsworth's pamphlet on the conven- 
tion OF CINTRA ECLOGUE OF THE ALDER- 

MAN's FUNERAL THE QUARTERLY REVIEW 

SIR JOHN MOORE'S RETREAT DEATH OF HIS 

LANDLORD MR. CANNING'S DUEL MORTE 

D'ARTHUR ECLECTIC AND QUARTERLY RE- 
VIEWS DR. COLLYER's LECTURES MR. COLE- 

RIDGE ? S "FRIEND" THE SOLDIER'S LOVE 

KEHAMA FINISHED PFLi i r O WAR IN THE 

PENINSULA. 1 809. 

In the following let f .er my father refers to one 
ne had lately received from Miss Seward, partly 
on the subject of Fayley's edition of Cowper's 
Milton. The reader will probably, therefore, 
not be displeased to see it prefaced by the quo- 
tation of her remarks. 

" To Mr. Hayley's quarto, which he calls 
Cowper's Milton, I six years past subscribed, 
and have sedulously perused my copy. Far from 
proving what its editor expects — the consum- 
mation of Milton's and his translator's glory — it 
appears to me utterly incapable of adding to that 
of either. If Milton's Latin and Italian com- 
positions are rich in poetic matter, they have met 
with no justice from Cowper, in w T hose dress 
they strike me as pedantic, tuneless, and spirit- 
less. Of the Damonides Langhorne formed a 
sweet and touching poem, one of the darlings of 
my youthful years. Cowper is as hard as iron 
in comparison, and almost all the pathos van- 
ishes in the stiff and labored expression ; yet 
Haylcy, for his idol, challenges the comparison, 
alleging also his conviction that, if the spirit of 
Milton could have directed the choice of a trans- 
lator from all living men, he would have selected 
Cowper, and that from the parity in their genius, 
their style, their character, and their fortunes. 
To this imaginary choice I am more than skep- 
tical. Rhyme was not Cowper's forte : nothing 
which he has written in it, except by sudden 
gleams, is above mediocrity. He not only want- 
ed ear to form its harmony, but rejected that 
harmony systematically. The numbers of its 
great master were displeasing to him. He says 
in his letters, ' Pope set his ideas to a tune 
which any one may catch ;' hence, when Cowper 
wrote in rhyme, provided he could cram his 
thoughts into the couplets, he chose rather that 
they should be rough than harmonious, that they 
should stumble rather than that they should 
glide. His blank verse is the sheet-anchor of 
his poetic fame. The Task, and the fragment 
en Yardley Oak, will be coeval with our language ; 
and, if his other works live, it will be for that 
they were written by the author of these two 
compositions. As for the quarto, seldom did a 
great book issue from the press whose contents 
were of less consequence to the literature of the 
country. The critical remarks which they con- 
tain on the Paradise Lost are few and trivial. 
T. Warton's notes, copied from that able writer's 



edition of Milton's lesser poems, are the most 
valuable part of the work. 

" Hayley is quite insane upon the subject of 
imputed similitude between Milton and Cowper 
as poets and men. He broaches it again and 
again, to the perfect nausea of all who can un- 
derstand the writings of either, or who ever 
made a remark on their characters and destiny. 
To such it must be evident that only one point 
of similitude exists — that the best works of each 
are in blank verse. Between the Paradise Lost 
and the Task there is no other shadow of resem- 
blance. The subject of the first, grave, dignified, 
regular, unbroken, and genuinely epic ; that of 
the other, originally light and comic. Mean- 
time, the poet floats through the pages of his 
desultory song, without rudder, without compass 
or anchor; yet he makes a varied and very in- 
teresting voyage, pleasing even to the most 
learned reader, and far more pleasing to the gen- 
erality of readers than poetry of a higher order, 
because it presents objects familiar to their ob- 
servation, and level with their capacity, and in 
numbers suited to the theme — sufficiently spirited 
and harmonious, but bearing no likeness to Mil- 
ton's rich maze of alternately grand and delicate 
verse." 

It appears that Mr. Bedford had been urged 
by Gifford to review this book, which he objected 
to do upon the plea of being a " very poor Ital- 
ian scholar, and not at all read in Milton, whom." 
he continues, "I freely confess I do not under- 
stand sufficiently to be in the same raptures with, 
which our countrymen, in general, think it a na- 
tional duty to feel." 

To this my father replies : 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Jan. 6, 1809. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 
" You make a confession respecting Milton 
which nine hundred and ninety-nine persons out 
of the thousand would make if they were honest 
enough ; for his main excellences are like M. 
Angelo's, only to be thoroughly appreciated by 
an artist. This, however, by no means inca- 
pacitates you from reviewing Hayley's book, in 
which your business lies with Cowper and with 
his biographer, one of whose works (his Animal 
Ballads) I once reviewed by quoting from 
O'Keefe's song — Haylcy, gaily, gamboraily, hig- 
gled)-, piggledy, galloping, draggle-tail, dreary 
dun. Hayley, as Miss Seward has just remarked 
to me in a letter, is perfectly insane upon the 
subject of Cowper's resemblance to Milton ; 
there is no other resemblance between them 
than that both wrote in blank verse — but blank 
verse as different as possible. You may com- 
pare Cowper's translations (which, I suppose, 
are very bad, as many of his lesser pieces are, 
and as Miss Seward tells me) with Langhorne's ; 
and you may estimate Cowper himself as a poet, 
as a man of intellect, and as a translator of 
Homer, showing that he is not overvalued ; but 
that his popularity is owing to his piety, not his 
poetry, and that that piety was craziiu's.-.. I 



:50 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JETAT. 35. 



like his letters, but think their so great popular- 
ity one of the very many proofs of the imbecility 
of the age. By-the-by, a very pretty piece of 
familiar verse, by Cowper,, appeared, about two 
years ago, in the Monthly Magazine. 

;: Ah, Grosvenor ! the very way in which you 
admire that passage in Kehama* convinces me 
that it ought not to be there. Did I not tell you it 
was clap-trappish ? you are clapping as hard as 
you can to prove the truth of my opinion. That it 
grew there naturally is certain, but does it suit 
with the poem? is it of a piece or color with 
the whole? Is not the poet speaking in him- 
self, whereas the whole character of the poem 
requires that he should be out of himself? I 
know very well that three parts of the public 
will agree with you in calling it the best thing in 
the poem, but my poem ought to have no things 
which do not necessarily belong to it. There 
will be a great deal to do to it, and a good deal 
is already done in the preceding parts. 

" I have long expected a schism between the 
Grenvilles and the Foxites. Jeffrey has been 
trying to unite the Opposition and the Jacobins, 
as they are called. He hurts the Opposition, 
and he wrongs the Jacobins ; he hurts the for- 
mer by associating them with a name that is still 
unpopular, and he wrongs the friends of liberty 
by supposing that they are not the deadliest en- 
emies of Bonaparte. Walter Scott, whom I look 
upon as as complete an anti- Jacobin as need be, 
does not sing out more loudly, ' Fight on, my 
merry men all !' than I do. General Moore must 
feel himself stronger than we have supposed him 
to be, or he would not advance into the plains of 
Castille. If he have 40,000, he will beat twice 
the number; and, for my own part, superior as 
he is in cavalry and artillery (ours being the 
best in the world) , I do not see what we have to 
fear from numbers against him, for nothing can 
withstand our cavalry in a flat country. You 
know, Grosvenor, I never felt a fear till it was 
said he was retreating, and now that he is march- 
ing on, all my apprehensions are over. Huzza ! 
it will be Rule Britannia by land as well as by sea. 

"I have had a grievous cold, which has pre- 
vented me from rising as soon as it is light, and 
thereby, for a while, stopped Kehama. This 
evening I have corrected the fourth sheet of Bra- 
zil : the volume will be ready in the spring. I 
am now busy in filling up some skeleton chap- 
ters in the middle of the volume. This will be 
as true a history, and as industriously and pain- 
fully made, as ever yet appeared ; yet I can not 
say that I expect much present approbation for 
it. It is deficient in fine circumstances ; and as 
for what is called fine writing, the public will get 
none of that article from me ; sound sense, sound 
philosophy, and sound English I will give them. 

"I was beginning to wonder what was be- 
come of Wynn. Can you procure for me a copy 
of the report of the Court of Inquiry, or will you 
ask Rickman if he can ? T do not write to him 



* See Curse of Kehama, Canto x.. verse 20, commenc- 
ing, 

"They siu who tell us love can die." 



till the season of franking returns. I shall want 
it hereafter as one of my documents. Lord Moi- 
ra has risen in my estimation ; he is the only per- 
son who seems to have had any thing like a feel- 
ing of the moral strength which was on our side, 
and which we completely gave up by the con- 
vention. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieut. Southey. H.M.S. Dreadnought. 
"Keswick, Jan. 10, 1809. 
" My dear Tom, 

"I have corrected five sheets of the Brazil, and 
am now hard at work in transcribing and filling 
up skeleton chapters ; that, in particular, which 
contains every thing concerning my friends the 
Tupinambas that has not inadvertently been said 
before. I wish you were here to hear it, as it 
gets on. There is a great pleasure in reading 
these things to any one who takes an interest in 
them — and, like our toast at breakfast, they seem 
the better for coming in fresh and fresh. I made 
an important discovery relative to De Lery — 
one of my best printed authorities — this morn- 
ing. This author, who, though a Frenchman, 
was a very faithful writer, translated his own 
French into Latin, and I used the Latin edition 
in De Boy's collection — you remember the book 
with those hideous prints of the savages at their 
cannibal feasts — William Taylor laid hands on 
the French book, and sent it me ; it arrived last 
Thursday only ; and I, in transcribing with my 
usual scrupulous accuracy, constantly referred to 
this original, because I knew that when an au- 
thor translates his own book, he often alters it, 
and therefore it was probable that I might some- 
times find a difference worthy of notice. Well, 
I found my own references to the number of the 
chapter wrong ; for the first time it passed well 
enough for a blunder, though I wondered at it a 
little, being remarkably exact in these things ; 
the second time I thought it very extraordinary ; 
and a third instance made me quite certain that 
something was wrong, but that the fault was not 
in me. Upon examination, it appeared that a 
whole chapter, and that chapter the most im- 
portant as to the historical part of the volume, 
had been omitted by De Boy, because he was a 
Catholic, De Lery a Huguenot, and this chapter 
exposed the villainy of Villegagnon, who went 
to Brazil expressly to establish an asylum for 
the Huguenots ; when there, was won over by 
the Guises, apostatized, and thus ruined a col- 
ony, which must else inevitably have made Rio 
de Janeiro now the capital of a French instead 
of a Portuguese empire. The main facts I had 
collected before, and clearly understood ; but the 
knavery of a Roman Catholic editor had thus 
nearly deprived me of my best and fullest au- 
thority, and of some very material circumstan- 
ces, for no one has ever yet suspected this col- 
lection of being otherwise than faithful, though 
it is now more than tvm hundred years old. See 
here the necessity of tracing every thing to the 
fountain-head when it is possible. 

" What you said about transports I repeated 
to Bedford : he made inquiry, and understood the 



jEtat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHED 



251 



objection came from the navy captains, who did 
not like to have their ships encumbered, or to feel 
as if they were transports. I repeated it to Cole- 
ridge and Wordsworth, and through them it has 
reached Stuart, and got into the Courier, wheth- 
er or not with effect time will show; but there 
is nothing like sending so obvious a truth afloat : 
it will find its way sooner or later. I see the 
captains are petitioning for an increase of pay : 
they will get it, to be sure, and then the increase 
must extend to you also. 

" Things in Spain look well. Bonaparte's 
bulletins prove beyond all doubt that every heart 
is against him, and his threat of taking the crown 
himself is the perfect phrensy of anger. Sir John 
Moore's movements backward and forward have 
been mere moves at chess to gain time, and wait 
for a blunder on the part of the adversary — so 
Bedford tells me ; and his intelligence is good, 
coming from Herries, who is Perceval's secre- 
tary, and Gifford, who is in Canning's confi- 
dence. Moore is a very able man, and is acting 
with a boldness which gives every body confi- 
dence that knows him. He will beat twice his 
own number of Frenchmen ; and I do not think 
greater odds can be brought against him. It 
looks well, that in this fresh embarkation, the offi- 
cers are desired not to take more baggage than 
they can carry themselves. At him, Trojan ! 
We shall beat him, Tom, upon Spanish ground. 
Let but our men fairly see the faces of the French 
in battle, and they will soon see their backs too. 

" The Grenvilles and Foxites are likely to sep- 
arate upon the question of peace. Canning hank- 
ers after the Grenvilles, and would do much to 
bring them in with him instead of his wretched 
associates. They are not popular ; but, if they 
had courage to make a home charge upon the 
Duke of York, and insist upon his removal as a 
preliminary and sine qua non to their going in, 
that measure would win them a popularity which 
would carry them in in spite of every obstacle. 
God bless you ! 

"Yours, R. S." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Dreadnought. 
"Keswick, Feb. 3, 1809. 
" We want a Nelson in the army. Poor Sir 
John Moore was too cautious a man. He wait- 
ed, in distrust of the Spaniards, to see what 
course the war would take, instead of being on 
the spot to make it take the course he wished. 
When Hope was at the passes of the Guadarra- 
ma Mountain, he and the rest of the army should 
have been at Samosierra, the other key to Mad- 
rid. There would have been re-enforcements 
sent if he had not positively written to have emp- 
ty transports, and the men were therefore dis- 
embarked. Had there been twenty thousand 
fresh troops at Corunna to have met the French, 
what a victory should we have obtained, when 
even with the wreck of an army, foot-sore, bro- 
ken-hearted, and half starved, we defeated them 
so completely at the last ! One thing results 
from this action — the fear of invasion must be at 
rest forever. We can beat the French under ev- 



ery possible disadvantage, and with two, almost, 
indeed, three to one against us. Come, then, 
Bonaparte ! the sooner the better. 

" Ministers are jarring with each other. It is 
Canning who stands up for Spain ; and I learn 
from Walter Scott that they will stand by the 
Spaniards to the last, cost what it may. But 
they paralyze one another, and the rest of the 
cabinet — by meeting him half way, doing half 
what he proposes — utterly undoes every thing. 
Still, if we had a few such men as Cochrane in 
the army — men who would have the same faith 
in British bottom by land as we have at sea, that 
faith would redeem us. To be upon the defensive 
in the field is ruin. Men never can win a bat- 
tle unless they are determined to win it, and ex- 
pect to win it ; and that can not be the case when 
they wait to be attacked. 100,000 men in Spain 
would overthrow and destroy Bonaparte ; but we 
send them in batches to be cut up. We squan- 
der the strength of the country, we waste the 
blood of the country, we sacrifice the honor of 
thqjjfcountry, and bring upon ourselves a disgrace, 
wmcrr^onaparte, were he ten times more pow- 
erful than he is, could never inflict upon us, were 
there but true wisdom and right courage in our 
rulers. 

" But, though Bonaparte may take the coun- 
try, he can not keep it. He would not have done 
what he has if the Spaniards had proclaimed a 
republic, for which, you may remember, I point- 
ed out the peculiar fitness which their separate 
states afforded. 

" The new review is to be called the Quar- 
terly, and will, I suppose, soon start. I fancy 
W. Scott has taken care of the Cid there. Of 
the new edition of Thalaba, nine books are print- 
ed. It would be convenient if I could borrow 
from my Hindoo gods a few of their supernumer- 
ary heads and hands, for I find more employment 
than my present complement can get through. 

" Holding that my face will ' carry off a drab,' 
I have a new coat of that complexion just come 
home from Johnny Cockbains, the king of the 
tailors. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. Ebenezcr Elliott. 

" Keswick, Feb. 3, 1809. 
"Sir, 

" Yestei'day I received your note inclosing the 
specimen of your poems. I have perused that 
specimen, but my advice can not be comprised 
in a few words. 

" A literary as well as a medical opinion, Mr. 
Elliott, must needs be blindly given, unless the 
age and circumstances of the person who re- 
quires it are known. When I advised Henry 
White to publish a second volume of poems, it 
was because he had fixed his heart upon a Uni- 
versity education, and this seemed to be a feasi- 
ble method of raising funds for that end, his 
particular circumstances rendering that prudent 
which would otherwise have been very much the 
reverse; for poetry is not a marketable article 
unless there be something strange or peculiar to 



252 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT.35. 



give it a fashion ; and in his case, what money 
might possibly have been raised would, in almost 
every instance, have been considered rather as 
given to the author than paid for his book. Your 
poem would not find purchasers except in the 
circle of your own friends ; out of that circle not 
twenty copies would be sold. I believe not half 
that number. 

" You are probably a young man, sir, and it 
is plain from this specimen that you possess more 
than one of those powers which form the poet, 
and those in a far more than ordinary degree. 
Whether your plans of life are such as to prom- 
ise leisure for that attention (almost, it might be 
said, that devotement), without which no man 
can ever become a great poet, you yourself must 
know. If they should, you will in a very few 
years have outgrown this poem, and would then 
be sorry to see it in print, irrecoverably given to 
the public, because you would feel it to be an 
inadequate proof of your own talents. If, on 
the other hand, you consider poetry as merely an 
amusement or an ornament of } r outh, to be laid 
aside in riper years for the ordinary pursuits of 
the world, with still less indulgence will you then 
regard the printed volume, for you will reckon it 
among the follies of which }^ou are ashamed. In 
either case it is best not to publish. 

" It is far, very far from my wish to discour- 
age or depress you. There is great promise in 
this specimen : it has all the faults which I should 
wish to see in the writings of a young poet, as 
the surest indications that he has that in him 
which will enable him to become a good one. 
But no young man can possibly write a good 
narrative poem, though I believe he can not by 
any other means so effectually improve himself 
as by making the attempt. I myself published 
one at the age of twenty-one : it made a reputa- 
tion for me — not so much by its merits, as be- 
cause it was taken up by one party, and abused 
b} r another, almost independently of its merits or 
dements, at a time when party spirit was more 
violent than it is to be hoped it will ever be again. 
What has been the consequences of this publica- 
tion? That the poem from beginning to end 
was full of incorrect language and errors of 
every kind ; that all the weeding of years could 
never weed it clean ; and that many people at 
this day rate me, not according to the standard 
of my present intellect, but by what it was four- 
teen years ago. Your subject, also, has the same 
disadvantage with mine, that it is anti-nation- 
al ; and believe me, this is a grievous one ; for, 
though we have both been right in our feelings, 
yet to feel against our own country can only be 
right upon great and transitory occasions, and 
none but our cotemporaries can feel with us — 
none but those who remember the struggle and 
took part in it. And you are more unfortu- 
nate than I was, for America is acting at this 
time unnaturally against England ; and every 
reader will feel this ; and his sense of what the 
Americans are now, will make him fancy that 
you paint falsely in describing them as they were 
then. There is yet another reason — criticism is 



conducted upon a different plan from what it was 
when I commenced my career. You live near 
the Dragon of Wantley's den ; but you will pro- 
voke enemies as venomous if you publish ; and 
Heaven knows whether or no you are gifted with 
armor of proof against them. Nor is it the ef- 
fect that malicious censure and ridicule might 
produce upon your own feelings which is of so 
much importance, as what would be produced 
upon your friends. They who are so only in 
name will derive a provoking pleasure from see- 
ing you laughed at and abused ; they who love 
you will feel more pain than you yourself, be- 
cause you will and must have a higher confidence 
in yourself, and a stronger conviction of injustice 
than they can be supposed to possess. 

" The sum of my advice is, do not publish this 
poem ; but if you can, without grievous impru- 
dence, afford to write poetry, continue so to do ; 
because, hereafter, you will write it well. As 
yet you have only green fruit to offer ; wait a 
season, and there will be a fair and full gather- 
ing when it is ripe. 

' Robert Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 9, 1809. 
" You have a bill coming before Parliament. 
The speaker's secretary happens to be one of 
my very intimate friends, and one of the men in 
the world for whom I have the highest respect. 
It may be some convenience to you on this oc- 
casion to know him, because he can give you 
every necessary information respecting Parlia- 
mentary business, and thus, perhaps, spare you 
some needless trouble ; and there needs no other 
introduction than knocking at his door and send- 
ing up your name, with which he is well ac- 
quainted. Rickman is his name ; and you will 
find it over his door, in St. Stephen's Court, New 
Palace Yard, next door to the speaker's. . I will 
tell you what kind of man he is. His outside has 
so little polish about it, that once having gone 
from Christ Church to Pool in his own boat, he 
was taken by the press-gang, his robust figure, 
hard-working hands, and strong voice all tending 
to deceive them. A little of this is worn off". 
He is the strongest and clearest-headed man that 
I have ever known. ' Pondere, numero et men- 
sura' is his motto ; but to all things he carries 
the same reasoning and investigating intellect as 
to mathematical science, and will find out in Ho- 
mer and the Bible facts necessarily to be inferred 
from the text, and which yet have as little been 
supposed to be there intimated as the existence 
of metal was suspected in potash before Davy de- 
tected it there. I have often said that I learned 
how to see for the purposes of poetry from Ge- 
bir. how to read for the purposes of history from 
Rickman. His manners are stoical : they are 
like the husk of the cocoa-nut, and his inner na- 
ture is like the milk within its kernel. When I 
go to London I am always his guest. He gives 
me but half his hand when he welcomes me at 
the door, but I have his whole heart — and there 
is not that thing in the world which he thinks 



/Etat. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



253 



would serve or gratify me that he does not do 
for me, unless it be something which he thinks I 
can as well do myself. The subject which he 
best understands is political economy. Were 
there but half a dozen such men in the House 
of Commons, there would be courage, virtue, 
and wisdom enough there to save this country 
from that revolution to which it is so certainly 
approaching. 

" I should not have written just now had it not 
been to mention Rickman, thinking that you may 
find it useful to know him ; for I wished, when 
writing, to tell you of Kehama : a good many 
interruptions have occurred to delay my prog- 
ress, indispositions of my own or of the children 
— the latter the only things concerning which I 
am anxious over much. At present my wife is 
seriously ill, and when I shall be sufficiently at 
rest to do any thing, God knows. Another heat 
will finish the poem. 

"Coleridge's essay* is expected to start in 
March. 

" My uncle, Mr. Hill, is settled at his parson- 
age, at Staunton-upon-Wye — in that savage part 
of the world to which your cedar plantation will 
give new beauty, and your name new interest, 
when those cedars shall have given place to 
their offspring : it is probable that you have no 
other neighbor so well informed within the same 
distance. Next year, God willing, I shall travel 
to the south, and halt with him; it is likely I 
may then find you out, either at Llantony or 
somewhere in the course of a wide circuit. 
Meantime I will still hope that some fair breeze 
of inclination may send you here to talk about 
Spain, to plan a great poem, and to cruise with 



me about Derwentwater. God bless 



you 



" R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Feb. 12, 1809. 
''My dear Grosvenor, 

" How shall I thank you for the pleasure and 
delight of your excellent and pretty letter, in- 
closing the half quarter of my poor mutilated 
pension ? That pension makes me disposed to 
swear every time it comes. 

" I have been busy in using borrowed books, 
which were to be returned with great speed, 
and which were like woodcocks, all trail. They 
cost me three weeks' incessant application — 
lhat is, all the application I could command. I 
waited to begin a new article for the Quarterly 
till the first number was published ; and as that 
is so near at hand, will begin to-morrow. But 
if GifTord likes my pattern- work, he should send 
me more cloth to cut ; he should send me Trav- 
els, which I review better than any thing else. 
I am impatient to see the first number. Young 
lady never felt more desirous to see herself in a 
new ball-dress, than I do to see my own per- 
formance in print, often as that gratification falls 
to my lot. The reason is, that in the multiplici- 
ty of my employments, I forget the form and 



The Friend. 



manner of every thing as soon as it is out of 
sight, and they come to me like pleasant recol- 
lections of what I wish to remember. Besides, 
the thing looks differently in print. In short, Mr. 
Bedford, there are a great many philosophical 
reasons for this fancy of mine, and one of the 
best of all reasons is, that I hold it good to make 
every thing a pleasure which it is possible to 
make so. And these sort of Claude's spectacles 
are very convenient things for a man who lives 
in a land of rain and clouds : they make an arti- 
ficial sunshine for what some people would call 
gloomy weather. # # # # 

" God bless you ! In a few days I will create 
leisure for another number of Kehama. I have 
not written a line of it these last two months ; 
first, I was indisposed myself; then the children 
were : lastly, my wife. Anxiety unfits me for 
any thing that requires feeling as well as thought. 
I can labor, I can think — thought and labor will 
not produce poetry. 

"In haste, yours, Robert Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 16, 1809. 
" My dear Friend, 
" # # * # * * # 

What is your Lisbon news ? Notwithstanding 
the Duke of York and Mrs. Clarke, I think of 
those countries ; and notwithstanding the disas- 
ters which our gross misconduct could not fail to 
bring on, my confidence in the ultimate success 
of a good cause remains undiminished. I could 
have wished, indeed, that the work of reforma- 
tion, which Joseph Bonaparte is beginning, had 
been begun by the junta ; that they had called 
the principle of liberty as well as of loyalty to 
\heir aid, and made freedom their watchword as 
well as the Virgin Mary, for she may be on 
both sides. Certainly it was not easy to do this ; 
and I have always suspected that those leaders, 
such as Palafox, who might have wished to do 
it, bore in mind the first great struggle of the 
Portuguese against Castille, when the Infante 
Don Joao, a prisoner and in chains, served as 
Joao the First's stalking-horse, and was painted 
upon his banner, till he found he could safely as- 
sume the crown himself. The convenience of 
such a name as Ferdinand, and the stain which 
France has brought upon the very name of Re- 
publicanism, were causes which might well in- 
duce a timid, and, therefore, a feeble line of con- 
duct. # # # Why is Bonaparte 
gone to Paris at such a time ? If any change 
in the north should call him into Germany, with 
only part of his army, the tide will roll back, and 
King Joseph be forced a second time to decamp. 
Meantime I expect a desperate resistance about 
the southern coast, wherever our ships can be of 
use. Is it possible we can leave Elvas without 
seeing it well garrisoned ? the place is absolute- 
ly impregnable. Moore would have done wise- 
ly had he fallen back upon the frontier, where 
there was a double line of fortified towns, into 
which ho might have thrown his troops when- 
ever he felt it necessary to leave the mountains ; 



m 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 35 



and against those fortresses the French would 
have wasted, and must have divided their force, 
allowing us time to send out another army. 
Regular armies in such wars as this must al- 
ways be successful in the field, but they have 
always met their chief disasters before fortified 
towns ; tactics are nothing there, individual cour- 
age every thing ; and women and children fight 
by the side of their husbands or their fathers, 
from the windows, on the house-tops, or on the 
walls. 

" Have you seen William Taylor's Defense of 
the Slave Trade in Bolinbroke's Voyage to the 
Demerary ? It is truly William Taylorish ; thor- 
oughly ingenious, as usual, but not ingenuous ; 
he weakens the effect of his own arguments by 
keeping the weak side of his cause altogether 
out of sight. In defending the slave trade, as 
respects the duty of man toward man, he has ut- 
terly failed ; he has succeeded in what you and 
I shall think of more consequence — in showing 
what the probable end is for which wise Provi- 
dence has so long permitted the existence of so 
great an evil. # # # # # 

" Believe me. yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 



Sir, 



To W. Gifford, Esq. 

"Keswick, March 6, 1809. 



" Your letter, and its inclosed draft, reached 
me this afternoon. I have to acknowledge the 
one, and thank you for the other. It gratifies 
me that you approve my defense of the mission- 
aries, because I am desirous of such approbation ; 
and it will gratify me if it should be generally 
approved, because I wrote from a deep and 
strong conviction of the importance of the sub- 
ject. With respect to any alteration in this or 
any future communication, I am perfectly sensible 
that absolute authority must always be vested in 
the editor. The printer has done some mischief 
by misplacing a paragraph in p. 225, which 
ought to have followed the quotation in the pre- 
ceding page. The beginning of the last para- 
graph is made unintelligible by this dislocation ; 
and, indeed, you have omitted the sarcasm which 
it was designed to justify. I could have wished 
that this Review had less resembled the Edin- 
burgh in the tone and temper of its criticisms. 
That book of Miss Owenson's is, I dare say, very 
bad both in manners and morals ; yet, had it fall- 
en into my hands, I think I could have told her 
so in such a spirit, that she herself would have 
believed me, and might have profited by the cen- 
sure. The same quantity of rain which would 
clear a flower of its blights, will, if it falls heav- 
ier and harder, wash the roots bare, and beat 
the blossoms to the ground. I have been in the 
habit of reviewing more than eleven years, for 
the lucre of gain, and not, God knows, from any 
liking to the occupation ; and of all my literary 
misdeeds, the only ones of which I have repent- 
ed have been those reviewals which were writ- 
ten with undue asperity, so as to give unneces- 
sary pain. I propose to continue the subject of 



the Missions through two other articles, neither 
of which will probably be half so long as the 
first — one respecting the South Sea Islands, the 
other South Africa. Lord Valentia's book I shall 
be glad to receive, and any others which you 
may think proper to intrust to me. Two things 
I can promise — perfect sincerity in what I write, 
without the slightest assumption of knowledge 
which I do not possess, and a punctuality not to 
be exceeded by that of Mr. Murray's opposite 
neighbors at St. Dunstan's. 

" I am sir, yours very respectfully, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Lieut. Southey , H.M.S. Dreadnought. 
"Keswick, March 14, 1809. 
" My dear Tom, 
" Yesterday I returned from a visit to Henry 
and his bride. * * * * * He 
lives in a street called by the unaccountable 
name of Old Elvet. A lucky opening on the 
opposite side of the way leaves him a good view 
of the Cathedral on the hill, and the river is 
within a stone's throw of his back door. Dur- 
ham stands upon a peninsula — that is to say, the 
main part of it — a high bank, on which is the 
Cathedral, and the castle, and the best houses ; 
and there are delightful walks below, such as no 
other city can boast, through fine old trees on 
the river's bank, from whence you look to the 
noble building on the opposite side, and see one 
bridge through the other. Harry is well off 
there, getting rapidly into practice, and living 
among all sorts of people — prebends and Roman 
Catholics, fox-hunters and old women, with all 
of whom he seems to accord equally well. * 
# * It is a place where any person might 
live contentedly. Among all these thousand 
and one acquaintances there are some whom 
one might soon learn to love, and a great many 
with whom to be amused, and none that are in- 
sufferable. One day I dined with Dr. Zouch, 
who wrote the Life of Sir P. Sidney. I never 
saw a gentler-minded man ; the few sentences of 
bigotry which he has written must have cost him 
strange efforts to bring forth, for I do not think 
a harsh expression ever could pass his lips, nor 
a harsh feeling ever enter his heart. In spite of 
his deafness, I contrived to have a good deal of 
talk with him. Dr. Bell was there, the original 
transplanter of that Hindoo system of teaching 
which Lancaster has adopted. He is a great 
Mend of Coleridge's ; a man pleasant enough, 
certes a great benefactor to his country, but a 
little given to flattery, and knowing less about 
India than a man ought to know who has lived 
there. Another day I dined with Dr. Fenwick, 
the ex-physician of the place. There we drank 
the Arch-duke Charles's health in Tokay, a wine 
which I had never before tasted. This is the 
first victory by which I ever got any thing. The 
Tokay proved prolific. Harry's next door neigh- 
bor was one of the party, and fancied some un- 
known wine which had been presented to him 
might be the same as this ; and he proposed, as 
we walked home, to bring in a bottle and sup 



JEvat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



255 



with us. I, nowevcr, recognized it for Old Suck 
— itself no bad thing. 

" On Monday last, after a week's visit, I took 
coach where I had appointed, to pass a day with 
James Losh, whom you know I have always 
mentioned as coming nearer the ideal of a per- 
fect man than any other person whom it has 
ever been my good fortune to know ; so gentle, 
so pious, so zealous in all good things, so equal- 
minded, so manly, so without speck or stain in 
his w T hole habits of life. I slept at his house, 
which is two miles from Newcastle, and the next 
day took the mail to Carlisle. It is an interest- 
ing road, frequently in sight of the Tyne before 
1 you reach Hexham, and then as frequently along 
the Eden. We reached Carlisle at ten o'clock. 
Yesterday I rose at five, and walked to Hesket 
to breakfast, fourteen miles ; a mile lost on the 
way made it fifteen. There was many a gentle 
growl within for the last five miles. From 
thence another stage of fourteen brought me 
home by half after two — a good march, per- 
formed with less fatigue than any other of equal 
length in the whole course of my pedestrian 
campaigns. 

" I found all well at home, God be praised ! 
Your letter was waiting for me, and one from 
Gifford, containing <s£l6 8s. for my article in the 
second Quarterly, with quant, suff. of praise, 
which I put down to the account of due desert. 
He has a reviewal of Holmes's American Annals 
in his hands for the third number. I am about 
the Polynesian Mission, and am to have Lord 
Valencia's Travels as soon as they appear. He 
requested me to choose any subjects I pleased. 
I have named Barlow's Columbiad, Elton's He- 
siod, and Whitaker's Life of St. Neots ; and I have 
solicited the office of justifying Frere against 
Sir John Moore's friends. * * * * 

Send for Wordsworth's pamphlet :* the more 
you read it the higher will be your admiration. 
* * # " * # 



God bless you 



R. S.' 



To Richard Duppa, Esq. 

"March 31, 1809. 
" My dear Duppa, 

" I am sorry for your loss — a heavy one under 
any circumstances, and particularly so to one 
who, being single at your time of life, will now 
feel more entirely what it is to have no person 
who intimately loves him. It is not in the order 
of nature that there should ever be a void in the 
heart of man — the old leaves should not fall from 
the tree till the young ones are expanding to 
supply their place. 

" I have now three girls living, and as delight- 
ful a play-fellow in the shape of a boy as ever 
man was blessed with. Very often, when I look 
at them, I think what a fit thing it would be that 
Malthus should be hanged. 

" You may have known that I have some deal- 
ings, in the way of trade, with your bookseller, 



* On the Convention of Cintra. 



Murray. One article of mine is in his first 
Quarterly, and he has bespoken more. When- 
ever I shall have the satisfaction of seeing you 
once more under this roof, it will amuse you to 
see how dexterously Gifford emasculated this 
article of mine of its most forcible parts. I 
amused myself one morning with putting them 
all in again, and restoring vigor, consistency, and 
connection to the whole. It is certainly true 
that his majesty gives me a pension of 66200 a 
year, out of w T hich his majesty deducts £60 and 
a few shillings ; but, if his majesty trebled or 
decupled the pension, and remitted the whole 
taxation, it would be the same thing. The 
treasury should never bribe, nor his judges deter 
me from delivering a full and free opinion upon 
any subject which seems to me to call for it. 
If I hate Bonaparte, and maintain that this coun- 
try never ought to accept of any peace w r hile 
that man is Emperor of France, it is precisely 
upon the same principle that I formerly disliked 
Pitt, and maintained that we never ought to 
have gone to war. 

" I am glad you have been interested by the 
Cid ; it is certainly the most curious chronicle 
in existence. In the course of the summer — I 
hope early in it — you will see the first volume 
of my History of Brazil, of which nine-and-twenty 
sheets are printed. This book has cost me in- 
finite labor. The Cid was an easy task ; of that 
no other copy was made than what went to the 
press ; of this every part has been twice written, 
many parts three times, and all with my own 
hand. For this I expect to get a sufficient 
quantity of abuse, and little else ; money is only 
to be got by such productions as are worth noth- 
ing more than what they fetch per sheet. I 
could get my thousand a year if I would but do 
my best endeavors to be dull, and aim at nothing 
higher than Reviews and Magazines 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours very truly, 

" R. Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

"April 23, 1809. 
"I shall send three sections of Kehama to 
meet you in London ; three more will complete 
it, and w 7 ould have so done before this time had 
all things been going on well with me. I had 
a daughter born on the 27 th of last month ; a 
few days after the birth her mother was taken 
>I1, and for some time there was cause of serious 
alarm. This, God be thanked, is over. The 
night before last we had another alarm of the 
worst kind, though happily this also is passing 
away. My little boy went to bed with some 
slight indications of a trifling cold. His mother 
went up as usual to look at him before supper ; 
she thought he coughed in a strange manner, 
called me, and I instantly recognized the sound 
of the croup. We have a good apothecary 
within three minutes' walk, and luckily he w T as 
at home. He immediately confirmed our fears. 
The child w T as taken out of bed and bled in the 
jugular vein, a blister placed on the throat next 



256 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 35. 



morning, and by these vigorous and timely rem- 
edies we hope and trust the disease is subdued. 
But what a twelve hours did we pass, knowing 
. the nature of the disease, and only hoping the 
efficacy of the remedjr. Even now I am far, 
very far, from being at ease. There is a love 
■which passeth the love of women, and which is 
more lightly alarmed than the wakefullest jeal- 
ousy. 

" Landor, I am not a stoic at home : I feel as 
you do about the fall of an old tree ; but, Christ ! 
what a pang it is to look upon the young shoot 
and think it will be cut down. And this is the 
thought which almost at all times haunts me ; it 
comes upon me in moments when I know not 
whether the tears that start are of love or of bit- 
terness. There is an evil, too, in seeing all things 
like a poet ; circumstances which would glide 
over a healthier mind sink into mine ; every thing 
comes to me with its whole force — the full mean- 
ing of a look, a gesture, a child's imperfect speech, 
I can perceive, and can not help perceiving ; and 
thus am I made to remember what I would give 
the world to forget. 

" Enough, and too much of this. The leaven 
of anxiety is working in my whole system ; I 
will try to quiet it by forcing myself to some oth- 
er subject. 

" What prevented Gebir from being read by 
the foolish? I believe the main reason w T as, 
that it is too hard for them ; more than that, it 
was too good. That they should understand its 
merits was not to be expected ; but they did not 
find meaning enough upon the surface to make 
them fancy they understood it. Why should you 
not write a poem as good, and more intelligible, 
and display the same powers upon a happier sub- 
ject ? Yet certain it is that Gebir excited far 
more attention than you seem to be aware of. 
Two manifest imitations have appeared, Rough's 
Play of the Conspiracy of Gowrie, and the first 
part of Sotheby's Saul. When Gifford published 
his Juvenal, one of the most base attacks that 
ever disgraced a literary journal w T as made upon 
it in the Critical Review by some one of the he- 
roes of his Baviad. Gifford wrote an angry re- 
ply, in which he brought forward all the offenses 
of the Review for many years back : one of those 
offenses was its praise of Gebir. I laughed when 
I heard this, guessing pretty w T ell at the nature 
of Gifford's feelings, for I had been the reviewer 
of whose partiality he complained. Gebir came 
to me with a parcel of other poems which I was 
to kill off. I was young in the trade, and re- 
viewed it injudiciously, so that every body sup- 
posed it to be done by some friend of the author ; 
for I analyzed the story ; studded it with as many 
beautiful extracts as they w T ould allow room for ; 
praised its merits almost up to the height of my 
feelings, and never thought of telling the reader 
that if he went to the book itself he would find 
any more difficulty in comprehending it than he 
found in that abstract. Thus, instead of serv- 
ing the poem, I in reality injured it. The world, 
nowadays, never believes praise to be sincere ; 
men are so accustomed to hunt for faults, that 



they will not think any person can hone tly ex- 
press unmingled admiration. 

" I once passed an evening with Professor 
Young at Davy's. The conversation was wholly 
scientific, and, of course, I was a listener. But 
I have heard the history of Thomas Young, as 
he is still called by those who knew him w T hen 
he was a Quaker, and believe him to be a very 
able man. Generally speaking, I have little 
liking for men of science : their pursuits seem 
to deaden the imagination and harden the heart ; 
they are so accustomed to analyze and anatomize 
every thing — to understand, or fancy they un- 
derstand whatever comes before them, that they 
frequently become mere materialists, account for 
every thing by mechanism and motion, and would 
put out of the w T orld all that makes the world 
endurable. I do not undervalue their knowl- 
edge, nor the utility of their discoveries ; but I 
do not like the men. My own nature requires 
something more than they teach ; it pants after 
things unseen ; it exists upon the hope of that 
better futurity w T hich all its aspirations promise 
and seem to prove. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" April 30, 1809. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" It would not be easy to tell you all I have 
suffered since Tuesday night, when Herbert was 
seized w T ith the croup. God be praised ! the 
disease seems to be subdued 5 but he is still in a 
state to make us very anxious : pale with loss 
of blood, his neck blistered, and fevered by the 
fretfulness the blister occasions. The poor child 
has been so used to have me for his play-fellow, 
that he will have me for his nurse, and you may 
imagine with what feelings I endeavor to amuse 
him. But, thank God ! he is living, and likely 
to live. 

" Almost the only wish I ever give utterance 
to is that the next hundred years were over. It 
is not that the uses of this world seem to me 
weary, stale, fiat, and unprofitable — God knows, 
far otherwise ! No man can be better contented 
with his lot. My paths are paths of pleasant- 
ness. I am living happily, and, to the best of 
my belief, fulfilling, as far as I am able, the pur- 
poses for which I was created. Still the insta- 
bility of human happiness is ever before my eyes ; 
I long for the certain and the permanent ; and, 
perhaps, my happiest moments are those wmen 
I am looking on to another state of being, in 
which there shall be no other change than that 
of progressing in knowledge, and thereby in 
power and enjoyment. 

" I have suffered some sorrow in my time, and 
expect to suffer much more ; but, looking into 
my own heart, I do not believe that a single 
pang could have been spared. My Herbert says 
to me, ' 0, you are very naughty,' when I hold 
his hands while his neck is dressed. I have as 
deep a conviction that whatever affliction I have 
ever endured, or yet have to endure, is dispensed 
to me in mercy and in love, as he will have for 



TEtat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHE Y. 



257 



my motives for inflicting pain upon him now — 
if it should please God that he should ever live 
to understand them. 

"It is three months before the third 'Quarter- 
ly will appear, and by that time present topics 
will have become stale ; but I wish you would 
let Gilford know, that if the subject is not out of 
time, and it be thought fit to notice it, I will 
right zealously and fearlessly undertake a justi- 
fication of Frere's conduct, which we in this 
part of the country do entirely approve. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To Lieut. Sonthey, H.M.S. Dreadnought. 

" Keswick, Monday, May 22, 1809. 
" My dear Tom, 
" My last letter told you of Herbert's danger 
and his recovery. You will be a little shocked 
at the intelligence in this. We lost Emma yes- 
terday night. Five days ago she was in finer 
health than we had ever seen her, and I repeat- 
edly remarked it. For a day or two she had 
been ailing ; on Saturday night breathed short- 
ly, and was evidently ill. Edmondson repeated- 
ly saw her, thought her better at ten o'clock, 
and assured us he saw no danger. In half an 
hour she literally fell asleep without a struggle. 
Edith is as well as should be expected, and I, 
perhaps, better. You know how I take tooth- 
ache and tooth-drawings, and I have almost 
learned to bear moral pain, not, indeed, with the 
same levity, but with as few outward and visi- 
ble signs. In fact, God be thanked for it, there 
never was a man who had more entirely set his 
heart upon things permanent and eternal than I 
have done ; the transitoriness of every thing here 
is always present to my feeling as well as my 
understanding. Were I to speak as sincerely of 
my family as Wordsworth's little girl, my story 
— that I have five children ; three of them at 
home, and two under my mother's care in heav- 
en — No more of this ; and, to convince you that 
I am not more unhappy than I profess, I will fill 
up the sheep, instead of sending you a mere an- 
notation of this loss. It is well you left her such 
an infant, for you are thus spared some sorrow. 
" Ballantyne has just sent me a present of 
Campbell's new poem, and inclosed the last Ed- 
inburgh Review in the parcel. They have tak- 
en occasion there, under cover of a Methodist 
book, to attempt an answer to my Missionary 
Defense. I hear from all quarters that this arti- 
cle of mine has excited much notice, and pro- 
duced considerable effect. It had the great ad- 
vantage of being in earnest, as well as thorough- 
ly understanding the subject. The Edinburgh 
reviewer knew nothing of Hindoo history except 
what newspapers and pamphlets had taught him. 
* * * No wonder, therefore, that I 
6hould have the upper hand of such a man in the 
argument. 

" Campbell's poem has disappointed his friends, 
Ballantyne tells me. It is, however, better than 
I expected, except in story, which is meager. 
This gentleman, also, who is one of Wordsworth's 
abusers, has been nibbling at imitation, and pal- 
R 



pably borrowed from the two poems of Ruth and 
The Brothers. 'Tis amusing envy ! to see how 
the race of borrowers upon all occasions abuse 
us who do not borrow. The main topic against 
me is, that I do not imitate Virgil in my story, 
Pope in my language, &c, &c. 

" Scott is still detained in London, and this 
will prevent me from going with him to Edin- 
burgh. Indeed, if engagements had not existed, 
I could not have left home now, for Edith will 
find it melancholy enough for some time to come 
with me, and without me it would be worse. 
Herbert, thank God ! seems well ; seems' is all 
one dares say : of all precarious things, there is 
nothing so precarious as life. You would have 
been delighted with your eldest niece if you 
could have seen the sorrow she was in this 
morning for fear her mother should die for grief, 
and then she said she should die too, and then 
her papa would die for grief about her. Just 
now, Tom, it might have been happier for you 
and me if we had gone to bed as early as John 
and Eliza ; a hundred years hence the advant- 
age will be on our side. * * My 
notions about life are much the same as they are 
about traveling — there is a good deal of amuse- 
ment on the road, but, after all, one wants to be 
at rest. Evils of this kind — if they may be call- 
ed evils — soon cure themselves ; the wound 
smarts, in a little while it heals, and, if the scar 
did not sometimes renew the recollection of the 
smart, it would, perhaps, be forgotten. 

" My History gets on ; the proof before me 
reaches to page 336 : I look at it with great 
pleasure. Whether I may live to complete the 
series of works which I have projected, and, in 
good part, executed, God only knows ; be that 
as it may, in what is done I shall, to the best»of 
my power, have on all occasions enforced good 
opinions upon those subjects which are of most 
importance to mankind. 

" God bless you ! It is long since I have 
heard from you : what can you be cruising aft- 
er? Things go on well in Spain, and will go 
on better when the Wellesleys get there. Once 
more, God bless you ! R. S." 

In the preceding letter my father refers to an . 
intention of accompanying Sir Walter Scott to 
Edinburgh, which could not be carried into ef- 
fect, owing to the latter having been detained in 
London. While there, with characteristic friend- 
liness, he had been using his influence in my fa- 
ther's behalf with his friends connected with the 
government, and he now thus communicates to 
him his expectations of success, expressing his 
hope that they would still be able to travel in 
company to Scotland. 

" I have much to say to you about the Quar- 
terly Review, Rhadamanthus,* &c. I do not 
apprehend that there is any great risk of our 



* This refers to a scheme of my father's (which Bal- 
lantyne was at one time anxious to engage in) for a Re- 
view "to exclude all cotemporary publications, and to 
select its subjects from all others." The plan, however, 
was never matured. 



258 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 35. 



politics differing when there are so many strings 
in unison, but it may doubtless happen. Mean- 
while, every one is grateful for your curious and 
invaluable article : and this leads me to a sub- 
ject which I would rather have spoken than 
written upon, but the doubt of seeing you obliges 
me to touch upon it. George Ellis and I have 
both seen a strong desire in Mr. Canning to be 
of service to you in any way within his power 
that could be pointed out, and this without any 
reference to political opinions. An official situ- 
ation in his own department was vacant, and, I 
believe, still is so : but it occurred to George 
Ellis and me that the salary — d£300 a year — 
was inadequate for an office occupying much 
time, and requiring constant attendance. But 
there are professors 7 chairs both in England and 
Scotland frequently vacant ; and there is hardly 
one, except such as are absolutely professional, 
for which you are not either fitted alread} T , or 
capable of making yourself so on a short notice. 
There are also diplomatic and other situations, 
should you prefer them to the groves of Acade- 
mus. # # # Mr. Canning's op- 

portunities to serve you will soon be numerous, 
or they will be gone altogether, for he is of a 
different mold from the rest of his colleagues, 
and a decided foe to those half measures which 
I know you detest as much as I do. It is not 
his fault that the cause of Spain is not at this 
moment triumphant. This I know, and there 
will come a time when the world will know it 
too. * * * Think over the thing 
in your own mind, and let it, if possible, determ- 
ine you on your northern journey. What would 
I not give to secure you a chair in our northern 
metropolis ! * * # =* # 

I ought in conscience to have made ten thousand 
pretty detours about all this, and paid some glow- 
ing compliments both to the minister and the 
bard ; but they may all be summed up by say- 
ing, in one sober word, that Mr. C. could not 
have entertained a thought more honorable to 
himself, and, knowing him as I do, I must add, 
more honorable and flattering to your genius and 
learning."'* 

My father's reply was as follows : 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

u Keswick, June 16, 1809. 
"Dear Scott, 

;; My friends leave Bristol on Monday next, 
on their way hither ; you thus perceive how im- 
possible it is that I can now accompany you to 
Edinburgh, as I should else willingly have done. 

" The latter part of your letter requires a con- 
fidential answer. I once wished to reside in 
Portugal, because the great object of my liter- 
ary life related to that country : I loved the coun- 
try, and had then an uncle settled there. Before 
Fox came into power this was told him by Charles 
Wynn, and, when he was in power, he was asked 
by Wynn to send me there. It so happened that 
John Allen wanted something which was in Lord 



* London, June 14, 1809. 



Grenville's gift, and this was given him on con- 
dition that Fox, in return, provided for me. 
There were two things hi Portugal which I could 
hold — thfe consulship, or the secretaryship of le- 
gation. The former was twice given away, but 
that Fox said was too good a thing for me ; the 
latter he promised if an opportunity occurred of 
promoting Lord Strangford, and that never took 
place. Grey was reminded of his predecessors 
engagement, and expressed no disinclination to 
fulfill it. The party got turned out ; and one 
of the last things Lord Grenville did was to give 
me a pension of <^200. Till that time I had re- 
ceived one of 66160 from Charles W. Wynn, my 
oldest surviving friend. The exchange leaves 
me something the poorer, as the Exchequer de- 
ducts above sixty pounds. This is all I have. 
Half my time I sell to the booksellers ; the other 
half is reserved for works which will never pay 
for the paper on which they are written, but on 
which I rest my future fame. I am, of course, 
straitened in circumstances ; a little more would 
make me easy. My chance of inheritance is 
gone by : my father's elder brother was worth 
d£40,000. but he cut me off without the slight- 
est cause of offense. 

" You will see by this that I would willingly 
be served, but it is not easy to serve me. Lis- 
bon is too insecure a place to remove to with a 
family, and nothing could repay me for going 
without them. I have neither the habits nor tal- 
ents for an official situation 5 nor, if I had. could 
I live in London — that is, I should soon die there. 
I have said to Wynn that one thing would make 
me at ease for life — create for me the title of 
Royal Historiographer for England (there is one 
for Scotland), with a salary of d£400 : the re- 
duction would leave a net income of c£278 : with 
that I should be sure of all the decent comforts 
of life, and, for every thing beyond them, it would 
then be easy to supply myself. Of course, my 
present pension would cease. Whether Mr. 
Canning can do this, I know not ; but, if this 
could be done, it would be adequate to all I want, 
and beyond that my wishes have never extend- 
ed. I am sorry we are not to meet, but it would 
be unreasonable to expect it now ; and, at some 
more convenient season, I will find my way to 
you and to the Advocate's Library. You will 
hear from Ballantyne what my plan is for Rhad- 
amanthus, concerning which I shall think noth- 
ing more till I hear from him upon the subject. 
Since last you heard from me, I have lost one 
of my children ; the rest, thank God ! are well. 
Edith desires to be remembered to you and Mrs. 
Scott. 

" Believe me, yours very truly, 

"Robert Soitthet." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Keswick, July 6, 1809. 
" My dear Scott, 
" I have just been informed that the steward- 
ship for the Derwentwater estates (belonging te 
Greenwich Hospital) , now held by a Mr. Walton, 
is expected soon to be vacated by his death. It 



/Etat. 35. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



259 



is a situation which would give me a respecta- 
ble income, perfectly suit my present place of 
abode, and not impose upon me more business 
than I could properly perform with comfort to 
myself. Mr. Sharp tells me this, and from him 
I learn that Mr. Long is one of the directors. 
Could this be obtained for me, I should be well 
provided for, and in a pleasant way ; so I have 
thought it right to mention it, in consequence of 
your last letter, and, having so done, shall dis- 
miss the subject from my thoughts. Pelle timo- 
rem, spemque fugato, is a lesson which I learned 
early in life from Boethius, and have been a good 
deal the happier for practicing. 

" The second Quarterly is better than the first. 
The affairs of Austria are treated with great pow- 
er, great spirit, and clear views. I expected the 
utter overthrow of the house of Austria, and my 
fears have happily been disappointed. They have 
profited by experience, and, though every thing 
is now upon the balance, and one can not open 
the newspaper without great anxiety and many 
doubts, still it does appear that the chances are 
in our favor. One defeat will not destroy the 
emperor, if he is only true to himself, but one 
defeat would destroy Bonaparte. His authori- 
ty, out of France, is maintained wholly by force ; 
in France, by the opinion of his good fortune and 
the splendor of his successes. One thorough de- 
feat will dissolve the spell. His colossal power 
then falls to pieces, like the image in Nebuchad- 
nezzar's dream. I am afraid our expedition will 
be too late to turn the scale. If it were now in 
Germany it might do wonders ; but we are al- 
ways slow in our measures, and game so timor- 
ously that we are sure to lose. Why not twice 
forty thousand men ? It has been proved that 
we can always beat the French with equal num- 
bers, or at any time when w T e are not previous- 
ly outnumbered. Why then send a force that 
can so easily be doubled or trebled by the ene- 
my ? For allied armies can not act together, 
and whatever battle we have to fight must be 
fought alone. Marlborough was the only gen- 
eral who could wield a confederacy. 

" I have made offer of my services to Gifford 
to undertake Frere's justification against the 
friends of Sir John Moore, if it be thought ad- 
visable. I have offered also to provide for the 
fourth number a paper upon Methodism, which 
would be in all things unlike Sidney Smith's, ex- 
cept in having as much dread of its progress. I 
should examine the causes of its progress, the 
principles in human nature to which it appeals 
and by which it succeeds ; its good and its evil ; 
the means of preventing the one, and of obtain- 
ing the other at less risk ; and instead of offend- 
ing the whole religious public, as they call them- 
selves, by indiscriminate ridicule, I should en- 
dea"or to show of what different parties that 
public is composed ; how some of them may be 
conciliated and made useful, and others suppress- 
ed — for there are limfts which common sense 
must appoint to toleration. 

" I have finished an English Eclogue, which 
is at Ballantyne's service, either for his Annual 



Register or his Minstrelsy, and which shall be 
transcribed and sent him forthwith. I have nev- 
er yet thanked you for Lord Somers, a very ac- 
ceptable addition to my library — a very valua- 
ble collection, and made far more eo by your ar- 
rangement and additions. I am sorry my life of 
D. Luisa de Carvajal is printed, or I would have 
offered it you, as worthy of being inserted among 
tjie Tracts of James I.'s time. 
" Believe me, yours very truly, 

" Robert Sotjthey." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

"Keswick, July 8, 1809. 
My dear Wynn, 

" You will be a little surprised to hear that 
Canning has expressed a wish to serve me, and 
that, in consequence, Walter Scott has been ask- 
ed to communicate this to me, and find out in 
what manner it can be done conformably to my 
own inclinations. There was a situation of d£300 
a year in his own department which he would 
have offered, but that was rightly judged by 
himself, Scott, and Ellis to be inadequate to the 
expense of time and attendance which it required* 
So Scott wrote to mention to me professorships 
at the Universities, diplomatic situations, or any 
other thing which could be pointed out. 

" Professorships in England are fenced about 
with subscription, and therefore unattainable by 
me. In Scotland I would accept one, if nothing 
more suitable could be found. The secretary- 
ship in Portugal is now no longer desirable. 
My uncle has left that country, and the salary 
would not support me there. I am too old to 
begin the pursuit of fortune in that line, and 
nothing but the desire of becoming independent 
ever made me desirous of a situation for which 
I know myself in many points to be exceeding- 
ly unfit. The truth is, that I have found my 
way in the world, and am in that state of life to 
which it has pleased God to call me, and for 
which it has pleased him to qualify me. At the 
same time, my means are certainly so straitened 
that I should very gladly obtain an addition to 
them, if it could be obtained without changing 
the main stream of my pursuits. 

" Now Sharp has told me that the steward- 
ship to Greenwich Hospital for the Derwentwater 
estates is expected soon to be vacated by the 
death of a Mr. Walton, and has advised me to 
apply for it. I have therefore written to Scott 
to tell him this ; and I now write to you, well 
knowing that if you can be of use to me in this 
application, you will. What the value of this 
appointment is I do not know — Sharp fancies 
from 66600 to d£800 a year. If this be thought 
' too good a thing for me,' as I dare say it will, 
the Cumberland estates might be divided from 
the Northumberland ones. Certes I should rath- 
er have the whole than half, but better half a 
loaf than no bread. And now I have done all 
that is in my power to do, having thus found out 
a specific thing, asked for it. and written to you 
for your assistance, if you can give me any. 
Having done this, I dismiss the subject altogcth- 



260 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 36. 



er from my thoughts. In this respect I have 
been truly a philosopher, that no hopes or fears, 
with respect to worldly fortune, have ever given 
me an hour's anxietv. God bless vou ! 

* "R. S." 

My father was the more desirous of obtaining 
this office, because the property included a large 
portion of country in the immediate vicinity of 
Keswick ; and " it would give him the care of 
the woods, and the power of planting and beauti- 
fying/' He accordingly did not cease his efforts 
with the foregoing letter, but through several 
other friends secured still further interest, and 
all appeared to be in a fair train for ultimate 
success, when a further inquiry into the nature 
and extent of the duties required at once put a 
stop to the matter. Indeed, a more practical 
man would at once have perceived that literary 
tastes and pursuits were hardly compatible with 
the management of a large and widely-scattered 
property. The following pleasant account of 
the nature of the office from his friend, Mr. 
Bedford, seems almost ludicrous, from the Pro- 
tean qualities required. 

" The present possessor, with all his knowl- 
edge, assiduity, and rapidity in the mode of 
transacting business, has always been employed 
for seventeen or eighteen hours out of twenty- 
four, together with his first clerk. The salary 
is about c£700 a year. The place of residence 
varies over a tract of country of about eighty 
miles. The steward must be a perfect agricul- 
turist, surveyor, mineralogist, and the best law- 
yer that, competently with these other charac- 
ters, can be found; and lest his various duties 
should leave him any time for frivolous pursuits, 
it is in contemplation to raise up to him the seeds 
of controversy and quarrel, by associating with 
him some other person, who, under the pretense 
of sharing his labors, shall differ with him in all 
his opinions, without, perhaps, relieving him in 
any degree from the responsibility attached to 
the management of a revenue of c£40,000 per 
annum. Would you, if you might have it on de- 
mand, accept a place with all these circumstan- 
ces attached to it ? For my own part, I would 
rather live in a hollow tree all the summer, and 
die when the cold weather should set in, than 
undertake such an employment." 

This, as might be expected, was a complete 
damper to my father's wishes, and, with one ex- 
ception, here ended his attempts to obtain official 
employment. 

To Walter Scott, Esq. ' 

" Keswick, July 30, 1809. 
" My dear Scott, 
" Wordsworth's pamphlet will fail of produc- 
ing any general effect, because the sentences are 
long and involved ; and his friend, De Quincey, 
who corrected the press, has rendered them more 
obscure by an unusual system of punctuation. 
This fault will outweigh all its merits. The 
public never can like any thing which they feel 
it difficult to understand. They will affect to 



like it, as in the case of Burke, if the reputation 
of the writer be such that not to admire him is 
a confession of ignorance ; but, even in Burke's 
case, the public admiration was merely affected : 
his finer beauties were not remarked, and it was 
only his party politics that were generally un- 
derstood, while the philosophy which he brought 
to their aid was heathen Greek to the multitude 
of his readers. I impute Wordsworth's want of 
perspicuity to two causes — his admiration of Mil- 
ton's prose, and his habit of dictating instead of 
writing : if he were his own scribe, his eye would 
tell him where to stop ; but in dictating his own 
thoughts are to himself familiarly intelligible, 
and he goes on, unconscious either of the length 
of the sentence, or the difficulty a common read- 
er must necessarily find in following its meaning 
to the end, and unraveling all its involutions. 

' ; A villainous cold, which makes me sleep as 
late as I possibly can in the morning, because 
the moment I wake it wakes with me, has pre- 
vented me finishing Kehama : it would else, ere 
this, have been completed. I think of publish- 
ing it on my own account, in a pocket volume 
of about 350 pages ; but this is not yet determ- 
ined. One of the pleasures which I had prom- 
ised myself in seeing you was that of showing 
you this wildest of all wild poems, believing that 
you will be one of the few persons who will 
relish it. The rhymes are as irregular as your 
own, but in a different key, and I expect to be 
abused for having given the language the free- 
dom and strength of blank verse, though I pride 
myself upon the mamier in which this is com- 
bined with rhyme. 

"The Eclogue* which I have sent Ballan- 
tyne has suffered a little by having all its local 
allusions cut out. This was done lest what was 
intended as a general character should have been 
interpreted into individual satire. The thing 
was suggested by my accidentally crossing such 
a funeral some years ago at Bristol ; and had I 
been disposed to personal satire, the hero of the 
procession would have afforded ample scope for 
it. As soon as he knew his case was desperate, 
he called together all the persons to whom he 
was indebted in his mercantile concerns : ' Gen- 
tlemen,' said he, 'I am going to die, and my 
death will be an inconvenience to you, because 
it will be some time before you can get your ac- 
counts settled with my executors ; now, if you 
will allow me a handsome discount, I'll settle 
them myself at once.' They came into the pro- 
posal, and the old alderman turned his death into 
nine hundred pounds' profit. 

" If Queen Orraca is not too long for the En- 
glish Minstrelsy, I will with great pleasure send 
off a corrected copy for it. 

c; Yours very truly, Robert Southet." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

m " August 6, 1809. 

:: My dear Scott, ™ 
"The quest is over; I believe the steward- 

* The Alderman's FuneraL 



&TAT. 36. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



261 



ship would have been promised to me had 1 
been fit for it. All, therefore, that I have to re- 
gret is having relied so implicitly upon Sharp's 
information as to apply for the post before I had 
thoroughly ascertained my own competency for 
it. This was only one blunder. Another was 
in supposing there was no English Historiogra- 
pher : old Dutens has had the office, with a sal- 
ary of d£400, for many years — upon what plea, 
they who gave it him can best tell. My aim 
must now be to' succeed him, whenever he pleas- 
es to move off, obtaining, if possible, an increase 
of salary, so as- to make it equivalent to what it 
originally was ; and toward this I hope some 
way is gained by what has already been done. 
I go to Lowther this day week, and according 
as I feel my footing, will contrive to have my 
views and wishes explained. 

"There came last night a letter from Ellis, 
communicating the result of his conversation 
with Canning : I have thanked him for his friend- 
ly interference, and told him how things stand. 

" I will do my best for Ballantyne ;* and going 
to work with clear views of the subject, and a 
thorough knowledge of the Spanish and Portu- 
guese character, I shall come to it with great ad- 
vantages. That lamentable ground over which 
poor Sir J. Moore retreated (as one of his own 
officers expresses it) ' faster than flesh and blood 
could follow him,' I paced on foot, loitering along 
that my foot-pace might not outstrip a laz)^ coach 
and six, and my recollection of passes where five 
hundred Englishmen could have stopped an 
army is as vivid as if I had just seen them. Bo- 
naparte owes more to the blunders of his ene- 
mies than to his own abilities ; and he has no 
surer allies than those writers who prepare our 
very generals to fear him, by constantly repre- 
senting him as not to be conquered. Oh, for 
Peterborough ! Oh, for a ' single hour of Dun- 
dee !' Sir John Moore was as brave a man as 
ever died in battle, but he had that fear upon 
him — his imagination was cowed and intimi- 
dated, though his heart was not. And now, be- 
cause the Galicians did not turn out and expose 
themselves to certain destruction by attempting 
to protect an army whom he would not suffer to 
protect themselves, a party in this country are 
laboring to prove that we ought to abandon the 
Spaniards ! Assuredly, if I am to write the his- 
tory of his campaign, not a syllable shall be set 
down in malice, but by Heaven I will nothing 
extenuate ; the retreat shall be painted in its 
true colors of shame and horror, accurately to 
the very life, or, rather, the very death, for death 
it was, not only to the wretched women and 
children, who never should have been permitted 
to enter Spain, but to man and beast — both 
marched till flesh and blood failed them, and the 
men broken-hearted to think that their lives were 
thus ignominiously wasted. 

" If I thought you repeated the retainer's wish 
in sober earnest, I could not in conscience wish 
your old Man of the Sea were off your shoulders ; 



See the beginning of the next chapter. 



but I believe, whenever he is laid down, doing 
what you please will be doing much, and that we 
shall have more Marmions and Williams of Delo- 
raines. Lord Byron's waggery was new to me, 
and I can not help wishing you may some day 
have an opportunity of giving him the retort as 
neatly as you have given it to Cumberland. 

" I have fixed myself here by a lease of one 
and-twenty years, which, after many weary pro 
crastinations, was executed a few days ago. 

" I had nearly forgotten to say something con- 
cerning Morte d' Arthur. It is now more than 
a year that I have been playing the dog in the 
manger toward you ; but the fault is not in me. 
Longman has been to blame in adjourning the 
printing the work sine die. I will in my next 
letter state to him that he is making me use you 
ill, and that, if there be any further delay, I 
shall, feel myself bound to throw up the business. 

"Yours very truly, Robert Sotjthey." 

To Lieut. Southcy, H.M.S. Dreadnought. 
" Sept 19, 1809. 
" My dear Tom, 

" Poor Jackson is gone at last, after a cruel 
illness. I followed him to the grave to-day. A 
good man, to whom the town of Keswick and 
many of its inhabitants are greatly beholden. 
He has left Hartley ^£50, to be paid when he 
comes of age. Had he thought of bequeathing 
him his books, it would have been a more suita- 
ble remembrance. Never had man a more faith- 
ful, anxious, and indefatigable nurse than he 
has had in Mrs. Wilson — always ready, always 
watchful, always willing, never uttering a com- 
plaint, never sparing herself ; with the most dis- 
interested affection ; acting so entirely from the 
feelings of a good heart, that I do not believe 
even the thought of duty ever entered it. The 
night after his death we made her take a little 
spirit and water : it was not a tea-cupful, but 
upon her it aoted as medicine ; and she told me 
the next day that, for the first time during two 
years, she had slept through the night. He 
never turned in his bed during that whole time 
that she did not hear, nor did he make the slight- 
est unusual sound or motion that she was not up 
to know what could be done for him. As you 
will readily suppose, I have long since told her 
never to think of quitting the place, but to re- 
main here as long as she lives with people to 
whom she is attached (she dotes upon Edith and 
Herbert), and who can understand her worth. 

" Busy as it is usually my fortune to be, I was 
never so busy as now. Three mornings more 
will finish my transcribing task for the first vol- 
ume of my History of Brazil, including a long 
chapter, which, I fear, can hardly be got into 
the volume, though I much wish to insert it. 
Then come the notes — supplementary — which 
might, with great pleasure to myself and profit 
to my reader, be extended to another volume as 
large ; but I shall not allow them much more 
than fifty pages. The book, as a whole, is more 
amusing than was to be expected. About a 
fortnight's morning work will complete my work 



262 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 36. 



for it : 448 pages are printed ; the whole will 
not be less than 660. 

" Last night we had a prodigious flood, higher 
in some places than can be remembered ; I say 
in some places, because the lake was previously 
low, and the force of the waters was spent be- 
fore they found their way to it. Do you know 
the little bridge over what is usually a dry ditch 
at the beginning of the Church Lane ? The 
water was over it, and three feet deep in the 
lane! Half Slack's Bridge is gone, a chaise- 
driver and horses lost between this place and 
Wigton, and the corn washed away to a heavy 
amount. It was a tremendous night. 

"I must not wish you to be paid off unless 
you could be sure of a better appointment than 
you have at present, or of not being appointed 
at all. As for peace, I see no hope of it — no 
fear of it would be the better phrase. The 
Junta have mismanaged, and so have we ; I 
know not whose mismanagement has been the 
worst. The army which has been wasted at 
Flushing would have recovered Spain ; the Span- 
iards will now be left to do it their own way, by 
detail. What these changes at home will pro- 
duce, one can not guess till it is known who is 
going out and who coming in. If Marquis 
Wellesley comes in, we may expect something. 
If Canning goes out, the candle will be taken out 
of the dark lantern. God bless you ! 

"R. S." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Keswick, Oct. 9, 1809. 
" My dear Scott, 

*' Before I had leisure to thank you for your 
own letter and for Ellis's, and for all that there 
is therein, a new game of puss-catch-corner has 
been commenced at Westminster, and Canning 
has done the most foolish thing he ever did in 
his life. He should have remembered that Lord 
Castlereagh was an Irishman, and that, as the 
Union abolished the Irish Parliament, so ought 
the ill customs of that Parliament — dueling being 
one — to have been abolished with it ; that, hold- 
ing his rank and station in the country, it was as 
much a breach of decency in him to accept a 
challenge as it would have been in an archbishop ; 
and that rie might have done more by his ex- 
ample toward checking a mischievous and ab- 
surd practice than has ever been done yet. He 
got much credit by replying to the Russian man- 
ifesto, and he would have got more by a proper 
reply to Castlereagh. A single combat had 
some sense in it; there you relied upon your 
own heart and hand : there was some pleasure 
in hewing and thrusting, and the bravest came 
off best ; but as for our duels, all that has been 
said against villainous gunpowder holds true 
against them. 

"I wish to see Marquis Wellesley in power, 
because we want an enterprising minister — one 
who would make the enemy feel the mighty 
power of Great Britain, and not waste our force 
so pitifully as it has always hitherto been wasted. 
[ wish to see him in power, because he has not 



been tried, and all the other performers upon the 
Westminster stage have. But I confess there 
is but little hope in my wishes. It appears to 
me that the very constitution of our cabinet nec- 
essarily produces indecision, half measures, and 
imbecility : it seems to me that a government so 
constituted is just like an army, all whose oper- 
ations are guided by a council of war instead of 
a general. I am for ministerial dictatorships. 

"Your views about the Morte d' Arthur are 
wiser ones than mine. I do most formally and 
willingly resign it into your hands. My intent 
was that the book should be read ; but people 
are not disposed to read such things generally, or 
the Cid would not hang upon hand. Now a 
very limited edition is sure to find purchasers, 
and nothing need be sacrificed to insure success. 
I was not, by-the-by, aware that the book had 
been reformed by the godly critics whose worthy 
descendants have lately set forth a Family Shaks- 
peare, and will, it is to be hoped, in due time 
present us with an Edition Expurgate of the 
Bible, upon the plan by Matthew Lewis. I 
have a bill of indictment against those Eclectics 
and Vice-Society men, whenever Murray will 
send me the needful documents, for be it known 
unto you that in one of the Eclectic Reviews 
there is a grand passage describing the soul of 
Shakspeare in hell. If I do not put some of 
those Pharisees into purgatory for this, for the 
edification of our Quarterly readers, then may 
my right hand forget its cunning. 

"I have not seen the last Review, which 
makes roe suppose that Murray is still on his 
journey. These Quarterly Reviews lose much 
by giving up all those minor publications, which 
served to play shuttlecock with, and were put 
to death with a pun, or served up in the sauce 
of their own humorous absurdity. Hence, too, 
they are less valuable as materials for the his- 
tory of literature. The old Annual's was the 
best plan, if it had not been starved by scanty 
pay, and, moreover, choked with divinity. 

"My next missionary article, when I have 
time to write it, will be singularly curious : it 
will relate to South Africa \ and I shall obtain 
from my uncle a manuscript of D'Anville's con- 
cerning the Portuguese possessions there, and 
his plan for establishing a communication by 
land between them. 

"I want to hear that you have planned an- 
other poem, and commenced it. For myself, I 
shall begin with Pelayo, the Spaniard, as soon 
as I can make up my mind in what meter to 
write it. That of Kehama, though in rhyme, is 
almost as much my own as Thalaba, and will, I 
dare say, excite as much censure. 

" Yours very truly, R. Southey." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

"Keswick, October 10, 1809. 
" My dear Neville, 
" Thank you for the books ; they arrived yes- 
terday, and I have gone through about three 
fourths of Dr. Collyer's lectures. I have more 
respect for the Independents than for any other 



&TAT. 36. 



ROBERT SOUTHED. 



263 



body of Christians, the Quakers excepted. * 
# # * Their English history is with- 

out a blot. Their American has, unhappily, 
some bloody ones, which you will see noticed in 
the next number of the Quarterly, if my reviewal 
of Holmes's American Annals should appear 
there in an unmutilated state. Dr. Collyer's is 
certainly an able book ; yet he is better calcula- 
ted to produce effect from the pulpit than in the 
study. Those parts of his lectures which are 
most ornamental, and, doubtless, the most popu- 
lar in delivery, are usually extraneous to the 
main subject in hand. All his congregations 
would fairly say, ' What a fine discourse !' to 
every sermon ; but, when the whole are read 
collectively, they do not exhibit that clear and 
connected view of prophecy which is what he 
should have aimed at. There is, perhaps, hardly 
any subject which requires so much erudition, 
and so constant an exertion of sound judgment. 
The doctor's learning is not extensive ; he quotes 
from books of little authority, and never refers 
to those which are of most importance. Indeed, 
he does not appear to know what the Germans 
have done in Biblical criticism. 

* ^ ^P ^ ^ ^ ^F 

It has occurred to me that it would add to the 
interest of the Remains if the name under the 
portrait were made a fac-simile of Henry's hand- 
writing. Since I wrote to you, I fell in with 
Dr. Milner, the Dean of Carlisle, who talked to 
me about Henry; how little he had known of 
him, and how much he regretted that he should 
not have known him more. I told him what 
you were doing with James, expressing a hope 
that he might find friends at Cambridge, for his 
brother's sake as well as his own, which he 
thought would certainly be the case. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

" We thank you for Miss Smith's book — a 
very, very interesting one. There are better 
translations of some of Klopstock's odes in the 
Monthly Magazine, where, also, is to be found a 
full account of the Messiah, with extracts trans- 
lated by my very able and excellent friend, Will- 
iam Taylor, of Norwich. Coleridge and Words- 
worth visited Klopstock in the year 1797: he 
wore a great wig. Klopstock in a wig, they 
said, was something like Mr. Milton. His Life 
will alwa}^s retain its interest ; his fame as a 
poet will not be lasting. #■##■# 
In Germany, his day of reputation is already 
passing away. There is no other country where 
the principle of criticism is so well understood. 
But one loves Klopstock as well as if he had 
been really the poet that his admirers believe 
him to be ; and his wife was as much an angel 
as she could be while on earth. * * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

Mr. Coleridge, who was at this time residing 
at Grasmere, had lately commenced the publica- 
tion of The Friend, which came out in weekly 
numbers ; and, becoming apprehensive that it was 
not altogether well calculated to find favor with 
the class of readers likely to take in a periodical 



work, he now wrote to my father, requesting 
him to address such a letter to him in his Friendly 
character as might afford him a good plea for 
justifying the form and style of the paper in 
question. 

Both the request and the reply to it will be 
interesting to the reader, especially as the Friend, 
however unattractive to the popular mind as a 
periodical, has, like the Spectator and the Ram- 
bler, taken a permanent place among the works 
of its author and the literature of the nation. 

S. T. Coleridge to R. Southey. 

"October 20, 1809. 
" My dear Southey, 

fr >jf *3r *£ 



» # 



* 



What really makes me despond is the daily con- 
firmation I receive of my original apprehension, 
that the plan and execution of The Friend is so 
utterly unsuitable to the public taste as to pre- 
clude all rational hopes of its success. Much, 
certainly, might have been done to have made 
the former numbers less so, by the interposition 
of others written more expressly for general in- 
terest ; and, if I could attribute it wholly to any 
removable error of my own, I should be less de- 
jected. I will do my best, will frequently inter- 
pose tales and whole numbers of amusement, will 
make the periods lighter and shorter 5 and the 
work itself, proceeding according to its plan, will 
become more interesting when the foundations 
have been laid. Massiveness is the merit of a 
foundation ; the gilding, ornaments, stucco-work, 
conveniences, sunshine, and sunny prospects will 
come with the superstructure. Yet still I feel 
the deepest conviction that no efforts of mine, 
compatible with the hope of effecting any good 
purpose, or with the duty I owe to my perma- 
nent reputation, will remove the complaint. No 
real information can be conveyed, no important 
errors radically extracted, without demanding 
an effort of thought on the part of the reader : 
but the obstinate and now contemptuous aversion 
to all energy of thinking is the mother evil, the 
cause of all the evils in politics, morals, and lit- 
erature, which it is my object to wage war 
against ; so that I am like a physician who, for 
a patient paralytic in both arms, prescribes, as 
the only possible cure, the use of the dumb-bells. 
Whatever I publish, and in whatever form, this 
obstacle will be felt. The Rambler, which, al- 
together, has sold a hundred copies for one of 
the Connoisseur, yet, during its periodical ap- 
pearance, did not sell one for fifty, and was 
dropped by reader after reader for its dreary 
gravity and massiveness of manner. Now what 
I wish you to do for me — if, amid your many 
labors, you can find or make a leisure hour — is, 
to look over the eight numbers, and to write a 
letter to The Friend in a lively style, chiefly 
urging, in a humorous manner, my Don Quixot- 
ism in expecting that the public will ever pre- 
tend to understand my lucubrations, or feel any 
interest in subjects of such sad and unkempt an- 
tiquity, and contrasting my style with the ce- 
mentless periods of the modern Anglo-Gallican 



264 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 36 



style, which not only are understood beforehand, 
but, being free from all connections of logic, all 
the hooks and eyes of intellectual memory, never 
oppress the mind by any after recollections, but, 
like civil visitors, stay a few moments, and leave 
the room quite free and open for the next comers. 
Something of this kind, I mean, that I may be 
able to answer it so as, in the answer, to state 
my own convictions at full on the nature of ob- 
scurity, &c. * * * * 

" God bless you ! S. T. Coleridge." 

To S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 

" TO the friend. 

[Without date.] 
" Sir, 
" I know not whether your subscribers have 
expected too much from you, but it appears to 
me that you expect too much from your sub- 
scribers ; and that, however accurately you may 
understand the diseases of the age, you have cer- 
tainly mistaken its temper. In the first place, 
sir, your essays are too long. 'Brevity,' says 
a cotemporary journalist, ' is the humor of the 
times ; a tragedy must not exceed fifteen hund- 
red lines, a fashionable preacher must not tres- 
pass above fifteen minutes upon his congrega- 
tion. We have short waistcoats and short cam- 
paigns ; every thing must be short — except law- 
suits, speeches in Parliament, and tax-tables.' 
It is expressly stated, in the pi'ospectus of a col- 
lection of extracts, called the Beauties of Senti- 
ment, that the extracts shall always be complete 
sense, and not very long. Secondly, sir, though 
your essays appear in so tempting a shape to a 
lounger, the very fiends themselves were ' not 
more deceived by the lignum vita apples, when 

" ' They, fondly thinking to allay 
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit 
Chew'd bitter ashes,' 

than the reader is who takes up one of your pa- 
pers from breakfast table, parlor window, sofa, 
or ottoman, thinking to amuse himself with a 
few minutes' light reading. We are informed, 
upon the authority of no less a ijnan than Sir 
Richard Phillips, how f it has long been a sub- 
ject of just complaint among the lovers of En- 
glish literature, that our language has been de- 
ficient in lounging or parlor-window books ;' and 
to remove the opprobrium from the language, 
Sir Richard advertises a list, mostly ending in 
ana, under the general title of ' Lounging Books 
or Light Reading.' I am afraid, Mr. Friend, 
that your predecessors would never have ob- 
tained their popularity unless their essays had 
been of the description, "Ofiotov 6/j.o'h,) ty'ikov — 
and thi« is a light age. 

" You have yourself observed that few con- 
verts were made by Burke ; but the cause which 
you have assigned does not sufficiently explain 
why a man of such powerful talents and so au- 
thoritative a reputation should have produced so 
little an effect upon the minds of the people. 
Was it not because he neither was nor could be 
generally understood ? Because, instead of en- 



deavoring to make difficult things easy of com- 
prehension, he made things which were easy in 
themselves, difficult to be comprehended by the 
manner in which he presented them, evolving 
their causes and involving their consequences, 
till the reader, whose mind was not habituated to 
metaphysical discussions, neither knew in what 
his arguments began nor in what they ended ? 
You have told me that the straightest line must 
be the shortest ; but do not you yourself some- 
times nose out your way, hound-like, in pursuit 
of truth, turning and winding, and doubling and 
running, when the same object might be reached 
in a tenth part of the time by darting straight- 
forward like a greyhound to the mark ? Burke 
failed of effect upon the people for this reason — 
there was the difficulty of mathematics without 
the precision in his writings. You looked through 
the process without arriving at the proof. It was 
the fashion to read him because of his rank as a 
political partisan ; otherwise he would not have 
been read. Even in the House of Commons he 
was admired more than he was listened to ; not 
a sentence came from hirn which was not preg- 
nant with seeds of thought, if it had fallen upon 
good ground ; yet his speeches convinced nobody, 
while the mellifluous orations of Mr. Pitt per- 
suaded his majorities of whatever he wished to 
persuade them ; because they were easily under- 
stood, what mattered it to him that they were as 
easily forgotten ? 

" The reader, sir, must think before he can 
understand you ; is it not a little unreasonable to 
require from him an effort which you have your- 
self described as so very painful a one ? and is 
not this effort not merely difficult, but in many 
cases impossible? All brains, sir, were not 
made for thinking : modern philosophy has taught 
us that they are galvanic machines, and thinking 
is only an accident belonging to them. Intellect 
is not essential to the functions of life ; in the 
ordinary course of society it is very commonly 
dispensed with ; and we have lived, Mr. Friend, 
to witness experiments for carrying on govern- 
ment without it. This is surely a proof that it 
is a rare commodity ; and yet you expect it in 
all your subscribers ! 

" Give us your moral medicines in a more 
' elegant preparation.' The Reverend J. Gen- 
tle administers his physic in the form of tea ; 
Dr. Solomon prefers the medium of a cordial ; 
Mr. Ching exhibits his in gingerbread nuts ; Dr. 
Barton in wine ; but you, Mr. Friend, come with 
a tonic bolus, bitter in the mouth, difficult to 
swallow, and hard of digestion. 

" My dear Coleridge, 
" All this, were it not for the sir and the Mr. 
Friend, is like a real letter from me to you : I 
fell into the strain without intending it, and would 
not send it were it not to show you that I have 
attempted to do something. From jest I got 
into earnest, and, trying to pass from earnest to 
jest, failed. It was against the grain, and would 
not do. I had re-read the eight last numbers, 
and the truth is, they left me no heart for jesting 



/Lr.vr. 36. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



265 



or for irony. In time they will do their work ; 
i it is the form of publication only that is unlucky, 
and that can not now be remedied. But this 
evil is merely temporary. Give two or three 
amusing numbers, and you will hear of admira- 
tion from every side. Insert a few more poems 
— any that you have, except Christabel, for that 
is of too much value. There is scarcely any 
thing you could do which would excite so much 
notice as if you were now to write the character 
of Bonaparte, announced in former times for ' to- 
morrow,' and to-morrow, and to-morrow ; and 
I think it would do good by counteracting that 
base spirit of condescension toward him, whicb I 
am afraid is gaining ground ; and by showing 
the people what grounds they have for hope. 
" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. Ebenezer Elliott. 

" Keswick, Nov. 22, 1809. 
u My dear Sir, 

" I have had your poem little more than a 
week : yesterday I carefully perused it (not hav- 
ing had leisure before), and should this evening 
have written to you, even if your letter had not 
arrived. 

" There are in this poem (which appears to 
me an alteration of that whereof you formerly 
sent me an extract) unquestionable marks both 
of genius and the power of expressing it. I 
have no doubt that you will succeed in attaining 
the fame after which you aspire ; but you have 
yet to learn how to plan a poem ; when you ac- 
quire this, I am sure you will be able to exe- 
cute it. 

" This is my advice to you. Lay this poem 
aside as one whose defects are incurable. Plan 
another, and be especially careful in planning it. 
See that your circumstances naturally produce 
each other, and that there be nothing in the story 
which could be taken away without dislocating 
the whole fabric. Ask yourself the question, is 
this incident of any use? does it result from 
what goes before? does it influence what is to 
follow ? is it a fruit or an excrescence ? Satisfy 
yourself completely with the plan before you be- 
gin to execute it. I do not mean to say that 
the detail must be filled up, only make the skel- 
eton perfect. There is no danger of your get- 
ting into the fault of common-place authors, 
otherwise I would recommend you to read some 
of the bad epic writers, for the sake of learning 
what to avoid in the composition of a story. 

" In your execution you are too exuberant in 
ornament, and resemble the French engravers, 
who take off the attention from the subject of 
their prints by the flowers and trappings of the 
foreground. This makes you indistinct ; but 
distinctness is the great charm of narrative po 
etry: see how beautifully it is exemplified in 
Spenser, our great English master of narrative, 
whom you can not study too much, nor love too 
dearly. Your first book reminded me of an old 
pastoral poet — William Brown : he has the same 
fault of burying his story in flowers ; it is one 
of those faults which are to be wished for in the 



writings of all young poets. I am satisfied that 
your turn of thought and feeling is for the higher 
branch of the art, and not for the lighter subjects. 
Your language would well suit drama: have 
your thoughts ever been turned to it ? 

" If, when you have planned another poem, 
you think proper to send me the plan, I will 
comment upon it, while it may be of use to point 
out its defects. It would give me great pleas- 
ure to be of any service to a man of genius, and 
such I believe you to be. If business ever brings 
you this way, let me see you. Should I ever 
travel through Rotherham, I will find you out. 
I have spoken so plainly and freely of your de- 
fects, that you can have no doubt of my sincerity 
when I conclude by saying go on and you will 
prosper. 

" Yours respectfully, and with the best wishes, 
" R. Southey. 

" One thing more : forget this poem while you 
are planning another, lest you spoil that for the 
sake of appropriating materials from this." 

To Lieut. Southey, H.M.S. Lyra. 

"Nov. 25,1809. 
'■ My dear Tom, 
" I write to you for two reasons * * 
* * ; the other, a more interesting one, is 
to tell you that I have this day finished Kehama, 
having written two hundred lines since yesterday 
morning. Huzza, Aballiboozobanganorribo ! # 
It is not often in his lifetime a man finishes a 
long poem, and as I have nobody to give me joy, 
I must give myself joy. 24 sections, 4844 lines ; 
200 or 300 more will probably be added in 
course of correction and transcription ; all has 
been done before breakfast (since its resumption) 
except about 170 lines of the conclusion. Huzza ! 
better than lying abed, Tom ; and, though I am 
not quite ready to begin another, I will rise as 
usual to-morrow, and work at the plans of Pe- 
layo and Robin Hood. And now* I am a little im- 
patient that you should see the whole, and shall 
feel another job off my hands when your copy is 
completed. By beginning earlier with the next 
poem, I shall be able to keep pace with it, and 
send it to you as fast as it proceeds. 

" Very, very few persons will like Kehama : 
every body will wonder at it ; it will increase 
my reputation without increasing my popularity : 
a general remark will be, what a pity that I 
have wasted so much power. I care little about 
this, having in the main pleased myself, and all 
along amused myself; every generation will af- 
ford me some half dozen admirers of it, and the 
everlasting column of Dante's fame does not stand 
upon a wider base. There will be a good many 
minor ornaments to insert, the meter will in 
many places be enriched, and the story, per- 
haps, sometimes be rendered more perspicuous. 
Now that the whole is before me, I can see 
where to add and alter. If it receives half the 

* See the Doctor, &c. 



166 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 36. 



improvements which Thalaba did. I shall be well 
content. 

" Pelayo is to be in blank verse : where the 
whole interest is to be derived from human char- 
acter and the inherent dignity of the story, I will 
not run the hazard of enfeebling the finer parts 
for the sake of embellishing the weaker ones. I 
shall pitch Robin Hood in a different ke} T — such 
as the name would lead one to expect — a wild 
pastoral movement, in the same sort of plastic 
meter as Garci Ferrandez.* I shall aim it at 
about 2000 lines, and endeavor not to exceed 
3000. 

" The state of home politics is perfectly hope- 
less. Bonaparte seems thoroughly to despise 
all we can do ; all that we have done he is cer- 
tainly entitled to despise ; but if we had Marl- 
borough or Peterborough alive again, six months 
would close his career forever even now. It re- 
mains to be seen whether he despises the Span- 
iards enough to let things go on in their present 
course, or if he will enter Spain again and over- 
run the open country. In that case there is a 
line of large towns between Barcelona and Cadiz, 
along the coast, some of which may be expected 
to hold out like Zaragoza and Gerona, which we 
could assist by sea, and which would afford op- 
portunities for such men as Cochrane or Sir S. 
Smith grievously to annoy the besiegers — indeed, 
to cut them off if they had a good force. There 
ought to be four flying squadrons of 5000 men, 
each ready to land wherever they were wanted; 
under Cochrane they would keep five times their 
number of French in continual alarm. The only 
possible hope from the Marquis Wellesley is, that 
he may insist on a vigorous effort. What we 
are doing now is just worse than nothing ; our 
men drink themselves to death : our officers learn 
to despise the Spaniards and Portuguese, be- 
cause they do not dress, eat, and drink like them- 
selves ; and their opinions pass current here in 
England ; and the consequence is, that never 
were a people so cruelly and basely calumniated 
as this nation, which has done more against the 
powers of France, and under every possible dis- 
advantage, than all the rest of Europe conjointly. 
What a different story Sir Robert Wilson would 
tell, who has kept the field with his legion of 
Portuguese through all the perilous season ! 

(: God bless you! R. S." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ENGAGEMENT WITH BALLANTYNE FOR THE EDIN- 
BURGH ANNUAL REGISTER RODERIC BEGUN 

PROFESSOR WILSON DE QUINCE Y THE 

FRIEND POLITICS MADOC DEFENDED 

MONTHLY REVIEW LORD BYRON WILLIAM 

ROBERTS REVIEW OF THE MISSIONARIES 

HISTORY OF BRAZIL DECLINING LOVE OF PO- 
ETICAL COMPOSITION THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

ROMANISM IN ENGLAND POEM OF MR. E. 



* Poerns, p. 441. 



ELLIOTT S CRITICISED PORTUGUESE LITERA- 
TURE EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER SPAN- 
ISH AFFAIRS DOUBTS ABOUT THE METER OF 

KEHAMA OLIVER NEWMAN PROJECTED KE- 

HAMA COMPARATIVE MERITS OF SPENSER AND 

CHAUCER EVIL OF LARGE LANDED PROPRIE- 
TORS REMARKS ON WRITING FOR THE STAGE 

LANDOR'S COUNT JULIAN POLITICAL VIEWS 

GIFFORD WISHES TO SERVE HIM PROG- 
RESS OF THE REGISTER L. GOLDSMID's BOOK 

ABOUT FRANCE PASLEY's ESSAY NEW RE- 
VIEW PROJECTED DEATH OF HIS UNCLE 

THOMAS SOUTHEY LUCIEN BONAPARTE DO- 
MESTIC HAPPINESS SPANISH WAR LOVE FOR 

FLOWERS— 1810-1811. 

The reader may probably have observed that 
for a considerable period comparatively but little 
mention has occurred in my father's letters of 
his long-projected History of Portugal, the mate- 
rials for which had been collected with so much 
pains and expense, and which he had fondly 
hoped to make one of the chief pillars of his rep- 
utation. 

For this there were several causes ; but the 
chief one, and the one which lasted till his labors 
closed, was the necessity of his giving up the 
chief of his time to periodical writing — the only 
literary labour which could be said to be in any 
way adequately and fairly remunerated. The 
Quarterly Review had taken the place of the 
Annual, and he now entered upon another en- 
gagement of much greater magnitude. 

At the close of the year 1808, James Bal 
lantyne, the Edinburgh publisher, with whom he 
had previously had some communication, sent 
him the prospectus of an Annual Register, which 
was about to be commenced under favorable 
auspices, and with a fair list of literary contrib- 
utors, soliciting his co-operation both in verse 
and prose. 

He accordingly sent some trifling contributions 
of the former kind, and the matter rested thus 
until the following August, when Ballantyne 
again wrote to him, at first wishing him to write 
the history of Spanish affairs for the past year, 
and very shortly afterward, being disappointed 
by the person who had engaged to write the 
History of Europe, he urged him to take the 
historical department generally, at the annual 
payment of £400. 

This was a work of no small labor, and the 
year already so far advanced that more than 
common industry and speed were required : on 
this head, however, the publishers had no cause 
to complain, and, indeed, they appeared well 
satisfied with their "historiographer' in every 
way, though sometimes a little startled with the 
fearless manner in which he expressed his opin- 
ions on the various political subjects that came 
before him ; and they were very desirous of se- 
curing his further services in the miscellaneous 
volume. 

This engagement, while it lasted, was the 
most profitable which had yet been offered to 
him ; neither was it as distasteful to him then as 



jEtat. 36. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



267 



it would have been in less stirring times, the 
events in Spain being a subject in which he took 
" as deep an interest as the heart of man is 
capable of;" and he moreover contemplated the 
compilation of an accurate body of cotemporane- 
ous history, which might hereafter become a 
standard work of reference, and which would 
thus have a value far beyond that of the ordina- 
ry periodical literature of the day. 

Still, however this might be, he could not but 
; feel that, with works demanding far deeper re- 
search, admitting the fullest exercise of his pow- 
ers, and requiring literary stores which at that 
time he alone possessed, lying on his shelves 
half finished, the time thus taken up was but un- 
worthily occupied. But he lived in hope — in 
hopes that in time he would be enabled to live 
by the worthier labors of his busy pen, that 
works of solid and lasting merit would take 
their fitting place in the estimation of the pub- 
lic, and that his unrelenting studies would at 
length find their reward. How far these hopes 
were fulfilled or disappointed we have yet to see. 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Jan. 21, 1810. 
" My dear Rickman, 

' : I am one of those lucky people who find 
their business their amusement, and contrive to 
do more by having half a dozen things in hand 
at once than if employed upon any single one of 
them. # # # You will like what 

I have said concerning the Catholic question,* 
and not dislike the way in which I have dis- 
charged a little of my gall upon the Foxites, 
the place-mongers, and Mr. Whitbread. This 
is a very profitable engagement. They give 
me d£400 for it; and if it continues two or three 
yeai-s (which I believe rests wholly with myself), 
it will make me altogether at ease in my cir- 
cumstances, for by that time my property in 
Longman's hands will have cleared itself, the 
constable will come up with me, and we shall 
travel on, I trust, to the end of our journey 
cheek by jowl, even if I should not be able to 
send him forward like a running footman. 

" The Quarterly pays me well — ten guineas 
per sheet : at the same measure, the Annual was 
only four. I have the bulky Life of Nelson in 
hand, and am to be paid double. This must 
be for the sake of saying they give twenty guin- 
eas per sheet, as I should have been well satis- 
fied with ten, and have taken exactly the same 
pains. #####=£ 

" The next news of my gray goose quill is, 
that I have one quarto just coming out of the 
press for you. I have another just going in for 
Mrs. Rickman, though I suspect it will be less 
to her taste than any of my former poems. Ke- 
hama has been finished these two months, is 
more than half transcribed, and the first part 
ought to have reached Ballantyne's a month 
ago, but those rascally carriers have delayed or 
lost it. Thejdays are now sufficiently lengthen- 

* In the Edinburgh Annual Register. 



ed to give me some half hour before breakfast, 
and I have begun Pelayo, conquered the diffi- 
culty of the opening, and am fairly afloat. Add 
to all this, that from the overflowings of my 
notes and notanda I am putting together some 
volumes of Omniana (which will, I have no 
doubt, pay better than any of the works of 
which they are in the main, as it were, the 
crumbs and leavings), and then you will have 
the catalogue of my works in hand. * * 

" Mathetes is not De Quincey, but a Mr. Wil- 
son. De Quincey is a singular man, but better 
informed than any person almost that I ever met 
at his age. The vice of the Friend is its round- 
aboutness. Sometimes it is of the highest merit 
both in matter and manner : more frequently its 
turnings, and windings, and twistings, and doub- 
lings provoke my greyhound propensity of point- 
ing straightforward to the mark. 

" The Coalition* which you seem to look on 
is likely enough to take place ; if it should, and 
Dutens were to die, I might be the better for it ; 
the country would not. The journey to Fal- 
mouth seems the best prospect ; and yet, at my 
time of life (the gray hairs are coming), and 
with my habits, it would be much more agree- 
able to me to stay at home. I have no hope 
from chopping and changing, while the materi- 
als must remain the same. It signifies little 
who plays the first fiddle. Tantararara wUl 
always be the tune till there be an entirely new 
set of performers. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. Ebenezer Elliott: 

"Keswick, Feb. 9, 1810. 
" The objections which have been made to 
the style of Madoc are ill founded. It has no 
other peculiarity than that of being pure Eng- 
lish, which, unhappily, in these times, renders it 
peculiar. My rule of writing, whether for prose 
or verse, is the same, and may very shortly be 
stated. It is, to express myself, 1st, as per- 
spicuously as possible ; 2d, as concisely as pos- 
sible ; 3d, as impressively as possible. This is 
the way to be understood, and felt, and remem- 
bered. But there is an obtuseness of heart and 
understanding which it is impossible to reach ; 
and if you have seen the reviewals of Madoc, 
after having read the poem, you will perceive 
that almost in every part or passage which they 
have selected for censure, they have missed the 
meaning. For instance, the Edinburgh sneers 
at the beginning of the third section, part ii.,f 



* " If Lord Grenville consent to leave the experiment 
(of establishing Romanism in Ireland) untried, I do not 
see what should hinder him from joining with Lord Wei- 
lesley, Perceval, and Canning in forming a stronger gov- 
ernment than the present ; and I should the less wonder 
at it, as one may suppose that all the Tantarararas * 
* * are bodily frightened at the remarkable prog- 
ress of Cobbetism, built on the late disasters of our ar- 
mies, though I can not consent to wish the battle of Tal- 
avera unfought, that having established that there is some 
truth in the old opinion of the bravery of the British, who 
that day, even by confession of the enemy, were not half 
their numbers."— J. R. to R. S., Jan. 14, 1810. 

t " ' Not yet at rest, my sister !' quoth the prince. 
As at her dwelling door he saw the maid, 



268 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 36. 



and the words ' my own dear mother's child,' as 
inane. 

" Now, as for the speech itself, if had 

not good feeling enough in his nature to feel its 
dramatic truth and fitness in that place, it is his 
misfortune j but that particular expression would, 
to any person who reflected upon its meaning 
with a moment's due attention, give it peculiar 
force ; for in that state of society, most of the 
king's children were by different mothers. Of 
course, when Madoc addressed his sister as his 
mother's child, more affecting remembrances and 
more love were implied in that single expres- 
sion than a whole speech could convey with equal 
expressiveness. The Eclectic ridicules 'Wilt 
thou come hither, prince, and let me feel thy 
face ?'* I am utterly ignorant of the nature and 
essence of true poetry if that be not one of the 
finest scenes that I have ever been able to pro- 
duce. 

" The meter has been criticised with equal in- 
capacity on the part of the critics. Milton and 
Shakspeare are the standards of blank verse : in 
these writers every variety of it is to be found, 
and by this standard I desire to be measured. 
The redundant verses (when the redundant syl- 
lable is any where but at the end of a line) are 
formed upon the admitted principle that two 
short syllables are equal in time to one long one. 
The truth is, that though the knack of versifying 
is a gift, the art is an acquirement. I versified 
more rapidly at the age of sixteen than now at 
six-and-thirty. But it requires a knowledge of 
that art to criticise upon the structure of verse ; 
nor Is it sufficient to understand the regular turn 
of the meter : a parrot might be taught that. In 
the sweep of blank verse, the whole paragraph 
must be taken into consideration before the merit 
or demerit of a single line, or sometimes of a 
single word, can be understood. Yet these crit- 
ics are everlastingly picking out single lines, 
and condemning their cadence as bad. This 
might be true if the line could possibly stand 
alone. But were I to cut off one of the critic's 
fingers, and tell him it was only fit for a tobacco- 
stopper, that would be true also, because the act 
of amputation made it so. 

" You appreciate the story with true judg- 
ment, and have laid your finger upon the faulty 
parts. This it is to have the inborn feeling of a 
poet. Of the language you are not so good a 
judge, because you have not mastered the art, 
a<nd are not well read in the poets of Shakspeare's 
age. You can not read Shakspeare, Spenser, 
Milton, and the Elizabethan dramatists too much. 
There is no danger of catching their faults. 
" Yours very truly, 

"R. SOUTHEY." 



Sit gazing on that lovely moonlight scene ; 

' To bed, Goervyl ! Dearest, what hast thou 

To keep thee wakeful here at this late hour, 

When even I shall bid a truce to thought, 

And lay me down in peace ? Good night, Goervyl, 

Dear sister mine, my own dear mother's child!' " 

* Madoc, Part I., Section 3. This passage is too long 
{or extraction here. 



To Mr. Neville White. 

"Keswick, March 11, 1810. J 
" My dear Sir, 

" Your account of the Monthly Review inter, 
ested me very much. If they rest the truth of 
their criticism upon that school poem in plain, 
direct, tangible language, I will most assuredly 
favor them with a few lines, first through the 
medium of as many magazines as we can get 
access to, and ultimately in a note to the Life. 
With regard to my own works, I am a perfect 
Quaker, and fools and rogues may misrepresent 
and libel them in perfect security ; but upon the 
subject of Henry, the M. Review shall find me 
a very Tartar. 

" Till you informed me of it, I did not know 
that Lord Byron had amused himself with lam- 
pooning me. It is safe game, and he may ga 
on till he is tired. Every apprentice in satire 
and scandal for the last dozen years has tried 
his hand upon me. I got hold of the Simpliciad 
the other day, and wrote as a motto in it these 
lines, from one of Davenant's plays which I hap- 
pened to have just been reading : 

" 'Libels of such weak fancy and composure, 
That we do all esteem it greater wrong 
To have our names extant in such paltry rhyme 
Than in the slanderous sense.' 

" The manner in which these rhymesters and 
prosesters misunderstand what they criticise, 
would be altogether ludicrous, if it did not pro- 
ceed as often from want of feeling as from want 
of intellect. 

" I want your assistance in a business in which 
I am sure it will interest you to give it. A youth 
of Bristol, by name William Roberts, died of con- 
sumption about two years ago, at the age of 
nineteen. He was employed in a bank, and his 
salary, d£70 a year (I believe), was materially 
useful in assisting toward the support of his fa- 
ther and mother, and a grandmother, and one 
only sister. The family had known better days 
^ * * * and one calamity fol- 

lowing another, has reduced them very greatly. 
Yet still there remains that feeling which, if I 
call it pride, it is only for want of a better w^ord 
to express something noble in its nature. Will- 
iam was a youth of great genius, and a few days 
before his death he bequeathed his poems in trust 
to his two intimate friends to be published for 
the benefit of his sister, that being all he had to 
bequeath, and his passionate desire (like that of 
Chatter ton) was to provide for her. You must 
remember that at that time he did not foresee 
the subsequent distresses of his father and moth 
er. These friends were a young physician of the 
name of Hogg, settled somewhere near London 
and James, a banker of Birmingham, an ac- 
quaintance of mine, the author of that sweel 
poem upon the Otaheitean Girl, of which some 
stanzas were quoted in the third Quarterly Re- 
view. James has arranged the poems and let- 
ters of the poor fellow for the press, and will 
draw up a biographical memoir. JIe has con- 
sulted me upon the subject, and the plain state- 
ment which I have here made of the circura 



jEtat. 36. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



269 



stances has interested me very deeply # # 
My opinion is, that great things might have been 
done by William Roberts; that every one will 
acknowledge this ; but that his Remains will not 
obtain a general sale. Of Henry's I foresaw 
the success as much as such a thing could be 
: foreseen. But Roberts has left nothing so good 
j as Henry's best pieces ; in fact, he died younger, 
and was precluded from the possibility of ad- 
vancing himself as Henry did, in choosing a 
learned profession, because his salary was want- 
ed at home. There is another reason, too, 
against their general sale ; though he was most 
exemplary in all his duties, and, as far as I can 
discover, absolutely without a spot or blemish 
upon his character, and a regular and sincere 
churchman, there is nothing of that kind of piety 
in his writings to which the Remains are mostly 
indebted for their popularity. 

•7? -Jf *7r tP Tv ">P "TT 

" My hope is that such a sum may be raised 
as will be sufficient to place Eliza Roberts in a 
situation respectably to support herself and her 
parents. I do not yet know what extent the 
publication will run to, but as soon as this is set- 
tled, I will beg you to beg subscriptions. * * 
This whole account is written with such a cau- 
tious fear of saying too much, that I fear I have 
said too little, and may unwittingly have led you 
to think slightingly of what poor William Roberts 
has left behind him. If I have done this I have 
done wrong, for certainly he was a youth of great 
genius and most uncommon promise, which it is 
my firm belief, founded upon the purity of his 
life and principles, and the rectitude of his feel- 
ings, that he would amply have fulfilled, if it had 
not pleased God to remove him so early from 
this sphere of existence. 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

Robert Southey." 

To Sharon Turner, Esq. 

•'March 20, 1810. 
" Dear. Turner, 

" I thank you for your little volume, which I 
have read with pleasure, as the faithful transcript 
of a good man's mind. It contains ample proof 
that you possess the perceptions of a poet ; and 
if the diction in which they are clothed has some- 
times its defects, it is because you have been too 
laboriously employed in more dignified pursuits 
to have had leisure for maturing the mechanical 
part of an art which, of all other trades or pro- 
fessions, requires the longest apprenticeship. 

" What I have written upon the missionaries 
I well knew would accord with your feelings and 
opinions. I have not yet done with the subject, 
meaning, so soon as my many occupations will 
allow, to prepare an article upon the South Afri- 
can missions ; and, perhaps, to go on at intervals 
till I have given a view of all the existing Prot- 
estant missions ; proved my own firm belief 
that there are but two methods of extending civ- 
ilization — conquest and conversion — the latter 
the only certain one ; entered fully into the dif- 



ficulties which oppose the reception of Christi- 
anity ; and, finally, connected this subject with 
that of civilization. • 

" I had given Canning credit for the Austrian 
article, though half suspecting that it was giving 
him credit for too much, because there was a 
reference to the principles of human nature and 
a sense of its dignity rarely, or never, to be found 
in a politician by trade. The Quarterly does 
well ; but it would do far better if it was eman- 
cipated from the shackles of party. It wants, 
also, some recondite learning : you should give 
them an account of the Welsh Archaiology ; or, 
if that be too laborious, should take some of the 
Welshmen's publications, Davies or Roberts, for 
your text, and pour out from your full stores. 

TT T? W ^ ^T 

"You will receive the first volume of my 
greatest labors very shortly; for, after many 
provoking delays, it has at last got out of the 
printer's hands. It is less interesting, perhaps, 
than the second volume will prove, or than the 
history of the mother country ; but it will repay 
perusal, and you will find many valuable hints 
respecting savage life. I have a poem also in 
the press, which you will wonder at and abuse. 
It is, in my own judgment, a successful attempt 
at giving to rhyme the whole freedom, and more 
than the variety, of blank verse. But in all its 
structure and story it is so wholly unlike any 
thing else, that I expect to have very few ad- 
mirers. This has been a sort of episode to my 
main employments. ■ * * * What 
I am busied upon most intently is the historical 
part of Ballantyne's new Annual Register. The 
perfect freedom and perfect sincerity with whieh 
I am discharging this task has astonished Ballan- 
tyne, and I dare say he will find his account in 
it ; for, sure I am, the veriest knave will feel that 
it is written with honesty. # # # # 
This evening I have finished the siege of Zara- 
goza, and my pulse has not yet recovered its 
usual regularity. The death of Sir John Moore 
will conclude the volume. # # * 

" Believe me, yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" March 26, 1810. 
"Is it a mark of strength or of weakness, of 
maturity or of incipient decay, that it is more 
delightful to me to compose history than poetry ? 
not, perhaps, that I feel more pleasure in the 
act of composition, but that I go to it with more 
complacency, as to an employment which suits 
my temperament. I am loth to ascribe this 
lack of inclination to any deficiency of power, 
and certainly am not conscious of any; still I 
have an ominous feeling that there are poets 
enough in the world without me, and that my 
best chance of being remembered will be as an 
historian. A proof-sheet of Kehama, or a sec- 
ond sight scene in Pelayo, disperses this cloud ; 
such, however, is my habitual feeling. It did 
not use to be the case in those days when 1 
thought of nothing but poetry, and lived, as it 



270 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 36. 



were, in an atmosphere of nitrous oxyd — in a 
state of perpetual excitement, which yet pro- 
duced no* exhaustion. 

" The first volume of my History of Brazil 
makes its appearance in a few days ; perhaps at 
this time it may have been published. This is 
the commencement of a long series ; the History 
of Portugal is to follow, then that of Portuguese 
Asia, then a supplementary volume concerning 
the African possessions. Lastly, if I have life, 
health, and eye-sight permitted me, the history 
of the Monastic Orders ; sufficient employment 
for a life, which I should think well employed in 
completing them. =* # =fc * 

" God bless you! R. S." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Durham, May 11, 1810. 
" My dear Scott, 

iC Yesterday evening, on my return from the 
race-ground, I found your poem* lying on the 
table. A provoking engagement called me from 
it for two or three hours ; but, notwithstanding 
this, and my obstinate habit of getting early to 
bed, I did not go to rest till I finished the book. 
Every reader's first thought, when he begins to 
think at all, will be to compare you with your- 
self. If I may judge from my own feelings, the 
Lady will be a greater favorite than either of 
her elder brethren. There is in all, the same 
skillful inscrutability of story till the artist is 
pleased to touch the spring which lays the whole 
machine open ; but, while the plot is thus well- 
wound up in the new poem, I think the narrative 
is more uniformly perspicuous than in the two 
former. There is in all, the like originality and 
beauty of circumstances. I am not willing to 
admit that some of the situations in the Lay and 
Marmion can be outdone ; and if I thought they 
were outdone last night, and still incline to think 
so, it is probably because new impressions are 
more vivid than the strongest recollection. 

" I wished most of the songs away on the first 
perusal ; on recurring to them, I was glad they 
were there ; yet, wherever they interrupt the 
narrative, without in any way tending to carry 
on the business of the story, my admiration of 
the things themselves does not prevent me from 
thinking them misplaced. Your title is likely 
to be a popular one ; and for that very reason, I 
wish it had not been chosen. Of course it led 
me to expect some tale of Merlin or King Ar- 
thur's days ; but what is of real consequence to 
one who loves old lays is, that whenever here- 
after the Lady of the Lake will be mentioned, 
most readers will suppose your Ellen is intended ; 
and in this way a sort of offense against anti- 
quity has been committed. This is something 
in the manner of Momus's criticism, to find fault 
with the trinkets of the Lady and with her name. 
But I heartily give you joy of the poem, and 
congratulate you with perfect confidence upon 
the success which you have a right to expect, 
which you deserve, and which you will find. 



The Ladv of the Lake. 



The portrait seems more like the more I look at 
it ; and my friend Camp is now doubly immor- 
talized. This reminds me of the dog in the 
poem — an incident so fine that it bears as well 
as courts comparison with one of the most affect- 
ing passages in Homer. 

" Longman was instructed to send you my 
Brazil. I hope to get a long spell at the con- 
cluding volume before it is necessary to fall se- 
riously to work upon the second Register. What 
you will think of Kehama I am not quite sure ; 
of what the public will think, I can have, and 
never have had, the slightest doubt. No subject 
could have been devised more remote from hu- 
man sympathies ; and there are so few persons 
who are capable of standing aloof from them, 
that the subject must be admitted to have been 
imprudently chosen, if in choosing it I had any 
other motive than that of pleasing myself and 
some half a dozen others. If it had been my 
intention to provoke censure, I could not have 
done it more effectually ; for, without intending 
any innovation, or being at first sensible of any, 
I have fallen into a style of versification as un- 
usual as the ground- work of the story ; with this, 
however, I am well satisfied. I have written 
the first canto of Pelayo in blank verse, and 
without machinery. This promises to be a strik- 
ing poem, and, if it were ready now, might per- 
haps, in some degree, be a useful one. 

" The meter of the Lady is to me less agree- 
able than the more varied measure. There is 
an advantage in writing in a meter to which one 
has been little accustomed ; it necessarily in- 
duces a certain change of style, and thus enables 
the writer to clothe his old conceptions in so dif- 
ferent a garb that they appear new even to him- 
self. The alteration which you have made is 
not sufficiently great to obtain this advantage ; 
and there is a loss of variety, from which I should 
have predicted a loss of freedom and a loss of 
power. This, however, is amply confuted by 
the poem, which certainly is .never deficient either 
in force or freedom. 

" I shall return home in the course of a fort- 
night 5 a short interval of idleness makes me feel 
impatient to get once more to my books and my 
desk. Pray remember me to Mrs. Scott, and 
believe me, 

" Very affectionately yours, 

"Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. Herbert Hill. 

" Keswick, May 30, 1310. 
" My dear Uncle. 
"# # =*'# # • # * 

My Register work was finished before I left home 
* * * * An interval of idleness 

which is to me more wearisome than any labor, 
has given me new appetite for employment, and 
I am now busily occupied with my second vol- 
ume,* to which, with such alternations of work 
for the Review as are always wholesome as well 
as convenient (for over-application to any one sub- 

* Of the '• History of Brazil." 



JErAT. 36. 



ROBERT SOUTHE Y. 



'27. 



ject disturbs my sleep, and I have long learned, 
by neutralizing, as it were, one set of thoughts 
with another, to sleep as sweetly as a child), I 
shall devote the next three months uninterrupt- 
edly. My first volume seems to be well liked by 
my friends ; they all speak of it as amusing, which 
I was at one time apprehensive it would not be. 

"Murray the bookseller, with whom the 
Quarterly had led me into correspondence, prom- 
ises to procure for me a MS. history of Lima, 
written by one of its viceroys. I shall be glad 
to see it, and am a good deal obliged by this 
mark of attention on his part; but those books 
upon Paraguay would be far more useful at this 
time, for I have no other guides than Charlevoix, 
and the mutilated translation of Techo, in 
Churchill. Luckily, a very brief summary of 
events is all that I am called upon, or, indeed, 
consistently with the main purpose and plan of 
the work, ought to give ; still it is impossible to 
do this to my own satisfaction unless I feel my- 
self thoroughly acquainted with the whole series 
of events. ###### 

" Scott sent me his poem to Durham. I like 
it better than eitheir Marmion or the Lay, though 
its measure is less agreeable ; but the story has 
finer parts, and is better conceived. The por- 
traits both of Camp and his master are remark- 
ably good. He talks of a journey to the Heb- 
rides ; but, if that does not take place, of a visit 
southward ; in which case, Keswick will be taken 
on his way, and we are to concoct some plan 
for employing Ballantyne's press. 

" The old Douay establishment is removed to 
England, to a place called Ushaw, about four 
miles from Durham. They began it upon a 
Bank of Faith system, after Huntingdon's man- 
ner, having only <s£2000 to begin with. The 
o£2000 have already been expended, and pretty 
near as much more will go before it is completed. 
There* are 100 students there already, chiefly 
boys ; and preparations are making for doubling 
the number. I rode over with Henry, and one 
of his Catholic friends, to look after the library. 
The philosophical tutor showed me a volume of 
the Acta Sanct. Benedictorum — ' Saints, as they 
choose to call them,' said he. In the evening, 
however, the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the 

Anglo-Saxons, by this very Mr. , were put 

into my hands ; and there he relates miracles, 
and abuses Turner for what he calls his Ro- 
mance of St. Dunstan ! These fellows are all 
alike. I asked what the number of the English 
Catholics was supposed to be, and was told 
300,000. This is most likely exaggerated. I 
should not have guessed them at half. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, August 5, 1810. 
My dear Friend, 
" Whatever you may think of my part in the 
Register in other respects, you will, I am sure, 
be well pleased with the perfect freedom which 
inspires it. It will offend many persons, and 
will please no party ; but my own heart is sat- 



isfied, and that feeling would always be to me a 
sufficient reward. And even if it should injure 
me in a political point of view (as it probably 
may), by cutting off the prospect of obtaining 
any thing from government beyond the pension 
* =* * # still I believe that even the 
balance of selfish prudence, though Mr. Worldy- 
wiseman himself were to adjust the scales, would 
prove in my favor ; for I confidently expect that 
this work will materially increase my reputation 
among the booksellers ; and, indeed, as long as 
I continue to be engaged in it, I shall need no 
other means of support. In the second part of 
the volume you will see me abundantly praised 
and most respectfully censured. I know not who 
the critic is, nor can I guess 5 he is very showy 
and sufficiently shallow. * * * As 

for my contempt of the received rules of poetry, 
I hold the same rules which Shakspeare, Spenser, 
and Milton held before me, and desire to be judg- 
ed by those rules ; nor have I proceeded upon 
any principle of taste which is not to be found in 
all the great masters of the art of every age and 
country wherein the art has been understood. 
When the critic specifies parts of my writings to 
justify his praise, he overlooks every thing which 
displays either a knowledge of human nature, or 
a power of affecting the passions, and merely 
looks for a specimen of able versification. * 
" God bless you ! 

" Yours very affectionately, R. S." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 17, 1810. 
"My dear Scott, 

"In the Courier of the 15th (which has this 
evening reached us) is an article pretending to 
exhibit imitations from your poems, and signed 
S. T. C. At the first sight of this I was cer- 
tain that S. T. Coleridge had nothing to do with 
it ; and, upon putting the paper into his hands, 
his astonishment was equal to mine. What may 
be the motive of this dirty trick, Heaven knows. 
I can only conjecture that the fellow who has 
practiced it designs in some other paper or mag- 
azine to build up a charge of jealousy and envy 
in Coleridge, founded upon his own forgery. 
Coleridge declares he will write to the Courier 
disavowing the signature. I know he means to 
do it ; but his actions so little correspond to his 
intentions, that I fear he will delay doing it, very 
probably, till it is too late. Therefore I lose no 
time in assuring you that he knows nothing of 
this petty and paltry attack, which I have no 
doubt, from whatever quarter it may have come, 
originates more in malice toward him than to 
ward you. 

" I was not without hopes of seeing you in 
this land of lakes, on your way from the York- 
shire Greta ; but, happening to see Jeffrey about 
a fortnight ago, he told me that you were set- 
tled at Ashiestiel for the autumn. I say hap- 
pening to see him, because his visit was to Cole- 
ridge, not to me ; and he told C.that he had not 
called immediately on me, as he did not know 
what my feelings might be toward him, &e 



272 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF .Etat. 37. 



" You have probably seen my labors in the 
Register. Upon almost all points of present pol- 
itics I believe there is little difference of opinion 
between us ; and every where, I think, you will 
give me credit for fair dealing as well as plain 
speaking. At present I am working very hard 
upon the second volume ; it is an employment 
which interests me very much, and I complain 
of nothing but the want sometimes of sufficient 
documents respecting the Spanish war. Par- 
ticularly I regret the want of detailed accounts 
of the second siege of Zaragoza and the siege of 
Gerona, that I might be enabled to present a full 
record of those glorious events. I suppose you 
know the whole secret history of the Register, 
otherwise I would tell you how liberally the Bal- 
lantynes have behaved to me. They will prob- 
ably find their account in having engaged a man 
who writes with such perfect freedom ; for, 
though parts of the work may, and indeed will, 
offend all parties in turn, still there is a decided 
character of impartiality about it, w T hich will 
prove the surest recommendation. 

" Kehama has traveled so slowly through the 
press, that, instead of appearing at the end of 
one season, it will be ready about the beginning 
of the next. I expect every body to admire my 
new fashion of printing (though unfortunately the 
printers did not fall into it for the first three or 
four sheets) ; if any thing else is admired — -po- 
namus lucro. My unknown critic in the Regis- 
ter will think that I am going against wind and 
tide with a vengeance, instead of sailing, accord- 
ing to his advice, with the stream. But if he or 
any body else should imagine that I purposely 
set myself in opposition to public opinion, they 
are very much mistaken. I do not think enough 
about public opinion for this to be possible. In 
planning and executing a poem, no other thought 
ever occurs to me than that of making it as good 
as I can. When it is finished, the ostrich does 
not commit her eggs with more confidence to 
the sand and the sun, and to Mother Nature, 
than I ' cast it upon the waters' — sure if it be 
good that it will be found after many days. 

" It gratified me much to hear that you had 
been interested with my first volume of Brazil. 
The second will contain more stimulating mat- 
ter ; but it is from the history of Portugal that I 
think you will derive most amusement, so full 
will it be of high chivalrous matter and beauti- 
ful costume. Pelayo comes on slow and sure, 
thoroughly to my own mind as far as it has ad- 
vanced. 

"Yours very truly, R. Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 11, 1811. 
" I am brooding a poem upon Philip's War 
with the New Englanders, which was the de- 
cisive struggle between the red and white races 
in America. Nothing can be more anti-heroic 
than stiff Puritan manners ; but these may be 
kept sufficiently out of sight ; and high Puritan 
principles are fine elements to work with. One 
of my main characters is a Quaker, an (ideal) 



son of Goffe the regicide. A good deal of orig- 
inal conception is floating in my mind, and there 
is no subject in which my own favorite feelings 
and opinions could be so fully displayed. It has 
taken strong hold on me, and if my mind was 
but made up as to the fittest form of meter, I 
should probably begin it forthwith, and continue 
it and Pelayo together, having the one to turn to 
when the way was not plain before me in the 
other. Hexameters would not be more difficult 
than any other meter, but they will not allow of 
the necessary transition from the narrative to the 
dramatic style without too great a discrepancy. 
The manner of Kehama would not do : the nar- 
rative is pitched too high, the dialogue too low, 
for a poem in which the circumstances will be 
less elevated than the passion. For this very- 
reason, rhyme, I fear, is required. 

"You have done wonders with C. Julian. 
1200 lines in a week were the quickest run (in 
sailors' phrase) that I ever made. Buc this is 
nothing to what you have accomplished ; and 
your manner involves so much thought (excess 
of meaning being its fault), that the same num- 
ber of lines must cost thrice as much expense of 
passion and of the reasoning faculty to you than 
they would to me. I am impatient to see this 
tragedy. I hear nothing of Kehama except that 
forty copies have been sold at Edinburgh, and 
that Scott has reviewed it for the next Quarterly. 

" What is the meaning of the monogram in 
the title-page of your Ode to Gustavus ? I never 
read your Latin without wishing it were En- 
glish, and regretting that you were ever taught 
a language so much inferior to your own. 

"Your abhorrence of Spenser is a strange 
heresy. I admit that he is inferior to Chaucer 
(who for variety of power has no competitor ex- 
cept Shakspeare), but he is the great master of 
English versification, incomparably the greatest 
master in our language. Without being insen- 
sible to the defects of the Fairy Queen, I am 
never weary of reading it. Surely Chaucer is 
as much a poet as it was possible for him to be 
when the "language was in so rude a state. 
There seems to be this material point of differ- 
ence between us — you think we have little poe- 
try which was good for any thing before Milton ; 
I, that we have little since, except in our own 
immediate days. I do not say there was much 
before, but what there was was sterling verse in 
sterling English. It had thought and feeling in 
it. At present, the surest way to become popu- 
lar is to have as little of either ingredient as pos- 
sible. 

" Have you read Captain Pasley's book ? I 
take it for my text in the next Quarterly, and 
would fain make it our political Bible. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman^ Esq. 

"Jan. 25, 1811. 
" My dear Rickman, 
" Thank you for the East India Report and 
for the Burdett papers. Your notes upon Par- 
liamentary Reform are now lying in my desk, to 



&TAT. 37. 



ROBERT SOUTREY. 



275 



be introduced immediate./ after the foolish plan 
Which he proposed in 1805 — a plan which could 
do no possible good. It is downright absurdity 
to suppose that the House of Commons can be a 
pure representative body, when there is always 
a regular party organized against the govern- 
ment of the country, and consequently in semi- 
alliance with the enemy. Such a state of things 
(which never existed any where else, and, as 
you will say, could not exist here but by favor 
of old Neptune) was unknown to our old laws of 
Parliament ; and it is therefore a manifest fallacy 
to argue from those laws against practices which 
are rendered necessary by the existing system, 
and without which there could be no government. 
The evil which I wish to see remedied is the 
aggregation of landed property, which gives to 

such a man as the command of whole 

counties, and enables such men as to sing 

' we are seven,' like Wordsworth's little girl, 
into the ear of a minister, and demand for him- 
self situations which he is unfit for. This is a 
worse evil than that which our mortmain statutes 
were enacted to remedy, for it is gradually root- 
ing out the yeomanry of the country, and dwind- 
ling the gentry into complete political insignifi- 
cance. It is not parliamentary reform which 
can touch this evil : some further limitation of 
entail, or a proper scheme of income taxation, 
might. Concerning parliamentary reform, in- 
deed, my views are much changed ; and Sir F. 
Burdett's scheme has not a little contributed to 
the alteration, elucidated as it is by all his sub- 
sequent conduct. The phrase, indeed, like Cath- 
olic Emancipation, is vox et praterea nihil. 
" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. Ebenezer Elliott. 

"Keswick, Feb. 7, 1811. 

11 1 will willingly find fault with your play 
when you can find means of sending it me ; that 
is, I will gladly, if it be in my power, point out 
in what manner i< may be fitted for representa- 
tion, should it require alteration, and appear ca- 
pable of being so altered. Of managers and 
green-rooms I know nothing. Old Cumberland 
once said to me in his characteristic way, ' What- 
ever you do, sir, never write a play ! the tor- 
ments of the damned are nothing to it.' I my- 
self suspect that if a man suffers any thing like 
purgatory in a green-room, it must be his own 
fault. I would send my play there, and if it was 
accepted they might mutilate it as they pleased, 
because the actors, generally speaking, must be 
the best judges of what will tell on the stage, 
and because the author can always restore the 
piece to its original state when he prints it. 

" I am sorry you should have suspected any 
thing like a reproach upon ' single blessedness' 
in women in what is said of Lorrinite.* Nothing 
could be further from my thoughts. The pas- 
sage has nothing beyond an individual reference 
to the witch herself, therein described as a ' can- 
kered rose.' You may find abundant proof in my 



* Curse of Kehama, canto xi. verse 3. 

s 



writings, and would require none if you kne^ 
me, that no man can lie more innocent of suci 
opinions as you seem to have suspected. So fa> 
am I from not regarding continence as a virtue 

" Those unaccountable clicks, as you call them, 
in the middle of the lines, are, as you must have 
seen, too frequent to be accidental. I went upon 
the system of rhyming to the ear regardless of 
the eye, and have throughout availed myself of 
the power which this gave me. The verse was 
no bondage to me. If I do not greatly deceive 
myself, it unites the advantages of rhyme with 
the strength and freedom of blank verse in a 
manner peculiar to itself. As far as I can judge 
(which is, of course, and must be, from very im- 
perfect and partial means), the story seems not 
to have shocked people as much as I expected, 
but that it should become popular is impossible. 
Many years must elapse before the opinion of 
the few can become the law of the many. 

" I have fallen in love with the American sub- 
ject which did not strike your fancy, and have 
half mounted it into a story of which a primitive 
Quaker is the hero ; a curious character, you 
will say, for heroic poetry — certainly an original 
one. 

" If ever you think upon political subjects, I 
beseech you read Captain Pasley's Essay on 
Military Policy — a book which ought to be not 
only in the hands, but in the heart of every En- 
glishman. Farewell ! 

" Yours very truly, R. Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

«' Keswick, Feb. 12, 1811. 

" I am not disappointed in Count Julian ; it is 
too Greek for representation in these times, but 
it is altogether worthy of you. The thought and 
feeling which you have frequently condensed in 
a single line is unlike any thing in modern com- 
position. The conclusion, too, is Greek. I 
should have known this play to be yours had it 
fallen in my way without a name. There was 
one written ten years ago by Rough which aimed 
at being what this is; this has the profundity 
which was attempted there. I see nothing to 
be expunged, but I see many of what a school- 
boy would call hard passages. Sometimes they 
are like water, which, however beautifully pellu- 
cid, may become dark by its very depth. Your 
own vase of tarnished gold is a better illustra- 
tion ; the very richness of the metal occasions its 
darkness. Sometimes they are like pictures — 
unless you get them in precisely the right point 
of view, their expression is lost. I can not tell 
how this is to be remedied if it is remediable ; it 
is what makes the difference between difficult 
and easy authors. I will not yet specify what 
the passages are which are obscure, because, 
upon every fresh perusal, some of them will flash 
upon me. 

" Never was a character more finely oen- 
ceived than Julian. That image of his seizing 
the horses is in the very first rank of sublimity ; 
it is the grandest image of power that ever poet 
produced. 



?74 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^TAT.37. 



- "You could not have placed the story in a 
dner dramatic light j but it has made you elevate 
some vile renegadoes into respectability. In my 
plan Sisabert will die by Florinda's hand, and 
Orpas will be cut down by Rodrigo's own hand. 
I go on very slowly ; what I have done is too 
good to be sacrificed ; but it will make the poem 
as faulty in structure as Shakspeare's Julius Cae- 
sar ; and I shall be a third of the way through 
it before Pelayo appears. My pace will soon 
be quickened ; the way opens before me ; hither- 
to there has been but one personage in view ; to- 
morrow I introduce others, and shall soon get 
into the business of the poem. You wonder that 
I can think of two poems at once ; it proceeds 
from weakness, not from strength. I could not 
stand the continuous excitement which you have 
gone through in your tragedy : in me it would 
not work itself off in tears ; the tears would 
flow while in the act of composition, and would 
leave behind a throbbing head and a whole sys- 
tem in the highest state of nervous excitability, 
which would soon induce disease in one of its 
most fearful forms. From such a state I recov- 
ered in 1800 by going to Portugal, and suddenly 
changing climate, occupation, and all internal 
objects ; and I have kept it off since by a good 
intellectual regimen. 

" When I have read Count Julian again and 
again, I will then make out a list of the passages 
which appear so difficult that ordinary readers 
may be supposed incapable of understanding 
them. When you perceive that they may be 
difficult to others, it will be easy, in most in- 
stances, to make the meaning more obvious. 
Then you must print the tragedy. It will not 
have many more admirers than Gebir ; but they 
will be of the same class and cast ; and with Ge- 
bir it will be known hereafter, when all the rubbish 
of our generation shall have been swept away. 

" What will you do next ? Narrative is bet- 
ter than dramatic poetry, because it admits of 
the highest beauties of the drama : there are two 
characters in Roman history which are admira- 
bly fit for either ; but in both cases their history 
suits the drama better than the epic — Sertorious 
and Spartacus. When I was a boy, the abortive 
attempt at restoring the republic by Caligula's 
death was one of my dramatic attempts. An- 
other was that impressive story in Tacitus of 
300 slaves (I think that was the number) put to 
death for not preventing the murder of their mas- 
ter, whom one of them had killed. The Em- 
peror Majorian is a fine character. I wish I 
could throw out a subject that would tempt you, 
but rather to a poem than a play ; for, though 
your powers for both are equal, and the play the 
more difficult work of the two, yet in my judg- 
ment the poem is the preferable species of com- 
position. 

"God bless you! R. S." 

To Grcsvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 16, 1811. 
' My dear Grosvenor, 
" If I had not heard of you from Gifford at the 



beginning of the month, I should have been very 
uneasy about you. Thank you for your letter, 
and for your serviceable interpolation of the re- 
view,* which is just what it should be — that is 
to say, just what I should wish it, only I wish 
you would not call me the most sublime poet 
of the age, because, in this point, both Words- 
worth and Landor are at least my equals. You 
will not suspect me of any mock-modesty in this. 
On the whole, I shall have done greater things 
than either, but not because I possess greater 
powers. 

"My abode under Skiddaw will have been 
more unfavorable to my first year's Annals than 
to any other, because I had fewer channels of 
information opened, and because of home poli- 
tics I was very ignorant, never liking them well 
enough to feel any interest beyond that of an 
election feeling. Now that it becomes my busi- 
ness to be better informed, I have spared no 
pains to become so ; and the probability is, that 
I learn as much political news to my purpose by 
letters, as I should do by that intercourse which 
would be compatible with my w T ay of life. Of 
three points I have now convinced myself, that 
the great desideratum in our government is a 
premier instead of a cabinet — that a regular op- 
position is an absurdity which could not exist 
any where but in an island without destroying 
the government — and that parliamentary reform 
is the shortest road to anarchy. 

" I am sincerely obliged to Gifford for his de- 
sire to serve me, and sincerely glad that I stand 
in need of no services — not that I am by any 
means above being served, or feel any ways un- 
comfortable under an obligation. On the con- 
trary, I should hold myself in the highest degree 
obliged to any person who would promote Tom 
for my sake ; but for this we must wait till the 
First Lord is in power. For myself, I am in a 
fair way of wanting nothing ; and if great men 
will but give me their praise, f they may keep 
their promises for others ; their praise would 
prove actual puddings : let them only make it 
the fashion to buy my books, and in seven years' 
time I will purchase a house and ground enough 
for the use of a dairy within a day's journey of 
London. Scott had 2000 guineas for the Lady 
of the Lake. If Canning would but compare 
Bonaparte to Kehama in the House of Commons, 
I might get half as much by my next poem. 

" I am reviewing Pasley's book — the most 
important political work that ever appeared in 
any country. The minister who shall first be- 
come a believer, in that book, and act upon its 
unanswerable principles, will obtain a higher 
reputation than ever statesman did before him. 

* This refers to a reviewal of Kehama, which Mr. Bed- 
ford had written for the Quarterly, not knowing that Sir 
Walter Scott had one in preparation. The latter was the 
one inserted. 

t " Your article on the Evangelical Sects is much ad- 
mired, and a few days ago, Perceval mentioned it in 
terms of the highest praise at his own table. Herriea, 
who was present, told him that you were the author of 
it, and he did not praise it one whit the less on that ac- 
count, but said it was the fairest, most candid, and com- 
prehensive view he had ever seen of any subject."-* 
G. C. B. to R. S., Feb. 6, 1811. 



E TAT. 37. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



275 



v lv review will be conciliatory toward the hus- 
banding politicians, that is, it will endeavor to 
make them ashamed without making them an- 
<rry. The blistering plaster for Whitbread goes 
all into the Register. 

" Abella supplies me well with Spanish pa- 
pers. I have found him excellently useful. He 
writes to me in — issimos of esteem, and I out- 
step a little the usual pace of English compli- 
ments in return, and am his friend and servant 
in superlatives — with a good conscience, believe 
me. for I really like him, and am very sensible 
of his services. Of course I have sent him my 
nest works, and no doubt my name Mill soon be 
::i high odor in the Isle of Lisbon. It was a 
mortification to me to hear he was about to re- 
turn before I could see him in London. * * 

" I have again taken to Pelayo, after a long 
mterval, and the third section is nearly finished. 
It will bring me into busier scenes, and the sto- 
ry will begin to open. I am afraid that, having 
thus begun ab ovo, I must change the title of the 
poem, and call it Spain restored, for Pelayo can 
not appear till I have got on a thousand lines. 
If I cared about rules, this would be a fault ; 
but the structure must depend upon the materi- 
als, and I have not too much of Roderic in the 
beginning, considering the part he has to play 
in the end. 

" The capture of the Isle of France is a good 
thing. We must now look to the Persian Gulf 
and the Red Sea, and take especial care to keep 
the French out of those important points — im- 
portant as to the means they afford of annoying 
us in their hands, or of spreading civilization in 
ours. Next year I purpose to give a w T hole 
chapter to the French intrigues with Persia, 
and their views in that quarter. I have neither 
time nor room for it in the present volume. 

"I most heartily rejoice that the Outs are 
Outs still. R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Feb. 20, 1811. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" I have it under the hand of that any 

new ministry must recall our troops from Spain 
and Portugal — to which I replied by praying 
that he might stay out of place so long as he 
thought so. 

"When I read L. Goldsmid's* book about 
France, the impression it made upon me was, 
that he was sent over by Bonaparte to further 
his purposes here. God knows by what other 
means, but specially by publishing such out- 
rageous and absurd stories against him as should 
give his good friends a plea for disbelieving any 
thing against a man who was so palpably ca- 
lumniated. For instance, that B., when at the 
military college, poisoned a woman who was 
with child by him ; that this is a lie, J know, 
because I happen to know a person resident in 



* L. GoMsmid was editor of the Argus in 1801, and was 
lire Mm • editing the Antigallican Monitor. 



the same town at whose house B. \v;,s in the 
habit of visiting, and from whom I learned that 
his character was exactly what you would sup- 
pose — very studious and very correct. That it 
must be a lie is obvious, because such things 
could not be done w T ith more impunity in France 
than in England ; and to say that it might have 
been concealed, leads to the obvious question, 
' If so, how came L. Goldsmid to know it ?' A 
still grosser and more ridiculous story is, that 
Bonaparte makes his poison by giving arsenic to 
a pig, and tying the pig up by the hind legs, 
and collecting what runs from his mouth. * 

" Now the man is no fool, and it is not possi- 
ble that he can believe this himself, or that he 
can suppose it can be believed by any person of 
common sense. For what purpose, then, can he 
publish such lies ? ^ 

" If he be the rascal which I take him to be, 
his newspaper shows what is the main purpose 
for which he has been sent over — to put the 
Bourbons into Bonaparte's hands. He recom- 
mends a Bourbon to be at the head of the army 
in Spain — a Bourbon to land in France. Now 
there can be no doubt this is what B. would 
above all things desire. * * * 

" Farewell ! R. S." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 2, 18J1. 
" My dear Scott, 

" You can probably tell me how I could trans- 
mit a copy of Kehama to your friend Leyden, 
for whom, though I do not personally know him, 
I have always felt a very high respect, regard- 
ing him, with one only exception (which might 
be more properly expressed to any person than 
to you), as a man of more true genius and far 
higher promise than any of his cotemporary 
countrymen. 

" No doubt you have seen Pasley's Essay. It 
will be, in the main, a book after your own heart, 
as it is after mine. He talks sometimes of con- 
quest when he should talk of emancipation. A 
system of unlimited conquest leads at last to the 
consequences which we have seen exemplified 
in the fate of the Roman empire. For ourselves, 
I would wish no other accession of dominion than 
Danish Zealand and Holland in the North, with 
as many islands as you please in the Mediter- 
ranean-, Italy to be formed into one independ- 
ent state under our protection, as long as it 
needed it. I believe that the ministry do not 
want the inclination to act vigorously ; but they 
want public opinion to go before, and protect 
them against the opposition. These men, and 
their coadjutors, the Morning Chronicle and the 
Edinburgh Review, have neither patriotism, nor 
principle, nor feeling, nor shame, to stand in 
their way. They go on predicting the total 
conquest of the Peninsula with as much effront- 
ery as if they had not predicted it tw T o years ago 
— nay, even asserted that it was then completed ; 
and they deliver their predictions in such a way, 
that it requires more charity than I possess not 
to believe that thev wish to see them fulfilled : 



276 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 37 



for this is the last and worst, yet the necessary 
effect of party spirit, when carried so far as these 
politicians carry it. I do not know that I ever 
regretted being alone so much as when the news 
of Graham's victory arrived. It gave me more 
delight than I could well hold, and I wanted 
somebody to share it with me. We shall have 
great news, too, from Portugal. Massena has 
no lines to fall back upon ; and if Lord Welling- 
ton can but bring him to action, we know what 
the result must be. How happy his retreat must 
make Lord Grenville, who had just delivered so 
wise an opinion upon the state of Portugal in the 
House of Lords ! 

" Longman's new Review will interfere with 
the Quarterly ; and, so far as it succeeds, so far 
will it prevent the extension of our sale. I have 
not learned who are the proprietors of it — not 
Longman himself, for he wrote to me some eight 
or ten weeks ago, wishing me to bear a part in 
it, and giving me to understand that it was set 
on foot by some independent M.P's. — so at least I 
understood his language. Of course I returned 
a refusal, upon the ground of my previous con- 
nection with the Quarterly. They have set out 
better than we did, though they have a consider- 
able portion of heavy matter, and their first ar- 
ticle ought to have been in a very different tone. 
" Yours ever truly, R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 21, 1811. . 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

"I have some news to tell you of my own 
family. Mr. T. Southey is dead : about half his 
property he has left to the son of a friend of his 
at Bristol, and the rest to his man Tom, and a 
few other such objects of his regard. This con- 
duct toward me and my brothers is neither very 
surprising nor very blamable : we lived at a dis- 
tance from him, and, when he did see us, he saw 
animals of so very different a nature from him- 
self, that the wonder would have been if he had 
taken any pleasure in their society. But he has 
a sister, now advanced in life, and ill provided 
for ; and she kept his house till he turned her out 
of it, for no other reason than that she discovered 
some regret at seeing the foot-boy Tom preferred 
to her nephews ; and he has not left her any 
thing. This is wicked and unnatural conduct. 
My account comes from her. She says nothing 
of herself, and, I verily believe, thinks nothing 
upon that score ; but her letter is an affecting 
one. 'I hope God will forgive him (these are 
her concluding words). John made himself a 
slave to get this trash ; Thomas has made him- 
self a fool to give it away.* I hope neither you 
nor yours will ever want it.' The property thus 
disposed of is about c£l000 a year. An estate 
of half that value was left by the elder brother 
to a farmer's son, whom the father used to send 
sometimes with a hare. 

" You know me well enough to know that no 
man living more thoroughly understands what 



* This property had been left to Thomas Southey by his 
elder brother John. 



Shenstone called the flocci-nauci-nihili-pilifica- 
tion of money. I had no expectations, and, con- 
sequently, have experienced no disappointment. 
God be praised for it ! I have, also, no want. 
My employment (provided I write prose) is suf- 
ficiently paid ; I have plenty of it ; and like it as 
well as if it were merely the amusement of leis- 
ure hours. And, in case of my death before I* 
shall have been able to make a provision for my 
family, my life is insured for c£l000; and the 
world must be worse than I believe it to be if 
my operas should not produce enough in addi- 
tion to that. ****** 

" I have another piece of news, which did sur- 
prise me. Brougham has been commissioned to 
apply to my uncle for the purpose of discover- 
ing whether I would undertake to translate Lu- 
cien Bonaparte's poem. My uncle replied, he 
supposed not, but referred the plenipotentiary to 
me ; and no further proceedings have taken 
place. When I hear from B. I shall recommend 
Elton for the task, who translates well, and will. 
probably, be glad of a task which is likely to be 
so well paid. This has amused me very much; 
but it has rather lowered Lucien in my opinion, 
by the vanity which it implies. If his poem be 
good for any thing, he may be sure it will find 
translators : it looks ill to be so impatient for 
fame as to look about for one, and pay him for his 
work. From whom the application to my wor- 
ship came I do not know ; Lucien has probably 
applied to some friend to recommend him to the 
best hand ; and, dispatch being one thing required, 
the preference has, perhaps, on this score, been 
given to me over Mr. Thomas Campbell ; by 
which, no doubt, I am greatly flattered. To 
Grosvenor Bedford I may say that, if the poem 
in question be a bad one, it will not be worth 
translating ; and if it be otherwise, I humbly 
conceive that the time which would be required 
to translate it may quite as worthily be bestowed 
upon some work of my own. 

" God bless you ! * R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 9, 1811. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I completed the Register last night. Its enor- 
mous length has cost me at least three months' 
labor more than the former volume, the whole 
of which is dead loss of the only capital I pos- 
sess in the world. This is considerably incon- 
venient ; half that time would have sufficed for 
the Life of Nelson, the other half have set me 
forward for the next three numbers of the Quar- 
terly. My ways and means, therefore, are con- 
siderably deranged. * * * * 

" So lectures to-morrow upon the Curse 

of Kehama ! I like for the same reason 

for which Dr. Johnson liked Mrs. Mary Cobb. 
' I love Moll,' said he ; * I love Moll Cobb for her 
impudence.' I like , however, for some- 
thing else ; for, though he is impudentissimus 
homo and the very emperor of coxcombs, yet, 

neverthleess, is an honest fellow, and 

has a good heart. He is a clever fellow, too, in 






iKTAT. 38. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



277 



the midst of his quackery. And so, partly be- 
cause I like him for the aforesaid reasons, partly 
because half an hour's conversation with him 
will afford m|j.rth for half a year afterward, I will 

certainly call upon when I go to town, 

and shake hands with him once more. Ah, 
Grosvenor ! people may say what they will about 
good company, or what Sharpe, more suo, de- 
nominates the ' very best' society — the 'very 
best' — there is no company like that of an old 
fellow you can laugh with, and laugh at, and 
laugh about till your eyes overflow with the very 
oil of gladness. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" London, July 15, 1811. 

" It is utterly unaccountable to me why you 
of all men should care either for good or evil 
report of your poems, certain as you must be of 
their sterling value. I look upon Gebir as I do 
upon Dante's long poem in the Italian, not as a 
good poem, but as containing the finest poetry 
in the language ; so it is with Count Julian, and 
so, no doubt, it was with the play which you 
have so provokingly destroyed. 

" In about three weeks I hope to see you in 
ycur turret. We leave London this day week, 
and I will write from Bristol as soon as I can 
say when we shall depart from it. I was at 
Llanthony in 1798, and forded the Hondy on foot 
because I could not find the bridge. Have you 
found St. David's cavern, which Drayton places 
there, and for which I inquired in vain ? 

" I am no botanist ; but, like you, my earliest 
and deepest recollections are connected with 
flowers, and they always carry me back to other 
days. Perhaps this is because they are the only 
things which affect our senses precisely in the 
same manner as they did in childhood. The 
sweetness of the violet is always the same, and 
when you rifle a rose, and drink, as it were, its 
fragrance, the refreshment is the same to the old 
man as to the boy. We see with different eyes 
in proportion as we learn to discriminate, and, 
therefore, this effect is not so certainly produced 
by visual objects. Sounds recall the past in the 
same manner, but do not bring with them indi- 
vidual scenes, like the cowslip-field or the bank 
of violets, or the corner of the garden to which 
we have transplanted field flowers. Oh, what a 
happy season is childhood, if our modes of life 
and education will let it be so ! It were enough 
to make one misanthropical when we consider 
how great a portion of the evil of this world is 
man's own making, if the knowledge of this truth 
did not imply that the evil is removable ; and, 
therefore, the prime duty of a good man is by 
all means in his power to assist in removing it. 
God bless you! R. S." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

gCOTT's VISION OF PON RODERIC ADVICE TO A 

YOUNG FRIEND ON GOING TO CAMBRIDGE 

BELL AND LANCASTER CONTROVERSY PLAN OF 



THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH WISHES TO ASSIST 

MR. W. TAYLOR IN HIS DIFFICULTIES PROS- 
PECT OF BEING SUMMONED TO THE BAR OF 

HOUSE OF COMMONS SHELLEY AT KESWICK 

UGLY FELLOWS OXFORD HERBERT MARSH 

TESTAMENTARY LETTER APPLICATION FOR 

THE OFFICE OF HISTORIOGRAPHER CATHOLIC 

CONCESSIONS MURDER OF MR. PERCEVAL 

STATE OF ENGLAND EDINBURGH ANNUAL REG- 
ISTER EXCURSION INTO DURHAM AND YORK- 
SHIRE VISIT TO ROKEBY THE QUARTERLY 

REVIEW THE REGISTER. 1811-1812. 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 8, 1811. 
" My dear Scott, 
"You will have thought me very remiss in 
not thanking you sooner for the Vision, if you did 
not remember that I had been traveling from Dan 
to Beersheba, and take into consideration how 
little opportunity can be found for the use of pen 
and ink in the course of a series of runaway vis- 
its, during a journey of nine hundred miles. It 
was given me at the Admiralty the very day 
that it arrived there. I opened it on the spot, 
discovered that a letter to Polwhele had been in- 
closed to me, in time for Croker to rectify the 
mistake by making a fair exchange, and thus 
saving mine from a journey to the Land's End. 
If, however, I have not written to you about 
D. Roderic, I have been talking to every body 
about him. The want of plan and unity is a de- 
fect inherent in the very natiire of your subject, 
and it would be just as absurd to censure the 
Vision for such a defect, as it is to condemn Ke- 
hama because all the agents are not human per- 
sonages. The execution is a triumphant answer 
to those persons who have supposed that you 
could not move with ease in a meter less loose 
than that of your great poems. To me it ap- 
pears, on the whole, better written than those 
greater works, for this very reason — you have 
taken fewer licenses of language, and have united 
with the majesty of that fine stanza (the most 
perfect that ever was constructed) an ease which 
is a perfect contrast to the stiffness of Gertrude 
of Wyoming. 

" It is remarkable that three poets should at 
once have been employed upon Roderic. I have 
a tragedy of Landor's in my desk, of which Count 
Julian is the hero : it contains some of the finest 
touches, both of passion and poetry, that I have 
ever seen. Roderic is also the pre-eminent per- 
sonage of my own Pelayo, as far as it has yet 
proceeded. Differing so totally as we do in the 
complexion and management of the two poems, 
I was pleased to find one point of curious com- 
parison, in which we have both represented Rod- 
eric in the act of confession, and both finished 
the picture highly. Our representations are so 
totally different as to form a perfect contrast, yet 
each so fitted to the temper in which the con- 
fession is made, that it might be sworn, if you 
had chosen my point of time, you could have 
written as I have clone, and that, if I had writ- 
ten of the unrepentant king, I should havo con- 



278 



' LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iErAT. 38. 



ceived of him exactly like yourself. I copy my 
own lines, because I think you will be gratified 
at seeing a parallel passage, which never can be 
produced except to the honor of both : 

" ' Then Roderic knelt 
Before the holy man, and strove to speak : 
"Thou see'st," he cried ; "thou see'st — " But memory 
And suffocating thoughts repress'd the word, 
And sifudderings, like an ague fit, from head 
To foot convulsed him. Till at length subduing 
His nature to the effort, he exclaimed, 
Spreading his hands, and lifting up his face, 
As if resolved in penitence to bear 
A human eye upon his shame, " Thou see'st 
Roderic the Goth." That name would have sufficed 
To tell its whole abhorred history. 
He not the less pursued — " the ravisher ! 
The cause of aD this ruin !" Having said, 
In the same posture motionless he knelt, 
Arms straightened down, and hands dispread, and eyes 
Raised to the monk, like one who from his voice 
Expected life or death.' 

" I saw but little of Gifford in town, because 
be was on the point of taking wing for the Isle 
of Wight when I arrived. The Review seems 
to have shaken the credit of the Edinburgh, and 
might shake it still more. The way to attack 
the enemy with most effect is to take up those 
very subjects which he has handled the most un- 
fairly, and so to treat them as to force a com- 
parison which must end in our favor. I am about 
to do this upon the question of Bell and Lancas- 
ter — a question on which has grossly com- 
mitted himself. 

' : You may well suppose that three months' 
idleness has brought upon me a heavy accumu- 
lation of business. Meantime, good materials 
for the third year's Register have reached me 
from Cadiz, and I have collected others respect- 
ing Sicily and the Ionian Islands. I saw the 
last volume on my road, and there I could trace 
your hand in a powerful but too lenient essay 
upon Jeffrey's journal. 

"Believe me, yours veiy truly, 

"R. SoUTHEY." 

To Mr. James White. 

"Keswick, Oct 25, 1811. 
" My dear James, 

" By this time you are settled at Pembroke, 
know your way to your rooms, the faces of your 
fellow-collegians, and enough, I dare say, of a 
college life to find its duties less formidable, and 
its habits less agreeable than they are supposed 
to be. Those habits are said to have undergone 
a great reformation since I was acquainted with 
them ; in my time they stood grievously in need 
of it. but even then a man who had any good 
moral principles might live as he pleased, if he 
dared make the trial; and, however much he 
might be stared at at first for his singularity, 
was sure ere long to be respected for it. 

" Some dangers beset every man when he en- 
ters upon so new a scene of life ; that which I 
apprehend for you is low spirits. * * 

* * * Walk a stated distance every 

day ; and that you may never want a motive for 
walking, make yourself acquainted with the ele- 
ments of botany during the winter, that as soon 
as the flowers come out in the spring you may 



begin to herbalize. A quarter of an hour every 
day will make you master of the elements in the 
course of a very few months. I prescribe for 
you mentally also, and this is one of the prescrip- 
tions ; for it is of main importance that you should 
provide yourself with amusement as well as em- 
ployment. Pursue no study longer than you can 
without effort attend to it, and lay it aside when- 
ever it interests you too much : whenever it im- 
presses itself so much upon your mind that you 
dream of it or lie awake thinking about it, be 
sure it is then become injurious. Follow my 
practice of making your latest employment in the 
day something unconnected with its other pur- 
suits, and you will be able to lay your head upon 
the pillow like a child. 

" One word more, and I have done with ad- 
vice. Do not be solicitous about taking a high 
degree, or about college honors of any kind. 
Many a man has killed himself at Cambridge by 
overworking for mathematical honors : recollect 
how few the persons are who, after they have spent 
their years in severe study at this branch of sci- 
ence, ever make any use of it afterward. Your 
wiser plan should be to look on to that state of 
life in which you wish and expect to be placed, 
and to lay in such knowledge as will then turn 
to account. ^ # # * * 

" Believe me, my dear James, 

" Your affectionate friend, 

" R. SotTTHEY." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Nov. 2, 1811. 
"My dear Friend, 

" * * * Since our return a larger 
portion of my time than is either usual or con- 
venient has been taken up by the chance society 
of birds of passage ; this place abounds with 
them during the traveling season ; and as there 
are none of them who find their way to me with- 
out some lawful introduction, so there are few 
who have not something about them to make 
their company agreeable for the little time that 
it lasts. 

" You have seen my article upon Bell and the 
Dragon in the Quarterly. It is decisive as to 
the point of originality, and would have been the 
heaviest blow the Edinburgh has ever received 
if all the shot of my heavy artillery had not been 
drawn before the guns were fired- I am going 
to reprint it separately with some enlargement, 
for the purpose of setting the question at rest. 
and making the public understand what the new 
system is, which is very little understood, and 
doing justice to Dr. Bell, whom I regard as one 
of the greatest benefactors to his species. * 

* * * The case is not a matter of 
opinion, but rests upon recorded and stated facts. 
I tread, therefore, upon sure ground, and, taking 
advantage of this, I shall not lose the opportu- 
nity of repaying some of my numerous obliga- 
tions to the Edinburgh Review. 

* # # # # # * 

" Probably you have seen the manner in which 
the Edinburgh Annual Register is twice noticed 



jEtat. 38. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



279 



in their last number. # # # When 
the first year's volume appeared it was not even 
suspected who was the historian ; and Jeffrey, 
a day or two after its publication, went for the 
first time into the publisher's shop expressly to 
tell him how much he admired the history, say- 
ing that, though he differed from the writer on 
many, indeed on most points, he nevertheless 
must declare that it was liberal, independent, 
and spirited throughout, the best piece of cotem- 
porary history which had appeared for twenty 
years. When the second volume appeared he 
knew who was the author ! 

" Believe me, very affectionately yours, 

"R. Southey." 

To the Rev. Herbert Hill. 

" Dec. 31, 1811. 
" My dear Uncle, 
" The hint which I threw out concerning our 
English martyrs in writing upon the evangelical 
sects is likely to mature into something of im- 
portance. I conceived a plan which Dr. Bell 
and the Bishop of Meath took up warmly, and 
the former has in some degree bound me to ex- 
ecute it by sending down Fox's Book of Martyrs 
as soon as he reached London. The projected 
outline is briefly this : Under the title of the 
Book of the Church, to give what should be at 
once the philosophy and the anthology of our 
Church History, so written as to be addressed to 
the hearts of the young and the understandings 
of the old ; for it will be placed on the estab- 
lishment of the national schools. It begins with 
an account of the various false religions of our 
different ancestors, British, Roman, and Saxon, 
with the mischievous temporal consequences of 
those superstitions, being the evils from which 
the country was delivered by its conversion to 
Christianity. 2dly, A picture of popery, and the 
evils from which the Reformation delivered us. 
3dly, Puritanism rampant, from which the res- 
toration of the Church rescued us. Lastly, 
Methodism, from which the Establishment pre- 
serves us. These parts to be connected by an 
historical thread, containing whatever is most 
impressive in the acts and monuments of the 
English Church. How beautiful a work may 
be composed upon such a plan (which, from its 
very nature, excludes whatever is uninviting or 
tedious), you will at once perceive. The civil 
history would form a companion work upon a 
similar plan, called the Book of the Constitution, 
showing the gradual but uniform amelioration 
of society ; and the direct object of both would 
be to make the rising generation feel and under- 
stand the blessings of their inheritance. 

" I am well stored with materials, having all 
the republished chronicles and Hooker — the only 
controversial work which it will be at all neces- 
sary to consult. The other books which I want 
I have ordered : they are Burnett and the Church 
Histories of Fuller, and of the stiff old non-juror, 
Jeremy Collier, I will send the manuscript to 
you before it goes to the press, for it will require 



an inspecting eye. Meantime, if any thing oc- 
cur to you which would correct or improve the 
plan, such as you here §ee it, do not omit to 
communicate your advice and opinion. I have 
a strong persuasion that both these works may 
be made of great, extensive, and permanent use- 
fulness. 

"R. S." 

To Dr. Gooch. 

"Keswick, Dec. 15, 1811. 
"My dear Gooch, 

" I have a letter from William Taylor of a 
dismal character. After stating the sum of 
their losses, he says, c we can not subsist upon 
the interest of what remains. The capital will 
last our joint lives, but I shall be abandoned to 
a voluntary interment in the same grave with 
my parents. O ! that nature would realize this 
most convenient doom !' 

" Now my reason for transcribing this passage 
to you is, because it made a deep impression on 
me, and haunts me when I lie down at night 
You know more of Norwich than I do, and more 
of William Taylor's connections. Who is most 

in his confidence ? is it ? I thought of 

writing directly to him. * *' * But 
what I would say to the person who may be 
most likely to enter into my wishes is, that Will- 
iam Taylor's friends should raise such an annui- 
ty as would secure him from penury, and at once 
relieve his mind from the apprehensions of it ; 
either raising a sum sufficient to purchase it 
(the best way, because the least liable to acci- 
dents), or by yearly contributions ; Dr. Sayers 
(or any other the fittest person) receiving, and 
regularly paying it ; and he never knowing par- 
ticularly from whence it comes, but merely that 
it is his. The former plan is the best, because, 
in that case, there would be only to purchase 
the annuity, and put the security into his hands : 
and this might be done without any person ap- 
pearing in it, the office transmitting him the 
necessary documents. This, of course, is a thing 
upon which the very wind must not blow. Ten 
years hence — or perhaps five — if the least de- 
sirable of these plans should be found most prac- 
ticable, 3'ou and Harry may be able to co-operate 
in it. I am ready now, either with a yearly ten 
pounds, or with fifty at once. If more were in 
my power, more should be done ; but, if his 
friends do not love him well enough to secure 
him at least <£l 00 a year, one way or other, the 
world is worse than I thought it. 

" You do not say whether you have seen 
Sharon Turner. That introduction was the best 
I could give you, because I think it would give 
you a friend. You could not fail to esteem and 
love Turner when you knew him. He is the 
happiest man I have ever known ; and that could 
not be the case if he were not a very wise as 
well as a very good one. 

" God bless you ! R. Southey." 

It has been already noticed that the Edin- 



230 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 38. 



burgh Review had recommended the Annual 
Register for government prosecution, on account 
of the boldness of its language on the Spanish 
question, and also, especially, with respect to 
some remarks on Mr. Whitbread. It appears 
that there was some likelihood of this " friendly" 
hint being taken, and to this the following letter 
refers. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 4, 1812. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

" Concerning Whitbread, I believe, in every 
instance, the text of his speech will justify the 
comment. You have heard of taking the wrong 
sow by the ear : he had better take a wild boar 
by the ear than haul me up to London upon this 
quarrel. I should tell him it was true that I 
had said his speeches were translated into 
French, and circulated through all the depart- 
ments of France, but I had not said — what has 
since come to my knowledge — that, when they 
were thus circulated, nobody believed them 
genuine ; nobody believed it possible that such 
speeches could have been uttered by an English- 
man. I should ask the House (that is, his side 
of the House ; and, of course, in that humble lan- 
guage becoming a person at the bar) at what 
time they would be pleased to let their transac- 
tions become matter for history ; and I should 
give the party a gentle hint not to delay that 
time too long, for reputations, like every thing 
else, find their level ; and if he, and such as he, 
do not get into history soon, they may run a risk 
of not getting into it at all. I should speak of 
the situation in which Spain and England stand 
to each other, and contrast my own feelings 
with those which he has continually expressed. 
I should appeal to the whole tenor of the book 
whether the design of the writer was to vilify 
Parliament, or to bring the government into con- 
tempt ; and, as an Englishman, a man of letters, 
and an historian, I should claim my privileges. 

" Phillidor has made his appearance, and shall 
be returned in the first parcel, with the reviewal 
of Azara. Out of pure conscience, I have prom- 
ised Gifford to take all these South American 
travelers myself, because I can not bear that the 
Edinburgh should gain credit upon this subject, 
when I am so much better versed in it than any 
other man in England possibly can be. I am 
heartily glad the state of South America is in 
Blanco's hands ; it will be highly useful to the 
Review, and, I hope, to himself also ; for he 
works hard, with little benefit, and, when he has 
once tried his strength in the Review, it will not 
be difficult to find other appropriate subjects for 
him. I have a high respect for this man's moral 
and intellectual character, and earnestly wish it 
were possible to obtain a pension, which never 
could be more properly bestowed. Canning has 
smitten the Quarterly with a dead palsy upon 
the Catholic Question, or else Blanco could sup- 
ply such an exposition upon that subject as would 
entitle him to any thing that Mr. Perceval could 
give. 



" Here is a man at Keswick, who acts upon 
me as my own ghost would do. He is just what 
I was in 1 794. His name is Shelley, son to the 
member for Shoreham ; with 666000 a year en- 
tailed upon him, and as much more in his father's 
power to cut off. Beginning with romances of 
ghosts and murder, and with poetry at Eton, he 
passed, at Oxford, into metaphysics ; printed half 
a dozen pages, which he entitled ' The Necessi- 
ty of Atheism ;' sent one anonymously to Cople- 
stone, in expectation, I suppose, of converting 
him ; was expelled in consequence ; married a 
girl of seventeen, after being turned out of doors 
by his father ; and here they both are, in lodg- 
ings, living upon h£200 a year, which her father 
allows them. He is come to the fittest physician 
in the world. At present he has got to the Pan- 
theistic stage of philosophy, and, in the course 
of a week, I expect he will be a Berkeleyan, for 
I have put him upon a course of Berkeley. It 
has surprised him a good deal to meet, for the 
first time in his life, with a man who perfectly 
understands him, and does him full justice. I 
tell him that all the difference between us is 
that he is nineteen and I am thirty-seven, and I 
dare say it will not be long before I shall suc- 
ceed in convincing him that he may be a true 
philosopher, and do a great deal of good with 
c£6000 a year, the thought of which troubles 
him a great deal more at present than ever the 
want of a sixpence (for I have known such a 
want) did me. # # # God help 

us ! the world wants mending, though he did not 
set about it exactly in the right way. God bless 
you, Grosvenor! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Jan. 17, 1812. 
" Dear Grosvenor, 
" My household is affected with a complaint 
which I take at this time to be epidemic — the 
fear of ugly fellows. In Mrs. Coleridge, per- 
haps, this may have originated in her dislike to 
you, but the newspapers have increased it. Ev- 
ery day brings bloody news from Carlisle, Cock- 
ermouth, &c. ; last night half the people in Kes- 
wick sat up, alarmed by two strangers, who, ac- 
cording to all accounts, were certainly ' no beau- 
ties,' and I was obliged to take down a rusty 
gun, and manfully load it for the satisfaction of 
the family. The gun has been properly cleaned 
to-day, and woe betide him who may be destined 
to receive its contents. But, in sober truth, the 
ugly fellows abound here as well as in London ; 
we are indebted for them partly to the manufac- 
tories at Carlisle, and partly to that distinguish- 
ed patriot , who encourages the importa- 
tion of Irishmen. I am looking for a dog, and I 
want you to provide me with more convenient 
arms than this old Spanish fowling-piece. Buy 
for me, therefore, a brace of pistols, the plainer 
and cheaper the better, so they are good — that 
is, so they will stand fire without danger of burst- 
ing. Sights and hair-triggers may be dispensed 
with, as they are neither for show nor for duel- 
ing, And I have leave from my governess— 



/Etat. 38. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



281 



nay, more than that, she has desired me — to 
send for 

A Watchman's Rattle ! 
Think of that, G. C. B. ! ! ! — think of that ! — de- 
signed by her to give the alarm when the ugly 
fellows come. But oh, Grosvenor, the glorious 
tunes, the solos and bravuras, that I shall play 
upon that noble musical instrument before any 
such fellow makes his appearance !* God bless 



you 



R. S. 



To Mr. James White 

"Keswick, Feb. 16, 1812. 
" My dear James, 

"I was glad to hear from Neville that you 
were comfortably settled, and growing attached 
to college ; and glad to hear afterward from 
yourself that you begin to feel your ground. 
There is no part of my own life which I remem- 
ber with so little pleasure as that which was 
passed at the University ; not that it has left be- 
hind it any cause of self-reproach, but I had 
many causes of disquietude and unhappiness — 
some imaginary, and some, God knows, real 
enough. And I can not think of the place with- 
out pain, because of the men with whom I there 
lived in the closest intimacy of daily and almost 
hourly intercourse ; those whom I loved best are 
dead, and there are some whom I have never 
seen since we parted there, and possibly never 
shall see more. It is with this feeling I believe, 
more or less, that every man who has any feel- 
ing always remembers college. Seven years 
ago I walked through Oxford on a fine summer 
morning, just after sunrise, while the stage was 
changing horses : I went under the windows of 
what had formerly been my own rooms ; the 
majesty of the place was heightened by the per- 
fect silence of the streets, and it had never be- 
fore appeared to me half so majestic or half so 
beautiful. But I would rather go a day's jour- 
ney round than pass through that city again, es- 
pecially in the day-time, when the streets are 
full. Other places in which I have been an in- 
habitant would not make the same impression ; 
there is an enduring sameness in a university 
like that of the sea and mountains. It is the 
same in our age that it was in our youth ; the 
same figures fill the streets, and the knowledge 
that they are not the same persons brings home 
the sense of ch 
most mournful. 

" I see your name to the Bible Society, con- 
cerning which I have read Herbert Marsh's 
pamphlet and Dr. Clai-ke's reply. Marsh may 
possibly be fond of controversy, because he knows 
his strength. He is a clear, logical writer, and 
in these days a little logic goes a great way, for 
of all things it is that in which the writers of this 
generation are most deficient. His reasoning is 
to me completely satisfactory as to these two 
points — that where Christians of all denomina- 
tions combine for the purpose either of spread- 



* These musical anticipations were fully realized, and 
the performance of them was one of the amusements of 
my childhood. 



ing Christianity or distributing Bibles in other 
countries, the cause of the general church is pro- 
moted thereby ; but that when they combine to- 
gether at home, as that condition can only be ef- 
fected by a concession on the part of the church- 
men, by that concession the Church of England 
is proportionally weakened. Nothing can be 
clearer. But, though the Margaret Professor is 
perfectly right in his views, and his antagonists 
are mere children when compared to him, I think 
he has been injudicious in exciting the contro- 
versy, because upon that statement of the case 
which his opponents will make, and which ap- 
pears at first sight to be a perfectly fair one, 
every body must conclude him to be in the wrong, 
and very few persons will take the trouble of 
looking further. And I think his object might 
have been effected by a little management with- 
out much difficulty — by an arrangement among 
the Church members of the Society that the Lit- 
urgy should be appended to the Bibles which 
they distributed at home, or by a Prayer-book 
Society. A man should be very careful how he 
engages in a controversy, in which, however 
right he may be, he is certain to appear wrong 
to the multitude ; and he ought to be especially 
careful when he thus exposes not his own char- 
acter alone, but that of the body to which he be- 
longs. Besides, the mischief which Marsh per- 
ceives is not very great, because I apprehend 
that at least nine tenths of the business of B. So- 
ciety relates to foreign countries. But I agree 
with, him entirely as to the mischief that lurks 
under the name of liberality, by which is meant 
not an indulgence to the opinious of other com- 
munities, but an indifference to your own. 

" Do you attend the Divinity Lectures ? Her- 
bert Marsh is likely to be a good lecturer, being 
a thorough master of his subject, and a reasoner 
of the old school. 

" Give me a letter when you feel inclined ; 
and believe me, my dear James, your affection- 
ate friend, Robert Southed." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 15, 1812. 
" My dear Wynn, 
" What a number of recollections crowd upon 

me when I think of ! Of all our school 

companions, how very few of them are there 
whose lots in life have proved to be what might 
have been expected for them. You and Bedford 
have gone on each in your natural courses, and 
are to be found just where and what I should 
have looked to find, if I had waked after a Nour- 
jahad sleep of twenty years. The same thing 
might be said of me if my local habitation were 
not here at the end of the map. I am leading 
the life which is convenient for me, and follow- 
ing the pursuits to which, from my earliest boy- 
hood, I was so strongly predisposed. A less 
troubled youth would probably have led to a less 
happy manhood. I should ha*" 1 * thought less and 
studied less, felt less and suffered less. Now, for 
all that I have felt and suffered, I know that I 
am the better ; and God knows that I have yet 



y.QO 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 38 



much to think., and to study, and to do. It is 
now eighteen 3-ears since you and I used to sit 
till midnight over your claret in Skeleton Cor- 
ner — half your life and almost half mine. Dur- 
ing that time we have both of us rather grown 
than changed, and accident has had as little to 
do with our circumstances as with our character. 

" Your godson Herbert, who is just old enough 
to be delighted with the Old Woman of Berke- 
ley, tells me he means, when he is a man, to be 
a poet like his father. It will be time enough 
ten years hence, if we live so long, to take thought 
as to what he shall be ; the only care I need take 
at present is what should be done, in case of my 
death, for the provision of my family. I have 
insured my life for 06 1000. I had calculated 
upon my copy-rights as likely to prove valuable 
when it would become the humor of the day to 
regret me ; but, to my great surprise, I find the 
booksellers interpret the terms of their taking the 
risk and sharing the profit as an actual surrender 
to them of half the property in perpetuity. Town- 
send, the traveler, who was as much deceived 
in this case as I have been, was about to try the 
point with them. I know not what prevented 
him. *■ * %■ This is a flagrant and 

cruel injustice. * * * If I live, and 
preserve my health and faculties, I have no doubt 
of realizing a decent competency in twenty years ; 
but twenty years is almost as much as my chances 
of life would be reckoned at in tables of calcula- 
tion. * * * 

" One thing which I will do whenever I can 
afford leisure for the task, will be, to write and 
leave behind me my own Memoirs : they will 
contain so much of the literary history of the 
times as to have a permanent value on that ac- 
count. This would prove a good post obit, for 
there can be no doubt I shall be sufficiently talked 
of when I am gone. 

" Such are my ways and means for the fu- 
ture ; but if I should not live to provide more 
than the very little which is already done, then, 
indeed, the exertion of some friends would be re- 
quired. An arrangement might be made with 
Longman to allow of a subscription edition of 
my works : this would be productive in propor- 
tion to the efforts that were used. I should hope, 
also, in such a case, that the continuance of my 
pension might be looked for from either of the 
present parties in the state, through Perceval, or 
Canning, or yourself. 

" This is a sort of testamentary letter. It is 
fit there should be one ; and to whom, my dear 
Wynn, could it so properly be addressed ? By 
God's blessing, I may yet live to make all nec- 
essary provision myself. My means are now 
improving every year. I am up the hill of diffi- 
culty, and shall very soon get rid of the burden 
which has impeded me in the ascent. I have 
some arrangements with Murray, which are like- 
ly to prove more profitable than any former spec- 
ulations ; and should I succeed in obtaining the 
office which the old Frenchman fills at present 
so properly — and which is the only thing for 
which I have the slightest ambition — it would 



soon put me in possession of the utmost I could 
want or wish for, inasmuch as I could lay by the 
whole income, and the title would be, in a great 
degree, productive. 

" Hitherto I have been highly favored. A 
healthy body, an active mind, and a cheerful 
heart are the three best boons nature can be- 
stow ; and, God be praised, no man ever enjoy- 
ed them more perfectly. My skin and bones 
scarcely know what an ailment is ; my mind is 
ever on the alert, and yet, when its work is done, 
becomes as tranquil as a baby : and my spirits 
invincibly good. Would they have been so, or 
could I have been what 1 am, if you had not been 
for so many years my stay and support ? I be- 
lieve not ; yet you had been so long my familiar 
friend, that I felt no more sense of dependence 
in receiving my main, and at one time sole, sub- 
sistence from you, than if you had been my broth- 
er : it was being done to as I would have done. 

"R. S." 

The appointment of Historiographer, to which 
my father refers in the letter, appears to have 
fallen vacant almost immediately. Application 
was at once made for it in his behalf in several 
influential quarters, but it seems to have been 
filled up with extraordinary haste, having been 
bestowed upon Dr. Stanier Clarke, Librarian to 
the Prince Regent. It turned out ultimately 
that there was no salary attached to the office, 
the appointment being merely honorary. 

The next letter was written immediately on 
hearing of the murder of Mr. Perceval. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, May 14, 1812. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

"In spite of myself, I have been weeping; 
this has relieved the throbbings of my head ; but 
my mind is overcharged, and must pour itself 
out. I am going to write something upon the 
state of popular feeling, which will probably ap- 
pear in the Courier, where it will obtain the read- 
iest and widest circulation. Enough to alarm' 
the people I shall be able to say ; but I would 
fain alarm the government, and if this were done 
in public they would think it imprudent, and, in- 
deed, it would be so. 

" I shall probably begin with what you say of 
the sensation occasioned by this most fatal event, 
and then give the reverse of your account as I 
have received it from Coleridge ; what he heard 
in a pot-house into which he went on the night 
of the murder, not more to quench his thirst than 
for the purpose of hearing what the populace 
would say. Did I not speak to you with omi- 
nous truth upon this subject in one of my last 
letters ? This country is upon the brink of the 
most dreadful of all conceivable states — an insur- 
rection of the poor against the rich ; and if, by 
some providential infatuation, the Burdettites had 
not continued to insult the soldiers, the existing 
government would not be worth a week's pur- 
chase, nor any throat which could be supposed 
to be worth cutting, safe for a month longer 



jEtat. 3d. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



283 



" You know, Grosvenor, I am no aguish poli- 
tician, nor is this a sudden apprehension which 
has seized me. Look to what I have said of the 
effect of Mrs. Clarke's business upon the public 
in the last year's Register, and look to the re- 
marks upon the tendency of manufactures to 
this state in Espriella, written five years ago. 
Things are in that state at this time that noth- 
ing but the army preserves us : it is the single 
plank between us and the red sea of an English 
Jacquerie — a Bellum Servile ; not provoked, as 
both those convulsions were, by grievous op- 
pression, but prepared by the inevitable tenden- 
cy of the manufacturing system, and hastened on 
by the folly of a besotted faction, and the wick- 
edness of a few individuals. The end of these 
things is full of evil, even upon the happiest term- 
ination ; for the loss of liberty is the penalty 
which has always been paid for the abuse of it. 
But we must not now employ our thoughts upon 
the danger of our own victory ; there is but too 
much yet to be done to render the victory certain. 

" The first step should be the immediate re- 
newal of associations for the protection of our 
lives and properties, and of the British Constitu- 
tion ; with the re-establishment to the utmost 
possible extent of the volunteers — as effective a 
force against a mob of. united Englishmen as 
they would be inefficient in the first shock of an 
invasion. This may be safely said and pressed 
upon the government and the people ; what I 
dare not say publicly is that there is yet danger 
from the army — that horrid flogging, for the ab- 
olition of which Burdett has been suffered to ap- 
pear as the advocate ! Oh that Perceval had pre- 
vented this popularity, by coming forward him- 
self as the soldier's friend ! .He has good works 
enough for his good name, as well as for his 
soul's rest ; but this would have remained for his 
colleagues and for the country. 

" This, of course, can not be touched upon 
immediately, for it would be too obviously an 
act of fear ; but if I knew the ministers, I would 
urgently press upon them the wisdom of grant- 
ing some boon to the soldiers — something which, 
at little cost to the nation, would yet come home 
to the feelings of every individual in the army. 
The mere institution of honorary rewards would 
do this — fifty pounds in copper medals would go 
farther than as many thousands in bounties to- 
ward recruiting it hereafter. But I would couple 
• it with something more ; Tor instance, ten or twen- 
ty of the oldest men, or oldest soldiers, in every 
regiment which distinguished itself in the two 
late assaults, should have their discharge, with 
full pay for life, or an increase of pay if they 
chose to serve on. Do not think that these things 
are inefficacious or beneath the notice of states- 
men. Why is it that poets move the heart of 
men, but because they understand the feelings of 
men, and it is by their feelings that they may be 
best governed ? Look at the agitators ; they ad- 
dress themselves to the passions of the mob, and 
who does not perceive with what tremendous ef- 
fect ! 

" I wish you would read this to Gifford or to 



Herries, because I am sure that these cheap and 
easy measures would go far toward winning the 
affections of the soldiers at these perilous times. 
Other topics I shall speak of elsewhere — the es- 
tablishment of a system of parochial education, 
and the necessity of colonial schemes as opening 
an issue in the distempered body politic. This 
will be for the Quarterly. Vigorous measures, 
I trust in God, will be taken while the feelings 
of the sound class are in a state to favor them. 
This murder, though committed publicly by a 
madman, has been made the act and deed of the 
populace. Shocking as this appears, so it is and 
so it must be considered. With timely vigor, 
the innocent blood which has been shed may 
prove an acceptable sacrifice, and save us ; oth- 
erwise it is but the opening of the flood-gates. 

"I thought of poor Herries as soon as I could 
think of any thing. The loss which the country 
has sustained I can scarcely dare to contemplate. 
There seems nothing to look to but the Welles- 
leys, with Canning, Huskisson for Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, and, in all likelihood, Sir James 
Mackintosh, who is sure to take the strongest 
side, and his talents will make him a powerful 
support to any party. Yet in this train there 
seems to follow a long catalogue of dangers : 
Catholic concessions, and next, by aid of all the 
admitted enemies of the Church, the sale of tithes 
to supply the necessities of the government — a 
measure which will be as certainly popular as it 
will be ultimately ruinous to the Church and 
most fatal to the country. There will be a glo- 
rious war to console us ; but, under such circum- 
stances, I shall look to that war w T ith the painful 
thought that we may be repaid for our services 
to the Spaniards by finding an asylum in Spain 
when England will have lost all that our fathers 
purchased for us so dearly ! 

" God bless you ! R. Southey. 

" Tell Gifford I shall be ready for him with 
the French Biography, which will be a sketch 
of the Revolution, introducing an examination 01 
our own state as tending toward the same gulf. 
Would to God it were not so well timed ! What 
has passed seems like a dream to me — a sort 
of nightmare that overlays and oppresses my 
thoughts and feelings !" 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 16, 1812. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

" I have myself so strong a sense of Mr. Per- 
ceval's public merits, that 1 can not help writing 
to you to say how much I wish that a statue 
might be erected to him. This could only be 
done by subscription ; but surely such a subscrip- 
tion might soon be filled, if his friends think it 
advisable. Suggest this to Herries ; and if the 
thing should be begun, when the list has the 
proper names to begin with, put mine down for 
five guineas, which could not at this time be 
better employed. 

" The fit place for this statue would be the 
spot where he fell. Permission to place it there 
would no doubt be obtained, and the opposition 



284 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtaj. 38. 



made to it would only recoil upon his political 
enemies. 

" I have often been grieved by public events, 
but never so depressed by any as by this. It is 
not the shock which has produced this, nor the 
extent of private misery which this wretched 
madman has occasioned, though I can scarcely 
refrain from tears while I write. It is my deep 
and ominous sense of danger to the country, from 
the Burdettites on one hand, and from Catholic 
concessions on the other. You know I am no 
High-Church bigot : it would be impossible for 
me to subscribe to the Church Articles. Upon 
the mysterious points I rather withhold assent 
than refuse it, not presuming to define in my own 
imperfect conceptions what has been left indefin- 
ite. But I am convinced that the overthrow of 
the Church establishment would bring with it the 
greatest calamities for us and for our children. If 
any man could have saved it, it was Mr. Perceval. 
The repeal of the Test Act will let in Catholics 
and invite more Dissenters. When the present 
Duke of Norfolk dies, vou will have Catholic mem- 
bers for all his boroughs. All these parties will 
join in plundering the Church. No man is more 
thankful for the English Reformation than I am ; 
but nearly a century and a half elapsed before the 
evils which it necessarily originated had subsided. 

" As for conciliating the wild Irish by such 
concessions, the notion is so preposterous, that 
when I know a man of understanding can main- 
tain such an opinion, it makes me sick at heart 
to think upon what sandy foundations every po- 
litical fabric seems to rest ! 

" I have strayed on unintentionally. Go to 
Hemes, and if he will enter into my feelings 
about the statue, let no time be lost. God bless 
you ! R. S." 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"May 17, 1312. 
i: My dear Grosvenor. 
"I received a note from Lord Lonsdale on 
Saturday, inclosing a reply from Lord Hertford 
to his application, which reply states that a pre- 
vious arrangement had been made for the office 
of historiographer. Thinking you would be like- 
ly tc know this as soon as myself, I did not write 
to you. My interest was better than I expected. 
Upon Lord Lonsdale I had reckoned ; but Scott 
wrote for me to Lord Melville, and seemed to 
depend upon success. I have now done with the 
state lottery. Of all things possible, I most de- 
sired an appointment at Lisbon ; if it had been 
given me when it was "desired, and when it would 
have been honorable in Fox so to have given it, 
knowing as he did my motive for wishing it, it 
would have involved me (owing to the subsequent 
troubles) in pecuniary difficulties which perhaps 
I should never have surmounted. That hope 
having failed, I looked to that good ship the His- 
toriographer, believing myself better qualified 
for the post than most men, and, more than any 
other man, ambitious of fulfilling its duties ; but 
that good ship, it seems, is still destined to be so 
ill manned as to be perfectly useless. 



" This evening I have a letter from Canning, 
couched in the most handsome and friendly terms. 
He does not know that the office is disposed of ( 
' but hints at difficulties in the way of his obtain- 
ing it (even supposing he were in power), whicb 
I Gifford has explained. He concludes with ex- 
I pressions and professions of good will, which 1 
doubt not are sincere. But there is nothing to 
. which I can look forward. 

" Say to Gifford that I must beg him to end 
, with my article instead of beginning with it. I 
| am close pressed with the Register, which this 
! week will bring, I hope and trust, to a conclu- 
, sion. Mr. Ballantyne's historiographer is well 
paid, but the office is no sinecure. 

* ; I wish you were here to see the country in 
full beauty. Your godson has just learned to read 
' Greek, and I expect in my next parcel a gram- 
mar and vocabulary for him. He promises well, 
i if it please God that he should live. God bless 
you! R. S." 

To J. Rickman, Esq. 

" May 18, 1812. 
" My dear Rickman, 
" The fate of poor Perceval has made me 
quite unhappy ever since I heard of it, not mere- 
ly from the shock and the private misery which 
it is quite impossible to put out of mind, but 
from the whole train of evils to which this is but 
the beginning. I would fain have believed the 
report that Mr. Abbott was to take his place in 
the House of Commons, because, if he could 
have found tongue, I knew where whatever else 
might have been wanting was to be found. But 
it was not likely that he should quit a better sit- 
uation for one of so much anxiety and labor. 

W and C , I doubt not, ratted upon the 

Catholic question because they expected the 
prince upon that ground would eject Perceval, 
and then they should have a better chance than 
the Early Friends. If they come in, as I fear 
they will, we may have the war carried on, but 

I we shall have Catholic concessions, after which 
the Church property is not worth seven years' 

! purchase ; they will sell the tithes ; and the 

I next step will be to put the Establishment to sale 
in the way of contracts ; the minds of the peo- 
ple (which, God knows, need no further poison) 
will then be totally unsettled, and the ship will 

1 part from her last cable on a lee shore in the 
height of the storm. At this moment the army 

j is the single plank between us and destruction ; 
and I believe the only thing doubtful is whether 
we shall have a military despotism before we go 

! through the horrors of a bellum servile or after it. 

j This I am certain of, that nothing but an imme- 
diate suspension of the liberty of debate and the 
liberty of the press can preserve us. Were I 
minister, I would instantly suspend the Habeas 
Corpus, and have every Jacobin journalist con- 
fined, so that it should not be possible for them 
to continue their treasonable vocation. There 
they should stay till it would be safe to let them 
out, which it might be in some seven years. I 
would clear the gallery whenever one cf the 






/Etat. 38. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



2S5 



agitators rose to speak, and if the speech were 
printed, I would teach him that his privilege of 
attempting to excite rebellion did not extend be- 
yond the walls of Parliament; that he might 
talk treason to those walls as long as he pleased, 
but that if he printed treason he was then an- 
swerable to the vengeance of his country. I did 
not forget* the main question about reading. 
One mouth suffices for a dozen or a score pair 
of ears in the tap-rooms and pot-houses, where 
Cobbett and Hunt are read as the evangelists of 
the populace. There is no way of securing the 
people against this sort of poison but by the old 
receipt of Mithradates — dieting them from their 
childhood with antidotes, and making them as 
ready to for for their church and state as the 
Spaniards. We are beginning to attempt this 
when it is too late. A judicial fatuity seems to 
have been sent among us. Romanists, sectari- 
ans of every kind, your liberality men, and your 
philosophers of every kind and of every degree 
of folly and emptiness, are united for the blessed 
purpose of plucking up old principles by the 
roots, each for their own separate ends, but all 
sure of meeting with the same end if they are 
successful. We who see this danger have no 
power to prevent it, and they who have the pow- 
er can not be made to see it. * * * 

" This is a melancholy strain. We must, 
however, work the ship till it sinks ; and a vig- 
orous minister might take advantage of the feel- 
ings of the sound part of the country at the mo- 
ment, and the avowal which the Burdettites have 
made for strong measures of prevention. * * 
# # # I would give the poor gratuitous ed- 
ucation in parochial schools — a boon which all 
among them who care for their children would 
rightly estimate ; and if the work of coercion kept 
pace with that of conciliation, we might hold on 
till our battle in Spain ended in the overthrow 
of the enemy. But where is the dictator who 
is to save the commonwealth ? Perceval had a 
character which was worth as much as his tal- 
ents. The only statesman who has these advan- 
tages in any approaching degree is Lord Sid- 
mouth, but he wants those abilities which in Per- 
ceval seemed always to grow according to the 
measure of the occasion. Yet he would be the 
best head of a ministry, for the weight which his 
good intentions would give him. Vansittart 
would do for Chancellor of Exchequer, if there 
were any other efficient minister in the Com- 
mons. 

"lam going to write upon the French Revo- 
lution for the Quarterly Review — a well-timed 
subject : the evil is, that it is writing to those 



* " What shall I say of the unhappy event which has 
happened here ? I expected Mr. Perceval to be murder- 
ed, but I had expected it from the Burdettites and others 
rendered infuriate by the poison they imbibe from sixteen 
newspapers, emulous in violence and mischief. In read- 
ing your little book about Lancaster, I do not find that you 
discuss the main question, whether the mob can be con- 
veniently taught reading while the liberty of the press ex- 
ists as at present. Every one who reads at all reads a Sun- 
day newspaper, not the Bible ; and if any man before 
doubted the efficacy of that prescription, the behavior of 
the mob upon Mr. P.'s death may teach them better knowl 
edge."— J. R. to R. S., May 16, 1812. 



readers who are in the main of the same way of 
thinking. Our cotemporaries read, not in the 
hope of being instructed, but to have their opin- 
ions flattered. Yours truly, R. S." 

The only recreation my father permitted him- 
self during this summer consisted of an excursion 
into the neighboring county of Dm-ham, where 
he had now two brothers residing, and a pedes- 
trian tour from thence home through part of 
Yorkshire. His account of a visit to Rokeby 
will be read with interest. 

To Mrs. Southey. 

" Settle, July 23, 1812. 
" My dear Edith, 
" We left St. Helen's after an early breakfast 
on Tuesday, with Tom in company ; looked at 
Raby and Bernard Castle, and made our way to 
the porter's lodge at Rokeby. # # # 
A sturdy old woman, faithful to her orders, re- 
fused us admittance, saying that if w T e were go- 
ing to the Hall we might go in, but if not we 
must not enter the grounds ; nor would she let 
us in till we had promised to call at the Hall. 
Accordingly, against the grain, in observance of 
this promise, to the house I went, and having 
first inquired if Sir Walter Scott was there, re- 
quested permission to see the grounds. Mr 
Morritt was not within, but the permission was 
granted ; and in ten minutes after, the footman 
came running to say we might see the house also, 
and we might fish if we pleased. I excused my- 
self from seeing the house, saying we were go- 
ing on, and returning a due number of thanks, &c 
But presently we met Mr. and Mrs. M. in the 
walk by the river side, and were, as you may 
suppose, obliged to dine and sleep there, their 
hospitality being so pressed upon us that I could 
not continue to refuse it without rudeness. Be- 
hold the lion, then, in a den perfectly worthy of 
him, eating grapes and pears, and drinking clar- 
et. The grounds are the finest things of the kind 
I have ever seen. A little in the manner of 
Downton, more resembling Lowther, but the 
Greta at Rokeby affords finer scenery than either. 
There is a summer-house overlooking it, the in- 
side of which was ornamented by Mason the 
poet : one day he set the whole family to work 
in cutting out ornaments in colored paper from 
antique designs, directing the whole himself. It 
is still in good preservation, and will, doubtless, 
be preserved as long as a rag remains. This 
river, in 1771, rose in the most extraordinary 
manner during what is still called the great flood. 
There is a bridge close by the summer-house at 
least sixty feet above the water ; against this 
bridge and its side the river piled up an immense 
dam of trees and rubbish, which it had swept 
before it ; at length, down comes a stone of such 
a size that it knocked down Greta Bridge by the 
way, knocked away the whole mass of trees, car- 
ried off the second bridge, and lodged some lit- 
tle way beyond it upon the bank, breaking into 
three or four pieces. Playfair the other day es- 
timated the weight of this stone at about seventy- 



28f 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 38. 



eight tons ; the most wonderful instance, he said, 
he had ever heard of of the power of water. Be- 
fore this stone came down, one of the trees had 
blocked up an old man and his wife who inhab- 
ited a room under the summer-house ; the branch- 
es broke their windows, and a great bough barr- 
ed the door ; meantime the water, usually some 
twenty feet below, was on a level with it. The 
people of the house came to their relief, and saw- 
ed the bough off to let them out, and the windows 
remain as they were left, a memorial of this most 
extraordinary flood. 

" Mr. Morritt's father bought the house of 
Sir Thomas Robinson, well known in his day 
by the names of Long Robinson and Long Sir 
Thomas. You may recollect a good epigram 
upon this man : 

" ' Unlike to Robinson shall be my song, 
It shall be witty — and it sh'a'nt be long.' 

Long Sir Thomas found a portrait of Richardson 
in the house : thinking Mr. Richardson a very 
unfit personage to be suspended in effigy among 
lords, ladies, and baronets, he ordered the paint- 
er to put him on the star and blue ribbon, and 
then christened the picture Sir Robert Walpole. 
You will easily imagine Mr. Morritt will not suf- 
fer the portrait to be restored. This, however, 
is not the most extraordinary picture in the room. 
That is one of Sir T.'s intended improvements, 
representing the river, which now flows over the 
finest rocky bed I ever beheld, metamorphosed 
by four dams into a piece of water as smooth and 
as still as a canal, and elevated by the same op- 
eration so as to appear at the end of a smooth 
shaven green. Mr. M. shows this with great 
glee. He has brought there from our country the 
stone fern and the Osmunda regalis.* Among 
his pictures is a Madonna by Guido; he men- 
tioned this to a master of a college, whose name 
I am sorry to say that I have forgotten, for the 
gentleman in reply pointed to a picture above 
representing an aunt of Mr. Morritt's (I believe), 
dressed in the very pink of the mode, and asked 
if that lady was the Madonna ! 

"lam sorry, too, that I forgot to ask if this 
was the lady whose needle-work is in the house. 
Mr. M. had an aunt who taught Miss Linwood. 
Wordsworth thought her pictures quite as good. 
In one respect they may be better, for she made 
her stitches athwart and across, exactly as the 
strokes of the original pictures. Miss L. (Mr. 
M. says) makes her stitches all in one way. This 
lady had great difficulty about her worsted, and 
could only suit herself by buying damaged quan- 
tities, thus obtaining shades which would else 
have been unobtainable. The colors fly, and, in 
order to preserve them as long as possible, prints 
are fitted in the frames to serve as screens. The 
art cost her her life, though at an advanced age ; 
it brought on a dead palsy, occasioned by hold- 
ing her hands so continually in an elevated posi- 
tion working at the canvas. Her last picture is 
hardly finished ; the needle, Mr. M. says, liter- 

* The largest of the fern tribe, growing to the height of 
five and six feet — a rare plant even in its own districts. 
The finest specimens are on the River Rotha. 



ally dropped from her hands. Death had been 
creeping on her for twelve years. God bless 
you ! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, Aug. 14, 1812. 
" My dear Friend, 

" Let me trouble you with a commission 
which, if it be successful, will essentially enrich 
my store of historical documents. I have just 
learned, by accident, that there is in High Hol- 
born a set of Muratori's great collection of the 
Italian historians, which, wanting one volume, is 
on that account offered for sale at a very low 
price — some five or six pounds, for a collection 
which I should joyfully purchase at the price of 
five-and-twenty, were it entire. * * * 
The three great works which I want are the 
Acta Sanctorum, the Byzantine Historians, and 
Muratori ; and it would be folly not to purchase 
this set, notwithstanding it is imperfect, when the 
loss of one volume so materially diminishes the 
price, without lessening the utility of the other 
volumes. I should think it, at half a guinea a 
volume, a cheap purchase. 

"My article upon the French Revolutionists 
in the last Quarterly is a good deal the worse 
for the mutilation which, as usual, it has under- 
gone, but which I regard less than I do the al- 
teration of one single word. Speaking of ' the 
pilot that weathered the storm,' I wrote ' what- 
ever may have been his merits,' and this word is 
altered into * transcendant as' — an alteration of 
which I shall certainly complain. Had the arti- 
cle been printed entire, it would have done me 
credit : the hint with which it concludes relates 
to an essay upon the state of the lower classes, 
which I have undertaken for the last number. 

"I had yesterday the pleasure of cutting open 
the last volume of the Register — a greater de- 
light to me than it will be to any other person, 
I dare be sworn. This is the last and greatest 
of an author's pleasures. The London propri- 
etors urge an alteration in the plan, and want 
it to be brought out in a single volume, like the 
London Annual Register ; the Edinburgh pro- 
prietors very wisely negative this proposal, and 
determine to carry it on upon the present plan, 
even if they are left to themselves. The change, 
I think, would have been fatal to the work : 
whether perseverance may preserve it, is very 
doubtful. I go to work, however, upon the year 
1811, with great good will. You will find, in 
the second part of this new volume, a life ot 
Lope de Aguirre, written as a chapter for the 
history of Brazil, but cut out as an excrescence, 
for which room could not be afforded. The nar- 
rative is an extraordinary piece of history, whole 
and entire of itself, and so little connected with 
that of any other country, that it would appear 
equally as an excrescence in the history of Peru 
or of Venezuela as in that of Brazil ; so it is as 
well where it is as it could be any where else. 
# # # * * xhe ballad of the Inchcape 
Rock, in the same volume, is mine also, written 
many years ago. when I was poet to the Morn- 



MtAT. 39. 



ROBERT SOUTHRY 



287 



ing Post. I know not to whom it is obliged for 
its present situation, neither do I know who has 
been tinkering it. It lay uncorrected among 
my papers, because I had no use for it, unless I 
should ever publish a miscellaneous volume of 
verse. The Life of Nelson is sent to the press. 
I expect the first proof every day, and hope to 
finish the manuscript by the beginning of next J 
month. Since my return from my late excur- 
sion, I have made good progress with Pelayo, 
or rather with Roderic, as the poem ought to . 
be called. It pleases me so well, that I begin 
to wish other persons should be pleased with it 
as well as myself. 

" Believe me, ever, your affectionate friend, 
"Robert Southey." 

The " sketch" referred to in the following let- 
ter was a very curious production. It consisted 
of a series of parallelisms between the events and 
characters in Thalaba and certain portions of the 
Scriptures, drawn out with great ingenuity and 
at considerable length. The view taken was as if 
the poem had been intended as an allegorical 
representation of the power and virtues of Faith. 

To the Rev. John Marty n Longmire. 

« Keswick, Nov. 4, 1812. 
"I am truly sensible, sir, of the honor you 
have conferred upon me by your letter of Octo- 
ber 29 th, and shall be still farther gratified by 
a communication of the sketch which is there 
mentioned. My aim has been to diffuse through 
my poems a sense of the beautiful and good (to 
koIov nal ayadbv) rather than to aim at the ex- 
emplification of any particular moral precept. 
It has, however, so happened, that both in Thal- 
aba and Kehama, the nature of the story led me 
to represent examples of faith. At a very early 
age, indeed, when I was a school-boy, my imag- • 
ination was strongly impressed by the mytholog- , 
ical fables of different nations. I can trace this to J 
the effect produced upon me, when quite a child, 
by some prints in the Christian's Magazine, cop- 
ied, as I afterward discovered, from the great 
work of Picart. I got at Picart when I was 
about fifteen, and soon became as well acquaint- 
ed with the gods of Asia and America as with 
those of Greece and Rome. This led me to con- 
ceive a design of rendering every mythology, 
which had ever extended itself widely, and pow- 
erfully influenced the human mind, the basis of a 
narrative poem. I began with the religion of 
the Koran, and consequently founded the inter- 
est of the story upon that resignation, which is ' 
the only virtue it has produced. Had Thalaba j 
been more successful, my whole design would [ 
by this time have been effected ; for prepared j 
as I was with the whole materials for each, and 
with a general idea of the story, I should assur- | 
edly have produced such a poem every year. 
For popular praise, quoad praise, I cared noth- 
ing ; but it was of consequence to me, inasmuch 
as it affected those emoluments with which my 
worldly circumstances did not permit me to dis- 
pense. The sacrifice, therefore, was made to 



prudence, and it was not made without reluct- 
ance. Kehama lay by me in an unfinished state 
for many years, and but for a mere accident, 
might, perhaps, forever have remained incom- 
plete. 

" Whether the design may ever be accom- 
plished is now doubtful. The inclination and the 
power remain, but the time has passed away. 
My literary engagements are numerous and 
weighty, beyond those of any other individual ; 
and though, by God's blessing, I enjoy good 
health, never-failing cheerfulness, and unwearied 
perseverance, there seems to be more before me 
than I mall ever live to get through. 

*.#■#.##'## 

" Bt ieve me, sir, yours, with due respect, 
" Robert Southey. 

"My next mythological poem, should I ever 
write another, would be founded upon the system 
of Zoroaster. I should represent the chief per- 
sonage as persecuted by the evil powers, and 
make every calamity they brought upon him the 
means of evolving some virtue, which would 
never else have been called into action, in the 
hope that the fables of false religion may be made 
subservient to the true, by exalting and strength- 
ening Christian feelings." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

present happiness affairs of the edin- 
burgh annual register embarrassed 

life of nelson roderic thanks sir w. 

scott for rokeby regrets being com- 
pelled to periodical writing politics 

mr. coleridge's tragedy brought out — 
remarks on the loss of youthful hopes- 
destruction of the french army in rus- 
sia life of nelson completed litera- 
ry plans reasons for submitting to gif- 

ford's corrections letters concerning 

mr. james dusautoy gloomy political 

forebodings paper in the quarterly re- 
view on the state of the poor naval 

reverses in the war with america ex- 
pected death of his brother-in-law, mr. 
fricker — Montgomery's deluge — anima- 
ted HORSE-HAIR PLAY BY MR. W. S. LANDOR 

VISIT TO LONDON APPOINTMENT AS POET 

LAUREATE. 1813. 

The period of my father's life to which the 
following letters relate, may be said, upon the 
whole, to have been the busiest and most stir 
ring portion of it, comprising, as it does, the 
maturest fruits of his poetical genius, with the 
most extensive engagements as a prose writer. 
His position in literature had been long no du- 
bious one ; and it had now become evident to 
him that he must rely upon literature alone as 
his profession, and trust to it wholly for his sup- 
port. It might seem, indeed, with the chances, 
the friends, and the interest he possessed, he had 
been singularly unfortunate in not obtaining 



288 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 3u. 



some employment which -would have secured 
him a regular income, and thus rendered him 
dependent upon authorship rather for the super- 
fluities than the necessaries of life. If, however, 
there was any "tide in his affairs" which might 
have "led to fortune," he did not "take it at 
the flood;" and having made those two applica- 
tions which have been noticed (for the Steward- 
ship of the Greenwich Hospital Estates, and for 
the office of Historiographer Royal), he became 
wearied with the trouble and annoyance of so- 
licitation, and was, perhaps, too ready to aban- 
don the advantages which he might have ob- 
tained. But he was himself very unwilling to 
take any office which would allow him only a 
small portion of time for the only pursuit in 
which he took any pleasure, and it must be ad- 
mitted that it would not have been easy for his 
best friends (and warmer friends no man ever 
possessed) to find any situation or employment 
which could possibly have suited a man whose 
tastes and habits were so completely fixed and 
devoted to a literary life. 

The first few years to which we are now 
coming were the happiest of his life. Settled 
to his heart's content at Keswick, having found 
a few friends in the neighborhood and country, 
and having many distant ones most highly es- 
teemed ; finding in his labors and in his library 
(which was rapidly becoming one of the best 
ever possessed by any person of such limited 
means) ceaseless occupation and amusement 
tbat never palled, he had for the present all his 
heart's desire, so far, at least, as was compati- 
ble with a doubtful and hardly-earned subsist- 
ence. 

His. principal source of income latterly, as the 
reader has seen, had been derived from the 
Edinburgh Annual Register ; but this, from the 
beginning, had been a losing concern, though 
started with the most sanguine anticipations of 
success. Indeed, it appears, from the Life of 
Sir W. Scott (vol. iv., p. 77), that tho actual 
loss upon it had never been less than .£1000 per 
annum, and it was therefore not to be wondered 
at that some considerable irregularities occurred 
in the publisher's payments, and that my father 
now found it prudent to declare his intention of 
withdrawing from it when the current volume 
should be concluded, having already suffered 
much inconvenience and some embarrassment 
from this cause. 

The defalcation of c£400 a year from his in- 
come was, however, a very serious matter, and 
he found it needful, without delay, to cast about 
for means of supplying its place. The establish- 
ment of the Quarterly Review had thus occurred 
at a fortunate time, both as affording him regular 
and tolerably profitable employment, and also as 
giving him scope for expressing earnest thoughts 
in vigorous language, which made themselves 
felt, despite the editor's merciless hand. 

This was, indeed, in most respects a far bet- 
ter vehicle than the Register, affording a far 
wider range of subjects, and speaking to a differ- 
ent and much more numerous class of readers ; 



and, however distasteful to him was the task of 
reviewing, his objections to it hardly applied to 
papers upon political, moral, or religious topics, 
and he felt and acknowledged that his reputation 
rose higher from his writings in the Quarterly 
Review T than from any of his other works. It is 
true, indeed, that on its first establishment he 
wished rather to have books submitted to him 
for ordinary criticism than for the purpose of 
writing political essays ; but that was simply be- 
cause in mere reviewing he was well practiced, 
and knew his strength, whereas the other, though 
a higher department of art, was new to him, and 
was also less safe ground with reference to those 
persons whom he believed to influence the pub- 
lication. 

He had also, at this time, and for a few years 
longer, a constant source of deep and heartfelt 
delight in the endearing qualities of his only boy, 
now little more than six years old, who possessed 
a singularly beautiful and gentle disposition, and 
who was just beginning to manifest an intellect 
as quick, and an aptitude for study as remark- 
able, as his own. This was the head and front 
of his happiness, the crowning joy of his domestic 
circle ; and while that circle remained unbroken, 
and he himself head and heart-whole to labor for 
his daily bread, the sun shone not upon a happier 
household. He might, indeed, had he been so 
disposed, have found enough in the precarious 
nature of his income to cause him much dis- 
quietude ; but on such points his mind was im- 
bued with a true philosophy ; and while he la- 
bored on patiently and perseveringly, he yet took 
no undue thought for the morrow, being well 
persuaded of the truth of the saying, that " suffi- 
cient for the day is" both the good and "the 
evil thereof." 

To John 3Iay, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 3, 1813. 
" My dear Friend, 
" Many happy new years to you, and may 
those which are to come prove more favorable 
to 3 t ou in worldly concerns than those which are 
past ! I have been somewhat unwell this Christ- 
mas ; first with a cold, then with a sudden and 
unaccountable sickness, which, however, has not 
returned, and I now hope I have been physicked 
into tolerable order. The young ones are going 
on well : little Isabel thrives, your god-daughter 
is old enough to figure at a Christmas dance, and 
Herbert will very soon be perfect in the regular 
Greek verb. A Testament is to come for him 
in my next parcel, and we shall begin upon it as 
soon as it arrives. No child ever promised better, 
morally and intellectually. He is very quick of 
comprehension, retentive, observant, diligent, and 
as fond of a book and as impatient of idleness as 
I am. Would that I were as well satisfied with 
his bodily health ; but, in spite of activity and 
bodily hilarity, he is pale and puny : just that 
kind of child of w T hom old women would say that 
he is too clever to live. Old women's notions are 
not often so well founded as this ; and having this 
apprehension before my eyes, the uncertainty cf 



/Etat. 39. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



289 



1 human happiness never comes home to my heart 
so deeply as when I look at him. God's will be 
done ! I must sow the seed as carefully as if 1 
were sure that the harvest would ripen. My two 
others are the most perfect contrast you ever saw. 
Bertha, whom I call Queen Henry the Eighth, 
from her likeness to King Bluebeard, grows like 
Jonah's gourd, and is the very picture of robust 
health ; and little Kate hardly seems to grow at 
all, though perfectly well — she is round as a 
mushroom-button. Bertha, the bluff queen, is 
just as grave as Kate is garrulous ; they are in- 
separable play-fellows, and go about the house 
hand in hand. Shall I never show you this little 
flock of mine? I have seen almost every one 
of my friends here except you, than whom none 
would be more joyfully welcomed. 

" I shall have two interesting chapters in this 
volume for 1811,* upon Sicily and South Amer- 
ica. My Life of Nelson, by a miscalculation, 
which lies between Murray and the printer, will 
appear in two volumes instead of one, which will 
materially, beyond all doubt, injure the sale. 
Murray has most probably ordered a large im- 
pression, calculating upon its going off as a mid- 
shipman's manual, which design is thus prevent- 
ed. If, however, this impression can pass off, I 
shall have no fear of its answering his purpose 
when printed in a suitable form ; for, though the 
subject was not of my own choice, and might be 
reasonably thought to be out of my proper line, 
I have satisfied myself in the execution far more 
than I could have expected to do. The second 
sheet of the second volume is now before me. I 
have just finished the battle of Copenhagen, which 
makes an impressive narrative. Two chapters 
more will complete it, and I hope to send you 
the book by the beginning of March. My labor 
with it will be completed much before that time, 
probably in ten days or a fortnight, and then the 
time which it now occupies will be devoted to 
the indigesta moles of Mr. Walpole's papers. I 
find the day too short for the employment which 
it brings ; however, if I can not always get 
through what is before me as soon as could be 
wished, in process of time I get through it all. 
My poemf comes on well ; about 2700 lines are 
written ; the probable extent is 5000 ; but the 
last half is like going down hill — the difficulty is 
over, and your progress accelerates itself. The 
poem is of a perfectly original character. What 
its success may be I can not guess. 
' Yours very affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Keswick, Jan. 13, 1813. 
"My dear Scott, 
" I received Rokeby on Monday evening, and 
you need not be told that I did not go to bed till 
I had read the poem through. It is yours all 
over, and, like its brethren, perfectly original. 
I have only to congratulate you upon its appear- 



* Edinburgh Annual Register. 
t Roderic, the Last of the Gotha. 

T 



ance, upon its life and spin;, aod (with sure and 
certain anticipation) upon its success. Let me 
correct an error in your last note, in time for the 
second edition. He-bin the Devil lived not upon 
one of our islands, but on Curwen's in Winander- 
mere, which then belonged to the Philipsons'. 
You may find the story in Nicholson and Burns's 
History of Westmoreland, p. 185-6. 

" I enjoyed your poem the more, being for the 
first time able to follow you in its scenery. My 
introduction at Rokeby* was a very awkward 
one ; and if the old woman who would not let 
me through the gate till I had promised her to 
call at the house, had been the porter or the por- 
ter's wife on the day of your story, Edmund 
might have sung long enough before he could 
have got in. However, when this awkwardness 
was over, I was very much obliged to her for 
forcing me into such society, for nothing could 
be more hospitable or more gratifying than the 
manner in which I and my companions were re- 
ceived. The glen is, for its extent, more beauti- 
ful than any thing I have seen in England. If 
I had known your subject, I could have helped" 
you to some Teesiana for your description — the 
result of the hardest day's march I ever yet 
made ; for we traced the stream from its spring- 
head, on the summit of Crossfell, about a mile 
from the source of the Tyne, all the way to 
Highforce. 

" In the course of next month I hope you will 
receive my Life of Nelson, a subject not self- 
chosen — and out of my way, but executed ri*» 
amore. Some of my periodical employment I 
must ere long relinquish, or I shall never com- 
plete the great historical works upon which so 
many years have been bestowed, in which so 
much progress has been made, and for which it 
is little likely that any other person in the coun- 
try will ever so qualify himself again. Yonder 
they are lying unfinished, while I suffer myself 
to be tempted to other occupations of more im- 
mediate emolument indeed, but in all other re- 
spects of infinitely less importance. Meanwhile 
time passes on, and I, who am of a short-lived 
race, and have a sense of the uncertainty of life 
more continually present in my thoughts and 
feelings than most men, sometimes reproach my- 
self for not devoting my time to those works upon 
which my reputation, and perhaps the fortunes of 
my family, must eventually rest, while the will 
is strong, the ability yet unimpaired, and the 
leisure permitted me. If I do not greatly de- 
ceive myself, my History of Portugal will be one 
of the most curious books of its kind that has 
ever yet appeared ; the matter is in itself so in- 
teresting, and I have hunted out so much that is 
recondite, and have so much strong light to 
throw upon things which have never been eluci- 
dated before. 

" Remember us to Mrs. Scott, and believe me, 
' My dear brother bard, 

" Yours most truly, 

"Robert Southey.'* 

* See p. 285. 



2t*0 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 39 



To C.,W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

"Keswick, Jan. 17, 1813. 
u My dear Wynn, 

" It is somewhat late to i^peak of Christmas 
and the New Year ; nevertheless, I wish you as 
many as you may be capable of enjoying, and the 
more the better. Winter is passing on mildly 
with us ; and if it were not for our miry soil and 
bad ways, I should not wish for pleasanter weath- 
er than January has brought w 7 ith it. Ailments 
rather than inclination have led me of late to 
take regular exercise, which I was wont to think 
I could do without as well as a Turk ; so I take 
two or three of the children with me, and, giving 
them leave to call upon me for their daily walk, 
their eagerness overcomes my propensities for the 
chair and the desk ; we now go before breakfast, 
for the sake of getting the first sunshine on the 
mountains, which, when the snow is on them, is 
more glorious than at any other season. Yester- 
day I think I heard the wild swan, and this 
morning had the finest sight of wild-fowl I ever 
beheld : there w T as a cloud of them above the 
lake, at such a height that frequently they be- 
came invisible, then twinkled into sight again, 
sometimes spreading like smoke as it ascends, 
then contracting as if performing some military 
evolution — once they formed a perfect bow ; and 
thus wheeling and charging, and rising and fall- 
ing, they continued to sport as long as I could 
watch them. They w T ere probably wild ducks. 

" Your godson is determined to be a poet, he 
says : and I w r as not a little amused by his tell- 
ing me this morning, when he came near a hol- 
low tree which has caught his eye lately, and 
made him ask me sundry questions about it, that 
the first poem he should make should be about 
that hollow tree. I have made some progress in 
rhyming the Greek accidence for him — an easier 
thing than you would perhaps suppose it to be ; 
it tickles his humor, and lays hold of his memory. 

" This last year has been full of unexpected 
events ; such, indeed, as mock all human foresight. 
The present will bring with it business of import- 
ance at home, whatever may happen abroad. 

" There is one point in which most men, how- 
ever opposite in their judgments about the affairs 
of the Peninsula, have been deceived — in their 
expectations from the Cortes. There is a lamen- 
table want of wisdom in the country ; among the 
peasantry, its place is supplied by their love of 
the soil, and that invincible perseverance which 
so sti*ongly marks the Spanish character. Bona- 
parte never can subdue them, even if his power 
had received no shock, and his whole attention 
were exclusively directed toward Spain : his life, 
though it should be prolonged to the length of 
Aurengzebe's (as great a villain as himself), 
would not give him time to wear out their per- 
severance and religious hatred. I have never 
doubted the eventual independence of Spain ; but 
concerning the government which may grow out 
of the struggle my hopes diminish, and I begin 
to think that Portugal has better prospects than 
Spain, because the government there may be in- 
duced to reform itself. 



" If Gifford prints what I have written, and 
lets it pass unmutilated, you will see in the next 
Quarterly some remarks upon the moral and 
political state of the populace, and the alarming 
manner in which Jacobinism (disappearing from 
the educated classes) has sunk into the mob — a 
danger far more extensive and momentous than 
is generally admitted. Very likely a sort of 
cowardly prudence may occasion some suppres- 
sions, which I should be sorry for. Wyndhani 
w T ould have acknowledged the truth of the pic- 
ture, and have been with me for looking the dan- 
ger in the face. It is an odd fact that the favor- 
ite song among the people in this little town just 
now (as I have happened to learn) is upon Parker 
the mutineer: it purports to have been written 
by his wife, and is in meter and diction just w T hat 
such a woman would write. 

" What part do you take in the East Indian 
question? I perceive its magnitude, and am 
wholly incapable of forming an opinion. 

" Coleridge's tragedy,* which Sheridan and 
Kemble rejected fifteen years ago, will come out 
in about a fortnight at Drury Lane. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Br. Gooch. 

"Keswick, Jan. 20, 1813. 
" My dear Gooch, 

Wordsworth refers, in more than one of his 
poems, with a melancholy feeling of regret, to 
the loss of youthful thoughts and hopes. In the 
last six weeks he has lost two children, one of 
them a fine boy of seven years old. I believe he 
feels, as I have felt before him, that ' there is 
healing in the bitter cup' — that God takes from 
us those we love as hostages for our faith (if I 
may so express myself) — and that to those who 
look to a reunion in a better world, where there 
shall be no separation, and no mutability except 
that which results from perpetual progressive- 
ness, the evening becomes more delightful than 
the morning, and the sunset offers brighter and 
lovelier visions than those which we build up in 
the morning clouds, and which disappear before 
the strength of the day. The older I grow — and 
I am older in feeling than in years — the more I 
am sensible of this : there is a precious alchemy 
in this faith, which transmutes grief into joy, or, 
rather, it is the true and heavenly euphrasy 
wilich clears away the film from our mortal sight, 
and makes affliction appear what, in reality, it is 
to the wise and good — a dispensation of mercy. 
" God bless you! 

" Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 



* After the successful appearance of this tragedy, which 
was entitled "Remorse," my father wrote, "I never doubt- 
ed that Coleridge's play would meet with a triumphant 
reception. Be it known now and remembered hereafter, 
that this self-same play, having had no other alterations 
made in it now than C. was willing to have made in it 
then, was rejected in 1797 by Sheridan and Kemble. Had 
these sapient caterers for the public brought it forward at 
that time, it is by no means improbable that the author 
might have produced a play as good every season : with 
my knowledge of Coleridge's habits I verily believe he 
woci'- To a C. B., Jan. 27, 1813. 



iEi'AT. 39. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



291 



To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Jan. 25, 1813. 
" My dear Neville, 

" Before I say any thing of my own doings, 
let me rejoice with you over these great events 
in the North. Never in civilized Europe had 
there been so great an army brought together 
as Bonaparte had there collected, and never was 
there so total and tremendous a destruction. I 
verily think that this is the fourth act of the Cor- 
sican, and that the catastrophe of the bloody 
drama is near. May his fall be as awful as his 
crimes ! The siege of Dantzic, and the acces- 
sion of Prussia to our alliance, will probably be 
our next news. Saxony will be the next gov- 
ernment to emancipate itself, for there the gov- 
ernment is as well disposed as the people. I 
wish I could flatter myself that Alexander were 
great enough to perform an act of true wisdom 
as well as magnanimity, and re-establish Po- 
land, not after the villainous manner of Bona- 
parte, but with all its former territory, giving 
up his own portion of that infamously acquired 
plunder, and taking Prussia's part by agree- 
ment, and Austria's by force ; for Austria will 
most likely incline toward the side of France, in 
fear of Russia, and in hatred of the house of 
Brandenburgh. May this vile power share in 
his overthrow and destruction, for it has cursed 
Germany too long ! 

"Was there ever an infatuation like that of 
the party in this country who are crying out for 
peace? as if this country had not ample cause 
to repent of having once before given up the 
' vantage ground of war, at a peace forced upon 
the state by a faction ! Let us remember Utrecht, 
and not suffer the Whigs of this day to outdo 
the villainy of the Tories of that. There can be 
no peace with Bonaparte, none with France, that 
is not dictated at the edge of the sword. Peace, 
I trust, is now not far distant, and one which 
France must kneel to receive, not England to 
ask. 

"The opening of the Baltic will come season- 
ably for our manufactures, and, if it set the looms 
to work again, we may hope that it will suspend 
the danger which has manifested itself, and give 
time for measures which may prevent its recur- 
rence. You will see in the next Quarterly a 
paper upon the State of the Poor — or, rather, 
the populace — wherein I have pointed out the 
causes of this danger, and its tremendous extent, 
which, I believe, few persons are aware of. I 
shall be sorry if it be mutilated from any false 
notions of prudence. It may often be necessary 
to keep a patient ignorant of his real state, but 
public danger ought always to be met boldly, 
and looked in the face. I impute the danger to 
the ignorance of the poor, which is the fault of 
the state, for not having seen to their moral and 
religious instruction; to the manufacturing sys- 
tem, acting upon persons in this state of igno- 
rance, and vitiating them ; and to the anarchist 
journalists (Cobbett, Hunt, &c.) perseveringly 
addressing themselves to such willing and fit 
recipients of their doctrines. 



"In the last number I reviewed D'Israeli's 
Calamities of Literature, the amusing book of a 
very good-natured man. 

" The poem goes on slow and sure. Twenty 
years ago nothing could equal the ardor with 
which I pursued such employments. I was then 
impatient to see myself in print : it was not pos- 
sible to long more eagerly than I did for the 
honor of authorship. This feeling is quite ex- 
tinct ; and, allowing as much as may be allowed 
for experience, wiser thoughts, and, if you please, 
satiety in effecting such a change, I can not but 
believe that much must be attributed to a sort 
of autumnal or evening tone of mind, coming 
upon me a little earlier than it does upon most 
men. I am as cheerful as a boy, and retain 
many youthful or even boyish habits ; but I am 
older in mind than in years, and in years than 
in appearance ; and, though none of the joyous- 
ness of youth is lost, there is none of its ardor 
left. Composition, where any passion is called 
forth, excites me more than it is desirable to be 
excited ; and, if it were not for the sake of grati- 
fying two or three persons in the world whom I 
love, and who love me, it is more than probable 
that I might never write a verse again. God 



bless 



you 



" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southet." 

To the Rev. Herbert Hill. 

"Keswick, Feb. 1, 18U 
" My dear Uncle, 

" The Life of Nelson* was completed this 
morning. The printer began with it before it 
was half written, but I have distanced him by 
ten sheets. Do not fear that I have been pro- 
ceeding too fast : it is he who, after the manner 
of printers, has given me plenty of time by tak- 
ing his own. This is a subject which I should 
never have dreamed of touching, if it had not 
been thrust upon me. I have walked among sea 
terms as carefully as a cat does among crock- 
ery ; but, if I have succeeded in making the nar- 
rative continuous and clear — the very reverse of 
what it is in the lives before me — the materials 
are, in themselves, so full of character, so pictur- 
esque, and so sublime, that it can not fail of be- 
ing a good book. # # # I a m 
very much inclined to attempt, under some such 
title as the Age of George III., a sketch of the 
revolutions which, almost every where and in 
all things, have taken place within the last half 
century. Any comparison which it might induce 
with Voltaire would rather invite than deter me. 
When I come to town I shall talk with Murray 
about this. 

" You wonder that I should submit to any ex 
purgations in the Quarterly. The fact is, that 
there must be a power expurgatory in the hands 



* This, which was, perhaps, upon the whole, the mo*t 
popular of any of my father's works, originated in an arti- 
cle in the fifth number of the Quarterly Review, which 
was enlarged at Murray's request. My father received 
altogether £300 for it : £100 for the Review, £100 when 
the Life was enlarged, and £100 when it was published 
in the Family Library. 



292 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 39. 



of the editor ; and the misfortune is, that editors 
frequently think it incumbent on them to use 
that power merely because they have it. I do 
not like to break with the Review, because Gif- 
fbrd has been something more than merely civil 
to me, and offered me services which I had no 
reason to expect, because the Review gives me 
(and shame it is that it should be so) more re- 
pute than any thing else which I could do, and 
because there is no channel through which so 
much effect can be given to what I may wish to 
impress upon the opinion of the public. * * 
" My aim and hope are, ere long, to support 
myself by the sale of half my time, and have the 
other half for the completion of my History. 
When I can command £500 for the same quan- 
tity that Scott gets 663000 for, this will be ac- 
complished, and this is likely soon to be the case. 
God bless you ! R. S." 

My father's publication of Kirk White's Re- 
mains very naturally drew upon him many ap- 
plications for similar assistance ; and curious in- 
deed would be the, collections of verses, good, 
bad, and indifferent, which from time to time 
were transmitted to him by youthful poets. 
But few of these, as may well be imagined, 
gave sufficient promise to warrant his giving any 
encouragement to their writers to proceed in the 
up-hill path of authorship ; others, however, 
showed such proofs of talent, that he could not 
but urge its cultivation, though he invariably 
gave the strongest warnings against choosing 
literature as any thing but recreation, or a pos- 
sible assistance while following some other pro- 
fession. In the case of Ebenezer Elliott, this 
led to an interesting correspondence with a man 
of great genius. Many of the applications he 
received do not admit of any particular account ; 
but among them are some which give us glimps- 
es of youthful minds whose loss the world has 
cause to lament. Such was William Roberts ; 
and such, also, was one whose story now comes 
before me. 

It seems that at the beginning of the year a 
youth of the name of Dusautoy, then about sev- 
enteen years of age, the son of a retired officer 
residing at Totness, Devon, and one of a numer- 
ous family, had written to my father, inclosing 
some pieces of poetry, and requesting his opin- 
ion and advice as to their publication. Neither 
the letter nor the reply to it have been preserv- 
ed ; but in Dusautoy's rejoinder, he expresses 
his grateful thanks for the warning given him ; 
against the imprudence of prematurely throwing 
himself upon the cold judgment of the public ; 
and asks in what degree it was probable or pos- 
sible that literature would assist him in making 
his way to the bar, the profession to which at 
that time he was most inclined. Being one of a 
large family, his laudable object was as far as 
possible to procure the means for his own edu- 
cation.^ 



* It appears that two years before writing to my father, 
young Dusautoy, then a schoolboy of fifteen, had made a 
Bimilar application to Sir Walter Scott, whose reply, which 



My father's reply was as follows : 

To James Dusautoy, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 12, 1813. 
"My dear Sir, 

'" /our talents will do every thing for you in 
time, but nothing in the way you wish for some 
years to come. The best road to the bar is 
through the University, where honors of every 
kind will be within your reach. With proper 
conduct, you would obtain a fellowship by the 
time you were one or two-and-twenty, and this 
would enable you to establish yourself in one 
profession or another, at your own choice. 

" This course is as desirable for your intel- 
lectual as for your worldly advancement. Your 
mind would then have time and opportunity to 
ripen, and bring forth its fruits in due season. 
God forbid that they should either be forced or 
blighted ! A young man can not support him- 
self by literary exertions, however great his tal- 
ents and his industry. Woe be to the youthful 
poet who sets out upon his pilgrimage to the 
temple of fame with nothing but hope for his 
viaticum ! There is the Slough of Despond, and 
the Hill of Difficulty, and the Valley of the Shad 
ow of Death upon the way ! 

"To be called to the bar, you must be five 
years a member of one of the inns of court ; but 
if you have a university degree, three will suffice. 
Men who during this course look to their talents 



is now before me, is very characteristic of the kind-heart- 
ed frankness and sound judgment of the writer. Some 
portion of it will, I think, interest the reader, as it is now 
published for the first time. After saying that " though in. 
general he had made it a rule to decline giving an opinion 
upon the verses so often sent him for his criticism, this 
application was so couched that he could not well avoid 
making an exception in their favor," he adds, " I have only 
to caution you against relying very much upon it : the 
friends who know me best, and to whose judgment I am 
myself in the constant habit of trusting, reckon me a very 
capricious and uncertain judge of poetry ; and I have had 
repeated occasions to observe that I have often failed in 
anticipating the reception of poetry from the public. 
Above all sir, I must warn you against suffering yourself 
to suppose that the power of enjoying natural beauty and 
poetical description are necessarily connected with that 
of producing poetry. The former is really a gift of 
Heaven, which conduces inestimably to the happiness of 
those who enjoy it. The second has much more of a 
knack in it than the pride of poets is always willing to ad- 
mit ; and, at any rate, is only valuable when combined 
with the first. * * * I would also caution you 
against an enthusiasm which, while it argues an excellent 
disposition and feeling heart, requires to be watched and 
restrained, though not repressed. It is apt, if too much 
indulged, to engender a fastidious contempt for the ordi- 
nary business of the world, and gradually to render us 
unfit for the exercise of the useful and domestic virtues, 
which depends greatly upon our not exalting our feelings 
above the temper of well-ordered and well-educated so- 
ciety. No good man can ever be happy when he is unfit 
for the career of simple and common-place duty ; and I 
need not add how many melancholy instances there are 
of extravagance and profligacy being resorted to under 
pretense of contempt for the common rules of life. Cul- 
tivate then, sir, your taste for poetry and the belles-lettres 
as an elegant and most interesting amusement ; but com- 
bine it with studies of a more severe and solid cast, and 
such as are most intimately connected with your pros- 
pects in future life. In the words of Solomon, 'My son, 
get knowledge.'" 

The remainder of the letter consists of some critical re- 
marks upon the pieces submitted to him, which, he says. 
appear to him " to have all the merits and most of the 
faults of juvenile composition; to be fanciful, tender, and 
elegant ; and to exhibit both command of language and 
luxuriance of imagination." — Askiestiel, May 6, 1811. 



^TAT. 39. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



293 



for support, usually write for newspapers and 
reviews : the former is destructively laborious, 
and sends many poor fellows prematurely to the 
grave ; for the latter branch of employment there 
are always too many applicants. I began it at 
the age of four-and-tvventy, which was long be- 
fore I was fit for it. 

" The stage, indeed, is a lottery where there 
is more chance of a prize ; but there is an evil 
attending success in that direction which I can 
distinctly see, though you, perhaps, may not be 
persuaded of it. The young man who produces 
a successful play is usually the dupe of his own 
success ; and being satisfied with producing an 
immediate and ephemeral effect, looks for nothing 
beyond it. You must aim at something more. I 
think your path is plain. Success at the Uni- 
versity is not exclusively a thing of chance or 
favor ; you are certain of it if you deserve it. 

" When you have considered this with your 
friends, tell me the result, and rest assured that 
my endeavors to forward your wishes in this, or 
in any other course which you may think proper 
to pursue, shall be given with as much sincerity 
as this advice ; meantime read Greek, and write 
as many verses as you please. By shooting at a 
high mark you will gain strength of arm, and 
precision of aim will come in its proper season. 
i: Ever yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

Upon fui-ther consideration, it was determined 
that Dusautoy should enter at Cambridge ; and 
my father having taken some trouble in the mat- 
ter, he was very soon admitted a member of 
Emanuel College. In the following year (1814) 
he was an unsuccessful competitor for the En- 
glish poetical prize,-* the present Master of 
Trinity, Dr. Whewell, being the successful one. 
In the college examination he stood high, being 
the first man of his year in classics and fourth in 
mathematics. He also obtained several exhibi- 
tions, and had the promise of a scholarship as 
soon as a vacancy occurred. In the midst, how- 
ever, of high hopes and earnest intentions, he fell 
a victim, among many others, to a malignant 
fever, which raged at Cambridge with such vio- 
lence that all lectures were stopped, and the men 
who had escaped its influence permitted to re- 
turn home. As an acknowledgment of his tal- 
ents and character, he was buried in the cloisters 
of his college ; a mark of respect, I understand, 
never before paid to any under-graduate. 

My father had at one time intended publishing 
a selection from Dusautoy's papers, which were 
sent to him for that purpose ; but further reflec- 
tion convinced him that his first inspection of 
them " had led him to form too hasty a conclu- 
sion, not as to the intellectual power which they 
displayed, but as to the effect which they were 
likely to produce if brought before the public. 
To me," he continues, "the most obvious faults 
of these fragments are the most unequivocal 
proofs of genius in the author, as being efforts of 

* Tke subject was Boadicea ; and Dusautoy's composi- 
tion an ode, "injudiciously written in Spenser's stanza." 



i a mind conscious of a strength which it had not 
yet learned to use-r-exuberance which proved 
the vigor of the plant and the richness of the soil. 
But common readers read only to be amused, and 
to them these pieces would appear crude and ex- 
travagant, because they would only see what is, 
without any reference to w T hat might have been." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 12, 18U. 
" My dear Wynn, 
" Do not be too sure of your victory in the 
House of Commons. It is not unlikely that w r hen 
the securities come to be discussed, you w 7 ill find 
yourselves in a minority there, as well as in the 
country at large. The mischief, however, is 
done. It is like certain bodily complaints, tri- 
fling in themselves, but of infinite import as 
symptomatic of approaching death. The more 
I see, the more I read, and the more I reflect, 
the more reason there appears to me to fear that 
our turn of revolution is hastening on. In the 
. minds of the busy part of the public it is already 
! effected. The save-all reformers have made 
; them suspicious ; the opposition has made them 
; discontented ; the anarchists are making them 
! furious. Methodism is undermining the Church, 
and your party, in league with all varieties of 
opinionists, have battered it till you have suc- 
ceeded in making a breach. I give you all credit 
for good intentions ; but I know the Dissenters 
and the philosophists better than you do, and 
know that the principle which they have in com- 
mon is a hatred of the Church of England, and a 
wish to overthrow her. This they will accom- 
plish, and you will regret it as much as I do — 
certainly not the less for having yourself con- 
tributed to its destruction. 

" The end of all this w T ill be the loss of liberty, 
for that is the penalty which, in the immutable 
order of things, is appointed for the abuse of it. 
What we may have to go through, before we sit 
down quietly in our chains, God only knows. 

" Have you heard of the strange circumstance 
about Coleridge? A man hanging himself in 
the Park with one of his shirts on, marked at full 
length ! Guess C.'s astonishment at reading 
this in a newspaper at a coffee-house. The thing 
is equally ridiculous and provoking. It will alarm 
many persons who know him, and I dare say 
many will always believe that the man was C. 
himself, but that he was cut down in time, and 
that his friends said it was somebody else in or- 
der to conceal the truth. As yet, however, I 
have laughed about it too much to be vexed. 

" I have just got General Mackinnon's Jour- 
nal :* never was any thing more faitnful than his 
account of the country and the people. We have, 
I fear, few such men in the British army. J 
knew a sister of his well some years ago, and 
should rejoice to meet with her again, for she was 
one of the cleverest women I ever knew. Whca 
they lived in France, Bonaparte was a frequent 
visitor at their mother's house. Mackinnon 



See Inscription, xxxv., p. 178, one vol. edit. 



294 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 39. 



would have made a great man. His remarks 
upon a want of subordination, and proper regula- 
tions in our army, are well wortlry of Lord Wel- 
lington's consideration. It was by thinking thus, 
and forming his army, upon good moral as well 
as military principles, that Gustavus became the 
greatest captain of modern times : so he may cer- 
tainly be called, because he achieved the great- 
est things with means which were apparently 
the most inadequate. God bless you ! 

;t R. Southey." 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

" March, 1813. 
" My DEAR RlCKMAN, 

" You and I shall agree about general educa- 
tion. Ignorance is no preventive in these days, 
if. indeed, it ever were one which could be relied 
on. All who have ears can hear sedition, and 
the more ignorant they are, the more easy is it 
to inflame them . My plan is (I know not whether 
Gilford has ventured to give it) to make transport- 
ation the punishment for seditious libeling. This, 



and this only, would be an effectual cure. The 
In a former letter my father speaks of an ar- ! existence of a press in the state in which ours is 
tide he had written for the forthcoming number i in, is incompatible with the security of any gov- 
of the Quarterly Review, on the state of the poor, ernment. 

and he there mentions briefly the heads of the | " About the manufacturing system as affecting 
general view he had taken of the subject. This the poor-rates, doubtless you are best informed, 
had appeared, and Mr. Rickman now comments My argument went to show that, under certain 
on it, whose practical and sensible remarks I circumstances of not unfrequent occurrence, man- 
quote here, as showing his frankness in stating ufactures occasioned a sudden increase of the 
differences of opinion, and his friend's willing- craving mouths, and that the whole previous dis- 
ness to hear and consider them : cipline of these persons fitted them to become 

" I have read your article on the poor with Luddites. It is most likely there may be some 



great satisfaction, for the abundance of wit it 
contains, and the general truth of its statements 
and reflections. With some things you know I 
do not agree — for instance, not in your dislike of 



ambiguity in that part of the article, from the 
vague use of the word poor, which ought to be 
distinguished from pauper — a distinction I never 
thought of making till vour letter made me see 



manufactures to the same degree — especially I the necessity for so doing. 

do not find them guilty of increasing the poor. " You give me comfort about the Catholics, 

For instance, no county is more purely agricul- and strengthen my doubts about the East India 



tural than Sussex, where twenty-three persons, 
parents and children, in one hundred receive par- ; 
ish relief; no county more clearly to be referred 
to the manufacturing character than Lancashire. 
where the persons relieved by the parish are seven 
in one hundred — not a third part of the agricul- 
tural poverty. An explanation of this (not in a ' 
letter) will perhaps lead you to different views | 
of the poors-rate plan of relief, which in agri- j 
cultural counties operates as a mode of equaliz- 
ing wages according to the number of mouths in J 
a family, so that the single man receives much ; 
less than his labor is worth, the married man | 
much more. I do not approve of this, nor of the , 
Poor Laws at all ; but it is a view of the matter , 
which, in your opinion more, perhaps, than in i 
mine, may lessen the amount of the mischief. * , 

" I am afraid nothing will settle my mind i 
about your wide education plan — a great good 
or a great evil certainly, but which I am not 
sure while the liberty of the press remains. I i 
believe that more seditious newspapers than Bi- 
bles will be in use among your pupils. 

" We go on badly in the House of Commons. | 
# * * 



question. I have written on the former subject 
in the forthcoming Register, very much to the 
purport of Mr. Abbot's speech. Mr. Perceval 
should have given the Catholics what is right and 
proper they should have, by a bill originating 
with himself. What but ruin can be expected 
when a government comes to capitulate with the 
factious part of its subjects ! * * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 2G, 1813. 
' ; My dear Grosvenor, 
" Tom is made quite unhappy by these re- 
peated victories of the Americans ; and for my 
own part, I regard them with the deepest and 
gloomiest forebodings. The superior weight of 
metal will not account for all. I heard a day or 
two ago from a Liverpoolian. lately in America, 
that they stuff their wadding with bullets. This 
may kill a few more men, but will not explain 
how it is that our ships are so soon demolished, 
not merely disabled. Wordsworth and I agreed 
in suspecting some improvement in gunnery (Ful- 
The Ministry considers noth- I ton is likely enough to have discovered some- 
ing, forsooth, as a cabinet question — that is, they | thing) before I saw the same supposition thrown 
have no opinion collectively. I can not imagine j out in the ' Times/ Still there would remain 
any thing in history more pitiful than their June- something more alarming to be resolved, and that 
tion and alliance with the hio-h and mighty mob is, how it happens that we injure them so little? 
against the East India Company — an establish- \ I very much fear that there may be a dreadful 
ment second only, if second, to the English gov- secret at the bottom, which your fact about the 



ernment, in importance to mankind. As to the 
Catholics, they will gain little from the House of 
Commons, and nothing from the Lords."* 

1 

* J. R. to R. S., March 12, 1813 . 



cartridges* of the Macedonian points at. ~Bo 



* " H. Sharp is just arrived from Lisbon ; he has been 
in America, where he went on board the Macedonian and 
the United States. 1 He says the captured ship was pierced 



1 The name ot the vessel that took the Macedonian. 



jEtat. 39. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



295 



you know, or does Henry know, a belief in the 
navy which I heard from Ponsonby, that the crew 

of the loaded purposely in this manner, in 

order that by being made prisoners they might 

be delivered from 's tyranny ? When 

Coleridge was at Malta, Sir A. Ball received a 

round-robin from 's crew, many of whom 

had served under him, and who addressed him in 
a manner which made his heart ache, as he was, 

of course, compelled to put the paper into 's 

hands. One day Coleridge was with him when 
this man's name was announced, and turning, he 
said to him in a low voice, ' Here comes one of 
those men who will one day blow up the British 
navy.' 

" I do not know that the captain of the Mace- 
donian was a tyrant. Peake certainly was not ; 
he is well known here, having married a cousin 
of Wordsworth's ; his ship was in perfect order, 
and he as brave and able a man as any in the 
service. Here it seems that the men behaved 
well ; but in ten minutes the ship was literally 
knocked to pieces, her sides fairly staved in ; and 
I think this can only be explained by some im- 
provements in the manufactory of powder, or in 
the mariner of loading, &c. But as a general 
fact, and of tremendous application, I verily be- 
lieve that the sailors prefer the enemy's service 
to our own. It is in vain to treat the matter 
lightly, or seek to conceal from ourselves the 
extent of the evil. Our naval superiority is de- 
stroyed ! 

" My chief business in town will be to make 
arrangements for supplying the huge deficit 
which the termination of my labors in the Regis- 
ter occasions. I wish to turn to present account 
rny Spanish materials, and still more the insight 
which I have acquired into the history of the war 
in the Peninsula ; and to recast that portion of 
the Register, carry it on, and bring it forth in a 1 
suitable form. This can not be done without the 
consent of the publishers — Ballantyne, Longman, 
and Murray. To the two latter I have written, 
and am about to write to James Ballantyne. 
Should the thing be brought to bear, I must pro- 
cure an introduction to Marquis Wellesley — that 
is, to the documents which I doubt not he would 
very readily supply ; and I should have occasion 
for all the assistance from the Foreign Office 
which my friends could obtain. To the marquis 
] have means of access through Mr. Littleton, 
and probably, also, via Gifford, through Canning. 
It may be of use if you make known my wishes 
in that quarter. R. S." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, June 14, 1813. 
" My dear Neville, 
" Josiah Conder had told me, though less par- 
ticularly, the circumstances of your sister's happy 
death, for happy we must call it. The prayer 



through and through, and full of shot, while in the Amer- 
ican vessel scarcely any have been lodged. Our ship 
seems to have been very badly fought ; the captors de- 
clared that they found many of the guns with the car- 
tridges put in the wrong way."— G. C. B. to R. S., May 24, 
1813. 



in the Litany against sudden death I look upon as 
a relic of Romish error, - the only one remaining 
in that finest of all human compositions — death 
without confession and absolution being regarded 
by the Romanist as the most dreadful of all calam- 
ities, naturally is one of the evils from which they 
pray to be delivered. I substitute the word vio- 
lent in my supplications ; for since that mode of 
dissolution which, in the Scriptures, is termed 
falling asleep, and which should be the natural 
termination of life passed in peace, and inno- 
cence, and happiness, has become so rare, that 
it falls scarcely to the lot of one in ten thousand, 
instantaneous and unforeseen death is the hap- 
piest mode of our departure, and it is even more 
desirable for the sake of our surviving friendy 
tnan for our own. I speak feelingly, for at. this 
time my wife's brother is in the room below me, 
in such a state of extreme exhaustion, that, hav- 
ing been carried down stairs at two o'clock, it 
would not in the least surprise me if he should 
expire before he can be carried up again. He 
is in the last stage of consumption — a disease 
which at first affected >the liver having finally as- 
sumed this form ; his recovery is impossible by 
any means short of miracle. I have no doubt 
that he is within a few days of his death, per- 
haps a few hours ; and sincerely do I wish, for 
his sake and for that of four sisters who are 
about him, that the tragedy may have closed be- 
fore this reaches you. According to all appear- 
ance, it will. 

" Your letter, my dear Neville, represents just 
that state of mind which I expected to find you 
in. The bitterness of the cup is not yet gone, 
and some savor of it will long remain ; but you 
already taste the uses of affliction, and feel that 
ties thus broken on earth r.re only removed to 
heaven. 

" Montgomery's poem came in the same par- 
cel with your letter. ' I had previously written 
about it to the Quarterly, and was told, in reply, 
that it was wished to pass it by there, because it 
had disappointed every body. I wish I could say 
that I myself did not in some degree feel disap- 
pointed also ; yet there is so much that is really 
beautiful, and which I can sincerely praise, and 
the outline of the story will read so well with the 
choicest passages interspersed, that I shall send 
up a revjewal, and do, as a Frenchman would 
say, my possible. Of what is good in the poem 
I am a competent judge ; of what may be de- 
fective in it, my judgment is not, perhaps, so 
properly to be trusted, for having once planned a 
poem upon the Deluge myself, I necessarily com- 
pare my own outline with Montgomery's. The 
best part is the death of Adam. Oh ! if the 
whole had been like that ! or (for that is impos- 
sible) that there had been two or three passages 
equal to it ! Montgomery has crippled himself 
by a meter which, of all others, is the worst for 
long and various narrative, and which most cer- 
tainly betrays a writer into the common track 
and common-places of poetical language. He 
has thought of himself in Javan, and the charac- 
ter of Javan is hardly prominent enough to be 



296 



LT^E AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 39. 



made the chief personage. Yet there is much, 
very much to admire and to recur to with pleas- 
ure. 

" God bless you ! Remember me to your 
mother, and tell James I shall always be glad to 
hear from him as well as of him. 
" Yours most truly, 

" R. SoUTHEY." 

To Dr. Southey. 

"Keswick, June 6, 1813. 
" My dear Harry, 

"Do you want to make your fortune in the 
philosophical world ? If so, you may thank Owen 
Lloyd for the happiest opportunity that was ever 
put into an aspirant's hands. You must have 
heard the vulgar notion that a horse-hair, plucked 
out by the root and put in water, becomes alive 
in a few days. The boj^s at Bratha} T repeatedly 
told their mother it was true, that they had tried 
it themselves and seen it tried. Her reply was, 
show it me, and I will believe it. While we 
were there last week, in came Owen with two 
of these creatures in a bottle. Wordsworth was 
there ; and to our utter and unutterable astonish- 
ment did the bo} T s, to convince us that these long, 
thin black worms were their own manufactory by 
the old receipt, lay hold of them by the middle 
while they writhed like eels, and stripping them 
with their nails down on each side, actually lay 
bare the horse-hair in the middle, which seemed 
to serve as the back-bone of the creature, or the 
substratum of the living matter which had col- 
lected round it. 

"Wordsworth and I should both have sup- 
posed that it was a collection of animalcule 
round the hair (which, however, would only be 
changing the nature of the wonder), if we could 
any way have accounted for the motion upon this 
theory ; but the motion was that of a snake. 
We could perceive no head ; but something very 
like the root of the hair. And for want of glasses, 
could distinguish no parts. The creature, or 
whatever else you may please to call it, is black 
or dark brown, and about the girth of a fiddle- 
string. As soon as you have read this, draw 
upon your horse's tail and mane for half a dozen 
hairs ; be sure they have roots to them ; bottle 
them separately in water, and when they are alive 
and kicking, call in Gooch, and make the fact 
known to the philosophical world.* Never in 
my life was I so astonished as at seeing, what 
even in the act of seeing I could scarcely believe, 
and now almost doubt. If you verify the experi- 
ment, as Owen and all his brethren will swear 
must be the case, you will be able to throw some 
light upon the origin of your friend the tape- 
worm, and his diabolical family. 

" No doubt you will laugh and disbelieve this, 
and half suspect that I am jesting. But indeed 

* " The Cyclopaedia says that the Gordius Aquaticus is 
vulgarly supposed to be animated horse-hair ; the print of 
the creature represents it as much smaller than Owen 
Lloyd's manufactory, which is as large as the other Gordii 
upon the same plate, and very like them. But I distinctly 
saw the hair when the accretion was stripped oft" with the 
nail."— R. S. to J. R., August 2, 1813 



I have only told you the fact as it occurred ; and 
you will at once see its whole importance in 
philosophy, and the use which you and Gooch 
may derive from it, coming forth with a series 
of experiments, and with such deductions as your 
greyhound sight and his beagle scent will soon 
start and pursue. 

" And if the horse's hair succeeds. Sir Domi- 
ne, by parallel reasoning you know, try one of 
your own. R. S." 

To Waller Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 30, 1813. 

" Your comedy came to hand a fortnight ago. 
* * * The charitable dowager is 

drawn from the life. At least it has all the ap- 
pearance of a portrait. As a drama there is a 
want of incident and of probability in that upon 
which the catastrophe depends ; but the dialogue 
abounds with those felicities which flash from 
you in prose and verse more than from any other 
writer. I remember nothing which at all re- 
sembles them except in Jeremy Taylor : he has 
things as perfect and as touching in their kind, 
but the kind is different ; there is the same beau- 
ty, the same exquisite fitness, but not the point 
and poignancy which you display in the comedy 
and in the commentary, nor the condensation 
and strength which characterize Gebir and 
Count Julian. 

" I did not fail to notice the neighborly com- 
pliment which you bestow upon the town of 
Abergavenny. Even out of Wales, however, 
something good may come besides Welsh flannel 
and lamb's-wool stockings. I am reading a 
great book from Brecknock ; for from Breck- 
nock, of all other places under the sun, the full- 
est Mohammedan history which has yet appear- 
ed in any European language, has come forth. 
Without being a good historian, Major Price is 
a very useful one ; he amuses me very much, 
and his volumes are full of facts which you can 
not forget, though the Mohammedan propria 
quce maribus render it impossible ever accurate- 
ly to remember any thing more than the great 
outlines. A dramatist in want of tragic subjects 
never need look beyond these two quarto vol- 
umes. 

" What Jupiter means to do with us, he him- 
self best knows ; for as he seems to have stulti- 
fied all parties at home and all powers abroad, 
there is no longer the old criterion of his inten- 
tions to help us in our foresight. I think this 
campaign will lead to a peace : such a peace 
will be worse than a continuance of the war, if 
it leaves Bonaparte alive ; but the causes of the 
armistice are as yet a mystery to me ; and if 
hostilities should be renewed, which, on the 
whole, seems more probable than that they 
should be terminated, I still hope to see his de- 
struction. The peace which would then ensue 
would be lasting, and during a long interval of 
exhaustion and rest perhaps the world will grow 
wiser, and learn a few practical lessons from 
experience. * * God bless you ! 

' R. S." 



/Etat. 39. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



297 



At the beginning of September my father 
vvent for a visit of a few weeks to London and 
the vicinity, and his letters from thence detail 
fully all the circumstances connected with his 
appointment to the office of poet laureate. These 
have been several times related, but never so 
accurately as here by himself. Mr. Lockhart, 
in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, gives the main 
facts, but was probably not acquainted with them 
all. My father, in the preface to the collected 
edition of his poems, corrects that account in a 
few minor details, but for obvious reasons omits 
to mention that the offer of the office to Sir Wal- 
ter was made without the prince's knowledge. 

There is now, however, no reason for sup- 
pressing any of the circumstance^, and no fur- 
ther comments of mine are needful to elucidate 
what the reader will find so clea-rly explained. 

To Mrs. Southcy. 
" Streatham, Sunday, Sept. 5, 1813. 
'' My dear Edith, 

One of the letters which you forwarded was from 
James Ballantyne; my business in that quarter 
seems likely to terminate rather better than might 
have been expected. I wish you had opened 
the other, which was from Scott. It will be 
easier to transcribe it than to give its contents 
and it does him so much honor that you ought 
to see it without delay. ' My dear Southey, — 
On my return home, I found, to my no small 
surprise, a letter tendering me the laurel vacant 
by the death of the poetical Pye. I have de- 
clined the appointment as being incompetent to 
the task of annual commemoration, but chiefly 
as being provided for in my professional depart- 
ment, and unwilling to incur the censure of en- 
grossing the emolument* attached to one of the 
few appointments which seems proper to be filled 
by a man of literature who has no other views 
in life. Will you forgive me, my dear friend, if 
I own T had you in my recollection? I have 
given Croker the hint, and otherwise endeavored 
to throw the office into your choice (this is not 
Scott's word, but I can not decipher the right 
one) . I am uncertain if you will like it, for the 
laurel has certainly been tarnished by some of its 
wearers, and, as at present managed, its duties 
are inconvenient and somewhat liable to ridicule. 
But the latter matter might be amended, and 
I should think the regent's good sense would 
lead him to lay aside these biennial commemo- 
rations ; and as to the former point, it has been 
worn by Dryden of old, and by Warton in mod- 
ern days. If you quote my own refusal against 
me, I reply, 1st, I have been luckier than you 
in holding two offices not usually conjoined. 
2dly, I did not refuse it from any foolish preju- 
dice against the situation, otherwise how durst I 
mention it to you, my elder brother in the muse ? 
but from a sort of internal hope that they would 



* Sir Walter Scott seems to hare been under the im- 
pression that the emoluments of the laureateship amount- 
ed tr £'i00 or £400 a year. — See Life of Scott, vol. iv., p. 
118. 



give it to you, upon whom It would be so much 
more worthily conferred ; for I am not such an 
ass as not to know that you are my better in po-\ 
etry, though I have had (probably but for a 
time) the tide of popularity in my favor. I have 
not time to add ten thousand other reasons, but 
I only wished to tell you how the matter was, 
and to beg you to think before you reject the 
offer which I flatter myself will be made you 
If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with 
two gowns already, I should have jumped at it 
like a cock at a gooseberry. Ever yours most 
truly, W. S.' 

" I thought this was so likely to happen, that 
I had turned the thing over in my mind in ex- 
pectation. So as soon as this letter reached me, 
I wrote a note to Croker to this effect — that 1 
would not write odes as boys write exercises, at 
stated times and upon stated subjects, but that 
if it were understood that upon great public 
events I might either write or be silent as the 
spirit moved, I should now accept the office as 
an honorable distinction, which under those cir- 
cumstances it would become. To-morrow I 
shall see him. The salary is but a nominal 
66120 ; and, as you see, I shall either reject it, 
or make the title honorable by accepting it upon 
my own terms. The latter is the most proba- 
ble result. 

" No doubt I shall be the better on my return 
for this course of full exercise and full feeding, 
which follows in natural order. By good for- 
tune this is the oyster season, and when in town 
I devour about a dozen in the middle of the day ; 
so that in the history of my life this year ought 
to be designated as the year of the oysters, in- 
asmuch as I shall have feasted on them more 
than in any other year of my life. I shall work 
off the old flesh from my bones, and lay on a 
new layer in its place — a sort of renovation 
which makes meat better, and therefore will not 
make me the worse. Harry complains of me 
as a general disturber of all families. I am up 
first in the house here and at his quarters ; and 
the other morning, when I walked from hence 
to breakfast with Grosvenor, I arrived before any 
body except the servants were up. This is as 
it should be. * * *# 



God bless 



you 



R. S. 



To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

" Streatham, Sept. 20, 1813. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" I saw your letter about the Laurel, and you 
will not be sorry to hear how completely I had 
acted in conformity with your opinion. 

" Pye's death was announced a day or two 
before my departure from Keswick, and at the 
time I thought it so probable that the not-very- 
desirable succession might be offered me, as to 
bestow a little serious thought upon the subject, 
as well as a jest or two. On my arrival in town 
Bedford came to my brother's to meet me at 
breakfast ; told me that Croker had spoken with 
him about it, and he with Gifford ; that they 



29d 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



2Etat. 40 



supposed the onus of the office would be dropped, 
or if it were not, that I might so execute it as 
to give it a new character ; and that as detur 
digniori was the maxim upon which the thing 
was likely to be bestowed, they thought it would 
become me to accept it. My business, however, 
whatever might be my determination, was to 
call without dela}- at the Admiralty, thank C. for 
what was actually intended well, and learn how 
the matter stood. 

"Accordingly, I called on Croker. He had 
spoken to the prince ; and the prince, observing 
that I had written ' some good things in favor 
of the Spaniards,' said the office should be given 
me. You will admire the reason, and infer from 
it that I ought to have been made historiographer 
because I had written Madoc. Presently Cro- 
ker meets Lord Liverpool, and tells him what 
had passed ; Lord Liverpool expressed his sor- 
row that he had not known it a day sooner, for 
he and the Marquis of Hertford had consulted 
together upon whom the vacant honor could 
most properly be bestowed. Scott was the 
greatest poet of the day, and to Scott, therefore-, 
they had written to offer it. The prince was 
displeased at this ; though he said he ought to 
have been consulted, it was his pleasure that I 
should have it, and have it I should. Upon this, 
Croker represented that he was Scott's friend as 
well as mine ; that Scott and I were upon friend- 
ly terms ; and, for the sake of all three, he re- 
quested that the business might rest where it was. 

" Thus it stood when I made my first call at 
the Admiralty. I more than half suspected that 
Scott would decline the offer, and my own mind 
was made up before this suspicion was verified. 
The manner in which Scott declined it was the 
handsomest possible ; nothing could be more 
friendly to me, or more honorable to himself. 
God bless you ! 

" Yours very affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Mrs. Southey. 

" Tuesday night, Sept. 28, 1813. 
"My dear Edith, 
" I have stolen away from a room full of peo- 
ple, that I might spend an hour in writing to 
you instead of wasting it at the card-table. 
Sunday I went by appointment to Lord William 
Gordon, who wanted to take me to see a young 
lady. Who should this prove to be but Miss 
Booth, the very actress whom we saw at Liver- 
pool play so sweetly in Kotzebue's comedy of the 
Birth-day. There was I taken to hear her re- 
cite Mary the Maid of the Inn ! and if I had not 
interfered in aid of her own better sense, Lord 
W. and her mother and sisters would have made 
her act as well as recite it. As I know you 
defy the monster, I may venture to say that she 
is a sweet little girl, though a little spoiled by 
circumstances which would injure any body ; 
but what think you of this old lord asking per- 
mission for me to repeat my visit, and urging 
me to ' take her under my protection,' and show 
hr^r what to recite and instruct her how to re- 



' cite it ? And all this upon a Sunday ! So 1 
I shall give her a book, and tell her what parts 
j she should choose to appear in. And if she goes 
again to Edinburgh, be civil to her if she touches 
at the Lakes ; she supports a mother and broth- 
er, and two or three sisters. When I returned 
to Queen Anne Street from the visit, I found 
Davy sitting with the doctor, and awaiting my 
return. I could not dine with him to-morrow, 
having an engagement, but we promised to gc 
in the evening and take Coleridge with us, and 
Elmsley, if they would go. It will be a party 
of lions, where the doctor must for that even- 
ing perform the part of Daniel in the lion's den. 

" I dined on Sunday at Holland House, with 
some eighteen or twenty persons. Sharp was 
there, who introduced me with all due form to 
Rogers and to Sir James Mackintosh, who seems 
to be in a bad state of health. In the evening 
Lord Byron came in.* He had asked Rogers 
if I was 'magnanimous,' and requested him to 
make for him all sorts of amends honorable for 
having tided his wit upon me at the expense of 
his discretion ; and in full confidence of the suc- 
cess of the apology, had been provided with a 
letter of introduction to me in case he had gone 
to the Lakes, as he intended to have done. As 
for me, you know how I regard things of this 
kind ; so we met with all becoming courtesy on 
both sides, and I saw a man whom in voice 7 
manner, and countenance I liked very much 
more than either his character or his writings 
had given me reason to expect. Rogers wanted 
me to dine with him on Tuesday (this day) : 
only Lord Byron and Sharp were to have been 
of the party, but I had a pending engagement 
here, and was sorry for it. 

" Holland House is a most interesting build- 
ing. The library is a sort of gallery, one hund- 
red and nine feet in length, and, like my study, 
serves for drawing-room also. The dinner-room 
is paneled with wood, and the panels emblaz- 
oned with coats of arms, like the ceiling of one 
room in the palace at Cintra. The house is of 
Henry the Eighth's time. Good night, my dear 
Edith. 

" We had a very pleasant dinner at Madame 
de Stael's. Davy and his wife, a Frenchman 
whose name I never heard, and the Portuguese 
embassador, the Conde de Palmella, a gentleman- 
ly and accomplished man. I wish you had seen 
the animation with which she exclaimed against 
Davy and Mackintosh for their notions about 
peace. 

" Once more farewell ! 

"R. Southey." 

The following poetical announcement of his 
being aotually installed may excite a smile : 

* The following is Lord Byron's account of this meet 
ing: "Yesterday, at Holland House, I was introduced to 
Southey, the best looking bard 1 have seen for some time. 
To have that poet's head and shoulders I would almost 
have written his Sapphics. He is certainly a prepossess 
ing-looking person to look at, and a man of talent and all 
that, and — there is his eulogy." — Life of Byron, vol. ii., 
p. 244 



jEtat. 40. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



299 



"I have something to tell you, which you will not be sor- 
ry at, 
"Tis that I am sworn in to the office of laureate. 
The oath that I took there could be nothing wrong in, 
'Twas to do all the duties to the dignity belonging. 
Keep this, I pray you, as a precious gem, 
For this is the laureate's first poem. 



''' There, my dear Edith, are some choice 
verses for fou. I composed them in St. James's 
Park yesterday, on my way from the chamber- 
lain's office, where a good old gentleman usher, 
a worthy sort of fat old man, in a wig and bag, 
and a snuff-colored full-dress suit with cut steel 
buttons and a sword, administered an oath." * 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"London, Nov. 5, 1813. 
" My dear Scott, 
" If you have not guessed at the reason why 
your letter has lain ten weeks unanswered, you 
must have thought me a very thankless and 
graceless fellow, and very undeserving of such a 
letter. I waited from day to day that I might 
tell you all was completed, and my patience 
was nearly exhausted in the process. Let me 
tell you the whole history in due order, before I 
express my feelings toward you upon the occa- 
sion. Upon receiving yours I wrote to Croker, 
saying that the time was past when I could write 
verses upon demand, but that if it were under- 
stood that, instead of the old formalities, I might 
be at liberty to write upon great public events 
or to be silent, as the spirit moved — in that case 
the office would become a mark of honorable 
distinction, and I should be proud of accepting 
it. How this was to be managed he best knew ; 
for, of course, it was not for me to propose terms 
to the prince. When next I saw him, he told 
me that, after the appointment was completed, 
he or some other person in the prince's confi- 
dence would suggest to him the fitness of making 
this reform in an office which requires some re- 
form to rescue it from the contempt into which 
it had fallen. I thought all was settled, and ex- 
pected every day to receive some official com- 
munication, but week after week passed on. My 
head-quarters at this time were at Streatham.^ 
Going one day into town to my brother's, I found 
that Lord William Gordon, with whom I had 
left a card on my first arrival, had called three 
times on me in as many days, and had that morn- 
ing requested that I would call on him at eleven, 
twelve, one, or two o'clock. I went accordingly, 
never dreaming of what this business could be, 
and wondering at it. He told me that the Mar- 
quis of Hertford was his brother-in-law, and had 
written to him, as being my neighbor in the coun- 
try — placing, in fact, the appointment at his 
(Lord William's) disposal, wherefore he wished 
to see me to know if I wished to have it. The 
meaning of all this was easily seen ; I was very 
willing to thank one person more, and especially 
a good-natured man, to whom I am indebted for 
many neighborly civilities. He assured me that 
I should now soon hear from the chamberlain's 



* His uncle, Mr. Hill, was then rector of that parish. 



once, and I departed accordingly, in full expec- 
tation that two or three days more would settle 
the affair. But neither days nor weeks brought 
any further intelligence ; and if plenty of em- 
ployments and avocations had not filled up my 
mind as well as my time, I should perhaps have 
taken dudgeon, and returned to my family and 
pursuits, from which I had so long been absent. 

" At length, after sundry ineffectual attempts, 
owing sometimes to his absence, and once or 
twice to public business, I saw Croker once more, 
and he discovered for me that the delay originated 
in a desire of Lord Hertford's that Lord Liver- 
pool should write to him, and ask the office for 
me. This calling in the prime minister about 
the disposal of an office, the net emoluments of 
which are about d£90 a year, reminded me of 
the old proverb about shearing pigs. Lord Liv- 
erpool, however, was informed of this by Croker : 
the letter was written, and in the course of an- 
other week Lord Hertford wrote to Croker that 
he would give orders for making out the appoint- 
ment. A letter soon followed to say that the 
order was given, and that I might be sworn in 
whenever I pleased. My pleasure, however, 
was the last thing to be consulted. After due 
inquiry on my part, and some additional delays, 
I received a note to say that if I would attend at 
the chamberlain's office at one o'clock on Thurs- 
day, November 4, a gentleman usher would be 
there to administer the oath. Now it so hap- 
pened that I was engaged to go to Woburn on 
the Tuesday, meaning to return on Thursday to 
dinner, or remain a day longer, as I might feel 
disposed. Down I went to the office, and solic- 
ited a change in the day ; but this was in vain : 
the gentleman usher had been spoken to, and a 
poet laureate is a creature of a lower description. 
I obtained, however, two hours' grace ; and yes- 
terday, by rising by candle-light and hurrying the 
post-boys, reached the office to the minute. I 
swore to be a faithful servant to the king, to re 
veal all treasons which might come to my knowl 
edge, to discharge the duties of my office, and 
to obey the lord chamberlain in all matters of the 
king's service, and in his stead the vice-chamber- 
lain. Having taken this upon my soul, I was 
thereby inducted into all the rights, privileges, 
and benefits which Henry James Pye, Esq., did 
enjoy, or ought to have enjoyed. 

" The original salary of the office was 100 
marks. It was raised for Ben Jonson to c£l00 
and a tierce of Spanish Canary wine, now wick- 
edly commuted for £26 ; which said sum, un- 
like the Canary, is subject to income-tax, land- 
tax, and heaven knows what taxes besides. 
The whole net income is little more or less than 
c£90. It comes to me as a God-send, and I 
have vested it in a life-policy : by making it up 
^£102, it covers an insurance for c€3000 upon 
my own life. I have never felt any painful anx- 
iety as to providing for my family — my mind is 
too buoyant, my animal spirits too good, for this 
care ever to have affected my happiness ; and I 
may add that a not unbecoming trust in Provi- 
dence has ever supported my confidence in mv- 



300 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ^tat. 40. 



self. But it is with the deepest feeling of 
thanksgiving that I have secured this legacy for 
my wife and children, and it is to }-ou that I am 
primarily and chiefly indebted. 

" To the manner of your letter I am quite 
unable to reply. We shall both be remembered 
hereafter, and ill betide him who shall institute 
a comparison between us. There has been no 
race ; we have both got to the top of the hill by 
different paths, and meet there, not as rivals, 
but as friends, each rejoicing in the success of 
the other. 

" I wait for the levee, and hope to find a 
place in the mail for Penrith on the evening af- 
ter it, for I have the Swiss malady, and am 
home-sick. Remember me to Mrs. Scott and 
your daughter ; and believe me, my dear Scott, 
" Most truly and affectionately yours, 

" Robert Southey." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

the laureate's first ode restrictions 

upon his freedom of speech complaints 

of gifford's corrections bonaparte 

conduct of the austrian government to- 
ward hofer anxiety respecting his 

children's health thinks of an ode on 

the expected marriage of the pp..incess 

charlotte repulse of the british at 

bergen-op-zoom quotation from george 

gascoigne concerning the dutch feel- 
ings on the news of the success of the 

allied armies poetical plans lord by- 

ron's ode to bonaparte remarks on 

mathematical studies on clerical du- 
ties ridiculous poem portrait and me- 
moir wanted laureate odes spanish 

affairs — humboldt's travels — roderic 

mr. coleridge domestic anxieties 

advice on college studies children's 

joy hospitals badly conducted polit- 
ical speculations barnard barton mr. 

Wordsworth's last poem — literary plans 

the ettric shepherd laureate odes 

still required foreign politics mr. 

canning history of brazil expe cts 

nothing from government a crazy com- 
positor grave of ronsard at tours 

roderic oliver newman thought of 

death bonaparte history of brazil 

new year's ode expected the property- 
tax the squid hound lord byron 

roderic difficulties of removal in- 
scriptions and epitaphs evil of going 

to india murat history of portugal 

his son's studies dr. bell's ludus lite- 

rarius question of marriage with a 

wife's sister rejoicings at the news of 

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 1814-1815. 

My father had now received that title which, 
insignificant as it has usually been in literary 
history, and, even in the case of its worthiest 
holders, little thought of, seemed, if I do not err, 



f with him to acquire a new importance, and — 
whether for good or evil, whether in honor or in 
opprobrium — to live in the mouths of men. 

The new laureate, notwithstanding his wishes 
and intentions of emancipating the office from its 
thraldom, was bound precisely by the same rules 
and etiquette as his predecessors. He had, in- 
deed, as he has stated, expressed a "#ish to Mr. 
Croker that it might be placed upon a footing 
which would exact from the holder nothing like 
a schoolboy's task, but leave him to write when 
and in what manner he thought best, and thus 
render the office as honorable as it was origin- 
ally designed to be ; and it had been replied 
that some proper opportunity might be found 
for representing the matter to the prince in its 
proper light. This, however, probably from va- 
rious causes, was never done ; and, in the very 
first instance of official composition, he was 
doomed to feel the inconvenience of writing to 
meet the taste of those in power. The time, 
indeed, was most favorable to him : he could 
combine a work intended as a specimen of his 
fulfillment of the laureate's duties with the ex- 
pression of his warmest feelings of patriotic ex- 
ultation. But there was a drawback : his feel- 
ings, on one point at least, far outran the calm- 
ness of the temperament authorized in high pla- 
ces. It appeared that he might rejoice for En- 
gland, and Spain, and Wellington, but he must 
not pour out the vials of his wrath upon France 
and Bonaparte. 

This he had done liberally in the first draft 
of his first ode, the Carmen Triumphale for the 
commencement of the new year ; but, having 
sent it, in MS., to Mr. Rickman, his cooler judg- 
ment suggested that there might be an impro- 
priety in some parts of it appearing as the poet 
laureate's production. " I am not sure," he says, 
" that you do not forget that office imposes upon 
a man many restraints besides the one day's bag 
and sword at Carlton House. Put the case that, 
through the mediation of Austria, we make peace 
with Bonaparte, and he becomes, of course, a 
friendly power — can you stay in office, this Car- 
men remaining on record?" 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 17, 1813. 
" My dear Rickman, 
"I thank you for your letter, and, in conse- 
quence of it, immediately transcribed the Car- 
men, and sent it to Mr. Croker. It had never 
occurred to me that any thing of an official char- 
acter could be attached to it, or that any other 
reserve was necessary than that of not saying 
any thing which might be offensive to the gov- 
ernment ; e. g., in 1808 the poet laureate would 
be expected not to write in praise of Mrs. Clarke 
and the resignation of the Duke of York. I dare 
say you are right, and I am prepared to expect 
a letter from Mr. Croker, advising the suppres- 
sion of any thing discourteous toward Bonaparte. 
In that case, I shall probably add something to 
that part of the poem respecting Hanover and 
Holland, and send the maledictory stanzas to the 



jEtat. 40. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



301 



Courier without a name. By-the-by, if the gov- 
ernment did not feel as I do, the Courier would not 
hoist Bourbon colors, as it has lately done. * 

"As for the Morning Chronicle, I defy the 

devil and all his works. My malice has and 

for its objects, and the stanza was intended 

as a peg upon which to hang certain extracts 
from the Edinburgh Review, and a remark upon 
the happy vein of prophecy which these worthies 
have displayed. With respect to attacks from 
that quarter, I shall be abused of course, and if 
there is a certain portion of abuse to be bestowed 
upon any body, it may better fall upon me than 
almost any other person ; for, in the first place, 
I shall see very little of it, and, in the next, care 
no further for what I may happen to see than just 
mentally to acknowledge myself as so much in 
debt. # # * # 

" Farewell ! R. S." 

To the Rev. Herbert Hill. 



" My dear Uncle, 
# =* * # 



'Keswick, Dec. 28, 1813. 



# # * 

"I am sorely out of humor with public affairs. 
One of our politicians (Mr. Canning, I believe) 
called Bonaparte once the child of Jacobinism ; 
but, whether Jacobinism or any thing worse bred 
him, it is this country that has nursed him up to 
his present fortunes. After the murders of the 
Due d'Enghien and Palm — avowed, open, notori- 
ous as they were — we ought to have made the 
war personal against a wretch who was under the 
ban of humanity. Had this been our constant 
language, he would long since have been destroy- 
ed by the French themselves 5 nor do I think that 
Austria would ever have connected itself by mar- 
riage with a man so branded. But it is impos- 
sible to make the statesmen of this country feel 
where their strength lies. It will be no merit of 
theirs if peace is not made, morally certain as 
every man, who sees an inch before his nose, must 
be, that it would last no longer than it serves this 
villain's purpose. He will get back his officers 
and men, who are now prisoners upon the Con- 
tinent ;" he will build fleets ; he will train sailors ; 
he will bring sailors from America, and send ships 
there, and we shall have to renew the contest at 
his time, and with every advantage on his side. 

" I spoiled my poem, in deference to Rick- 
man's judgment and Croker's advice, by cutting 
out all that related to Bonaparte, and which gave 
strength, purport, and coherence to the whole. 
Perhaps I may discharge my conscience by put- 
ting these rejected parts together,* and letting 
them off in the Courier before it becomes a libel- 
ous offense to call murder and tyranny by their 
proper names. 

" You will see that I have announced a series 
of inscriptions recording the achievements of our 
army in the Peninsula. Though this is not ex- 
actly ex officio, yet I should not have thought of 



* These, with some additions, are published in the col- 
lected edition of his poems, uader the title of an " Ode 
written during the Negotiations with Bonaparte in Jan., 



it if it had not seemed a fit official undertaking. 
This style of composition is that to which I am 
more inclined than to any other. My local knowl- 
edge will turn to good account on many of these 
epigrammata. 

" I had a letter a day or two ago from Kinder, 
who is at this time forming a commercial estab- 
lishment at St. Andero. The Spanish troops, he 
says, had behaved so ill that Lord W. had or- 
dered them all within their own frontier. From 
the specimens which he had seen, he thought 
they combined a blacker assemblage of diabolical 
qualities than any set of men whom he ever be- 
fore had an opportunity of observing. Now Kin- 
der is a cool, clear-headed man, disposed to see 
things in their best colors, and, moreover, has 
been in Brazil and Buenos Ayres. The truth 
seems to be that, though there never was much 
law in Spain, there has been none during the last 
six years, and the ruffian-like propensities of the 
brute multitude have had their full swing. Kin- 
der had been to the scene of action, and dined 
frequently at head-quarters. He finds Biscay 
more beautiful than he expected, but has seen 
nothing to equal the Vale of Keswick. I shall 
make use of him to get books from Madrid. My 
friend Abella is one of the deputies for Aragon to 
the New Cortes. 

" The South Sea missionaries have done some- 
thing at last besides making better books than 
their Jesuit forerunners. They have converted 
the King of Otaheite. His letters are in my last 
Evangelical Magazine, and very curious they 
are. If he should prove conqueror in the civil 
war which is desolating the island, this conver- 
sion may, very probably, lead to its complete 
civilization. Human sacrifices would, of course, 
be abolished, and schools established. His maj- 
esty himself writes a remarkably good hand. * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

"Jan. 15, 1814. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" One of our poets says, ' A dram of sweet is 
worth a pound of sour,' which, if it be not good 
poetry, is sound practical wisdom. I assure you 
you have gone far toward reconciling me to the 
Carmen, by praising the Dutch stanza, of which 
I had conceived the only qualification to be, that 
it was as fiat as the country of which it treated, 
as dead as the water of the ditches, and as heavy 
astern as the inhabitants. How often have I had 
occasion to remember the old apologue of the 
painter, who hung up his picture for public criti- 
cism ! The conclusion also, laus Deo ! has found 
favor in your eyes. 

" I have added three stanzas to the five which 
were struck out, and made them into a whole, 
which is gone, sine nomine, to the Courier, where 
you will be likely to see it sooner than if I were 
to transcribe the excerpts. 

" There was another stanza, which I expunged 
myself, because it spoke with bitterness of those 

"Who deemed that Spain 
Would bow her neck before the intruder's throne; 



302 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 40 



and I should have been sorry to have had it ap- 
plied in a manner to have wounded you, its di- 
rection being against the Edinburgh Review. 
Upon this point your remarks have in no degree 
affecfed my opinion, either as to the propriety of 
the attack itself, or of the place for it. However 
rash I may be, you will, I think, allow that my 
disposition is sufficiently placable. I continued 
upon courteous terms with Jeffrey, till that ras- 
cally attack upon the Register, in which he rec- 
ommended it for prosecution. As for the retali- 
ation of which you are apprehensive, do not sup- 
pose, my dear Wynn, that one who has never 
feared to speak his opinions sincerely can have 
any fear of being confronted with his former self? 
I was a Republican ; I should be so still, if I 
thought we were advanced enough in civiliza- 
tion for such a form of society ; and the more my 
feelings, my judgment, my old prejudices might 
incline me that way, the deeper would neces- 
sarily be my hatred of Bonaparte. Do you know 
that the Anti- Jacobin treats my Life of Nelson as 
infected with the leaven of Jacobinism ? 

" If I were conscious of having been at any 
time swayed in the profession of my opinions by 
private or interested motives, then indeed might 
I fear what malice could do against me. True 
it is that I am a pensioner and poet laureate. I 
owe the pension to you, the laurel to the Span- 
iards. Whether the former has prevented me 
from speaking as I felt upon the measures of gov- 
ernment, where I thought myself called upon to 
speak at all, let my volumes - of the Register bear 
witness. The Whigs who attack me for cele- 
brating our victories in Spain, ought to expunge 
from the list of their toasts that which gives ' The 
cause of Liberty all the world over.' The In- 
scriptions are for the battles we have won, the 
towns we have retaken, and epitaphs for those 
who have fallen — that is, for as many' of them as 
I can find any thing about whose rank or ability 
distinguished them. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Jan. 29, 1814. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" I hope you have secured the manuscript of 
my article on the Dissenters, in which I sus- 
pect Gifford has done more mischief than usual. 
Merely in cutting open the leaves, I perceived 
some omissions which one would think the very 
demon of stupidity had prompted. You may re- 
member the manner in which I had illustrated 
Messrs. Bogue and Bennet's mention of Paul and 
Timothy. He has retained the quotation, and 
cut out the comment upon it. I believe the ar- 
ticle has lost about two pages in this way. The 
only other instances which caught my eye will 
show you the spirit in which he has gone to 
work. Bogue and Bennet claim Milton, Defoe, 
&c, as Dissenters. I called them blockheads for 
not perceiving that it was ' to their catholic and 
cosmopolite intellect' that these men owed their 
immortality, not to their sectarian opinions, and 
the exterminating pen has gone through the 



words catholic and cosmopolite. There is also a 
foolish insertion stuck in, to introduce the last 
paragraph, which at once alters it, and says, 
' Now I am going to say something fine,' instead 
of letting the feeling rise at once from the sub- 
ject. It is well, perhaps, that the convenience 
of this quarterly incoming makes me placable, or 
I should some day tell Gifford, that though I have 
nothing to say against any omission which may 
be made for political or prudential motives, yet 
when the question comes to be a mere matter of 
opinion in regard to the wording of a sentence, 
my judgment is quite as likely to be right as his. 
You will really render me a great service by pre- 
serving my manuscript reviewals : for some of 
these articles may most probably be reprinted 
whenever my operas come to be printed in a col- 
lected form after I am gone, and these rejected 
passages will then be thought of most value. 

" I wish you would, as soon as you can, call 
on Gifford, and tell him — not what I have been 
saying, for I have got rid of my gall in thus let- 
ting you know what I feel upon the subject — but 
that I will review Duppa's pamphlet about Juni- 
us, and the Memoirs, for his next number. Per- 
haps I may succeed in this, as, in approaching 
Junius, I shall take rather a wider view of polit- 
ical morality than he and his admirers have done. 

" Some unknown author has sent me a poem 
called the Missionary, not well arranged, but 
written with great feeling and beauty. I shall 
very likely do him a good turn in the Quarterly. 
It is Ercilla's ground-work, with a new story 
made to fit the leading facts. 

" God bless you ! R. S. : ' 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

"Keswick, March 9, 1814. 
" Did you see my ode in the Courier, beginning, 
'Who calls for peace at this momentous hour?' &c. : 
it grew out of the omitted portion of the Carmen 
Triumphale, wherein I could not say all I wished 
and wanted to say, because a sort of official char- 
acter attached to it. For five years I have been 
preaching the policy, the duty, the necessity of 
declaring Bonaparte under the ban of human na- 
ture ; and if this had been done in 1808, when 
the Bayonne iniquity was fresh in the feelings of 
the public, I believe that the Emperor of Austria 
could never have given him his daughter in mar- 
riage ; be that as it may, Spain and Portugal 
would have joined us in the declaration; the 
terms of our alliance would have been never to 
make peace with him ; and France, knowing this, 
would, ere this, have delivered herself from him. 
My present hope is that he will require terms of 
peace to which the allies will not consent : a little 
success is likely enough to inflate him, for he is 
equally incapable of bearing prosperous or ad- 
verse fortunes. As for the Bourbons, I do not 
wish to see them restored, unless there were no 
other means of effecting his overthrow. Restora- 
tions are bad things, when the expulsion has taken 
place from internal causes and not by foreign 
forces. They have been a detestable race, and 
the adversity which they have undergone is not 



Atat. 40. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



303 



of that kind which renovates the intellect, or calls 
into life the virtues which royalty has stifled. I 
used to think that the Revolution would not have 
done its work till the houses of Austria and Bour- 
bon were both destroyed — a consummation which 
the history of both houses has taught me devoutly 
to wish for. Did I ever tell you that Hofer got 
himself arrested under a false name and thrown 
into prison at Vienna, and that he was actually 
turned out of this asylum by the Austrian gov- 
ernment ? If any member of that government 
escapes the sword or the halter, there will be a 
lack of justice in this world. The fact is one of 
the most shocking in human history, but a fact 
it is, though it has not got abroad. Adair told 
it me. 

" I shall rejoice to see your Idyllia. The print- 
er is treading close on my heels, and keeping me 
close to work with this poem. I shall probably 
send you two sections more in a few days. 

"R. S." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, March 18, 1814. 
" My dear Neville, 

" I am afraid I have been silent for a longer 
time than has ever before passed without a letter 
since our communication began. How truly has 
it been said that the first twenty years of life are 
the longest part of it, let it be ever so long ex- 
tended. Days, weeks, and months now pass 
away so rapidly and yet so imperceptibly, that I 
am scarcely sensible of the sum of time which 
has gone by, till some business stares me in the 
face which has been left undone. 

"It is not, however, from uniformity of hap- 
piness that time of late has passed so speedily 
with me. We have had ailments enough among 
the children to keep me perpetually anxious for 
the last eight or ten weeks. These are things 
which a man hardly understands till they have 
happened to himself, and even then some are 
affected more by them and some less ; but it is 
one of the weak parts of my nature to feel them 
more, perhaps, than the occasion always justi- 
fies. I myself have had my share, though not a 
very heavy one, of the complaints which the un- 
usual length and obstinacy of the winter scatter- 
ed so plentifully in these parts. And though I 
have not been idle, and what I have done might 
be deemed a sufficient quantity for one who had 
less to do, the last four months have perhaps 
produced less than any former ones. I readily 
acknowledge that it may be fortunate for me to 
be under the necessity of continually bestirring 
my faculties in composition, otherwise the pleas- 
ure of acquiring knowledge, and continually sup- 
plying those deficiencies in my own acquire- 
ments, of which they who know most are most 
sensible in themselves, is so much more delight- 
ful than the act of communicating what I already 
know, that very probably I might fall into this 
kind of self-indulgence. 

" My great poem will not be out before June. 
I am working hard at it. For the Quarterly I 
have done little — only Montgomery's poem, and 



a little Moravian book about the Nicobar Islands. 
I shall be vexed if the former be either delayed 
or mutilated. 

" This evening's newspaper brings great news. 
The old desire of my heart — that of seeing peace 
dictated before the walls of Paris — seems about 
to be fulfilled. But what a dreadful business has 
this been at Bergen-op-Zoom !* This is the con- 
sequence of government deferring to popular opin- 
ion when founded upon false grounds. Graham 
was extolled and rewarded for the battle of 
Barrosa — a battle which he ought not to have 
fought, and which was worse than useless. 
Government knew this, and felt concerning it as 
I am now expressing myself, Yet they, of 
course, were glad to raise a cry of success, and 
the Opposition joined it in extolling Graham for 
the sake of abusing the Spaniards ; whereas, in 
truth, he was infinitely rnore^n fault than La 
Peha. After the battle he never ought to have 
been trusted with command. 

" Believe me, my dear Neville, 

" Ever yours with the truest regard, 

"Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 23, 1814. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" Your letterf operated well. Like a good 
boy, I began my task immediately after its ar- 
rival, and have now completed one part and be- 
gun the second, of a poem which is to consist of 
three. Can you give me a better title than 
Carmen Maritale ? I distrust my own Latinity, 
which has long been disused and never was very 
good. The poem is in six-lined stanzas ; first a 
proem, so called rather than introduction, that 
the antiquated word may put the reader in tune 
for what follows. It is a poet's egotism making 
the best of the laurel, and passing to the present 
subject by professing at first an unfitness for it ; 
the second part will be a vision, wherein alle- 
gorical personages give good advice ; and the 
concluding part a justification of the serious strain 
which has been chosen ; something about the 
king ; and a fair winding up with a wish that it 
may be long before the princess be called upon 
to exercise the duties of which she has been here 
reminded. The whole poem 300 to 400 lines 
— on which, when they are completed, I will re- 
quest you to bestow an hour's reading, with a 
pencil in your hand. 

" In George Gascoignc's poem there are many 
things about the Dutch, showing that the English 
despised them and despaired of their cause, just 
as in our days happened to the Spaniards : 

'"And thus, my lord, your honor may discerne 
Our perils past ; and how, in our annoy, 



* "The attempt by the English force under Graham to 
carry Bergen-op-Zoom (a place of extraordinary strength, 
but inadequately garrisoned) by a coup-de-main, was re- 
pulsed, March 8, 1814, with a loss of 900 killed and wound- 
ed, and 1800 prisoners ; a bloody check, which paralyzed 
the operations of the English."— Alison. 

t My father had been in doubt as to the likelihood of 
the Princess Charlotte's marriage with the Prince of 
Orange, and hesitated whether to commence a poem on 
that subject. 



304 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 40. 



God saved me (your lordship's bound forever), 
Who else should not be able now to tell 
The state wherein this country doth persever, 
Ne how they seem in careless minds to dwell 
(So did they erst, and so they will do ever). 
And so, my lord, for to bewray my mind, 
Methinks. they be a race of bull-beef borne, 
Whose hearts their butter mollyfieth by land, 
And so the force of beef is clear outworne. 
And eke their brains with double beer are lined, 
Like sops of browasse puffed up with froth ; 
When inwardly they be but hollow geer, 
As weak as witfd which with one puff up goeth. 
And yet they brag, and think they have no peer, 
Because Harlem hath hitherto held out ; 
Although in deed (as they have suffered Spain) 
The end thereof even now doth rest in doubt.' 



" I dearly love a piece of historical poetry like 
this, which shows how men thought and felt, 
when history only tells me how they acted. 

"R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 25, 1814. 
" My dear Friend, 
"If the King of France has any stray cordon 
bleu to dispose of here, Herbert has a fair claim 
to one, having been the first person in Great 
Britain who mounted the white cockade. He 
appeared with one immediately upon the news 
from Bordeaux, and wore it till the news from 
Paris.* My young ones were then all as happy 
as paper cockades could make them ; and, to our 
great amusement, all the white ribbon in Kes- 
wick was bought up to follow their example. 
My own feelings, on the first intelligence, were 
unlike any thing that I ever experienced before 
or can experience again. The curtain had fallen 
after a tragedy of five-and-twenty years. Those 
persons who had rejoiced most enthusiastically 
at the beginning of the Revolution, were now 
deeply thankful for a termination which restored 
things, as nearly as can be, to the state from 
which they set out. What I said, with a voice 
of warning, to my own country, is here historic- 
ally true — that 'all the intermediate sum of 
misery is but the bitter price which folly pays 
for repentance.' The mass of destruction, of 
wretchedness, and of ruin which that revolution 
has occasioned, is beyond all calculation. Our 
conception of it is almost as vague and inade- 
quate as of infinity. This, however, occurred 
to me at. the time less than my own individual 
history ; for I could not but remember how ma- 
terially the course of my own life had been in- 
fluenced by that tremendous earthquake, which 
seemed to break up the great deeps of society, 
like a moral and political deluge. I have de- 
rived nothing but good from it in every thing ex- 
cept the mere consideration of immediate worldly 
fortune, which is to me as dust in the balance. 
Sure I am that under any other course of disci- 
pline I should not have possessed half the intel- 
lectual powers which I now enjoy, and perhaps 
not the moral strength. The hopes and the ar- 
dor, and the errors and the struggles, and the 
difficulties of ny early life crowded upon my 
mind ; and, above all, there was a deep and 



* Of the occupation of Paris by the allied armies, and 
tne restoration of the Bourbons. 



grateful sense of that superintending goodness 
which had made all things work together for 
good in my fortunes, and will, I firmly believe, 
in like manner uniformly educe good from evil 
upon the great scale of human events. 

" I fear we shall make a bad peace. Hitherto 
the people have borne on their governors (I ex- 
cept Prussia, where prince and people have been 
worthy of each other) . The rulers are now left 
to themselves, and I apprehend consequences 
which will fall heavy upon posterity, though not, 
perhaps, upon ourselves. I had rather the French 
philosophy had left any other of its blessings be- 
hind it than its candor and its liberality. It was 
very natural that the Emperor of Austria should 
not choose to have his son-in-law hanged. But 
here is Alexander breakfasting with Marshal Ney, 
who, if he had more necks than the Hydra or my 
Juggernaut,* owes them all to the gallows for 
his conduct in Galicia and in Portugal. Caulin- 
court is to have an asylum in Russia, and no doubt 
will be permitted to choose his latitude there. 
Candor is to make us impute all the enormities 
which the French have committed to Bonaparte. 
All the horrors, absolutely unutterable as they 
are, which you know were perpetrated in Portu- 
gal, and which I know were perpetrated in Spain, 
but which I literally can not detail in history, be- 
cause I dare not outrage human nature and com- 
mon decency by such details — all these must in 
candor be put out of remembrance. All was 
Bonaparte's doing, and the most amiable of na- 
tions were his victims rather than his agents — so 
this most veracious of nations tells us, and so we 
are to believe. But if the Devil could not have 
brought about all the crimes without the Emperor 
Napoleon, neither could the Emperor Napolecn 
have discharged the Devil's commission without 
the most amiable of nations to act up to the full 
scope of his diabolical desires. At present, I ad- 
mit, our business is to conciliate and consolidate 
the counter-revolution. But no visitings to Mar- 
shal Ney, no compliments to his worthy col- 
leagues, no asylums for the murderers of the Due 
d'Enghien. In treating for peace, liberality will 
not fail to be urged by the French negotiators as 
a reason for granting them terms which are in- 
consistent with the welfare of Europe. Alexan- 
der is a weak man, though a good one ; and our 
ministers will be better pleased to hear them- 
selves called liberal by the Opposition, than to be 
called wise by posterity. 

"R. SOUTHEY." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 27, 1814. 
" My dear Scott, 
" Thank God, we have seen the end of this 
long tragedy of five-and-twenty years ! The cur- 
tain has fallen; and though there is the after- 
piece of the Devil to Pay to be performed, we 
have nothing to do with that : it concerns the 
performers alone. I wish we had been within 

* See Curse of Kehama, sect xiv 



JE.TAT.40. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



3C5 



reach of a meeting upon the occasion ; and yet 
the first feeling was not a joyous one. Too many 
: recollections crowded upon the mind ; and the 
sudden termination putting an end at once to 
those hopes, and feax-s, and speculations which, 
for many years past, have made up so large a 
part of every man's intellectual existence, seemed 
like a change in life itself. Much as I had de- 
sired this event, and fully as I had expected it, 
still, when it came, it brought with it an awful 
sense of the instability of all earthly things ; and 
when I remembered that that same newspaper 
might as probably have brought with it intelli- 
gence that peace had been made with Bona- 
parte, I could not but acknowledge that some- 
thing more uniform in its operations than human 
councils had brought about the event. I thought 
he would set his life upon the last throw, and die 
game ; or that he would kill himself, or that some 
of his own men would kill him ; and though it 
had long been my conviction that he was a 
mean-minded villain, still it surprised me that he 
should live after such a degradation — after the 
loss, not merely of empire, but even of his mili- 
tary character. > But let him live ; if he will write 
his own history, he will give us all some informa- 
tion, and if he will read mine, it w T ill be some set- 
off against his crimes. 

" I desired Longman to send you the Carmen 
Triumphale. In the course of this year I shall 
volunteer verses enough of this kind to entitle me 
to a fair dispensation for all task-work in future. 
I have made good way through a poem upon the 
princess's marriage in the olden style, consisting 
of three parts — the Proem, the Dream, and L'En- 
voy ; and I am getting on with the series of Mil- 
itary Inscriptions. The conclusion of peace will, 
perhaps, require another ode, and I shall then 
trouble Jeffrey with a few more notes. As yet 
I know nothing more of his reply than what some 
sturdy friend in the Times has communicated to 
me ; but I shall not fail to pay all proper atten- 
tion to it in due season. He may rest assured 
that I shall pay all my obligations to him with 
compound interest. The uses of newspapers will 
for a while seem flat and unprofitable, yet there 
will be no lack of important matter from abroad ; 
and for acrimonious disputes at home, we shall 
always be sure of them. I fear we shall be too 
liberal in making peace. There is no reason 
why we should make any -cessions for pure gen- 
erosity. It is very true that Louis XVIII. has 
not been our enemy ; but the French nation has, 
and a most inveterate and formidable one. They 
should have their sugar islands, but not without 
paying for them — and that a good round sum — 
to be equally divided between Greenwich and 
Chelsea, or to form the foundation of a fund for 
increasing the pay of army and navy. 

" I am finishing Roderic, and deliberating 
w T hat subject to take up next ; for as it has pleased 
you and the prince to make me laureate, I am 
bound to keep up my poetical character. If I do 
not fix upon a tale of Robin Hood, or a New En- 
gland story connected with Philip's war, and 
Goffe the regicide, I shall either go far north or 
U 



far east for scenery and superstitions, and pursue 
my old scheme of my mythological delineations. 
Is it not almost time to hear of something from 
you ? I remember to have been greatly delighted 
when a boy with Amyntor and Theodora, and 
with Dr. Ogilvie's Rona. The main delight must 
have been from the scenes into which they car- 
ried me. There was a rumor that you were 
among the Hebrides. I heartily wish it may be 
true. 

" Remember us to Mrs. Scott and your daugh- 
ter. These children of ours are now growing 
tall enough and intelligent enough to remind us 
forcibly of the lapse of time. Another genera- 
tion is coming on. You and I, however, are not 
yet off the stage ; and, whenever we quit it, it 
will not be to men who will make a better figure 
there. 

" Yours very affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

"Keswick, April 29, 1814 
" My dear Neville, 

"My main employment at present is upon 
Roderic. The poem is drawing toward its com- 
pletion ; in fact, the difficulty may be considered 
as over, and yet a good deal of labor remains, for 
I write slowly and blot much. However, land is 
in sight, and I feel myself near enough the end 
of this voyage to find myself often considering 
upon what course I shall set sail for the next. 
Something of magnitude I must always have be- 
fore me to occupy me in the intervals of other 
pursuits, and to think of when nothing else re- 
quires attention. But I am less determined re- 
specting the subject of my next poem than I ever 
was before when a vacancy was so near. The 
New England Quaker story is in most forward- 
ness, but I should prefer something which in its 
tone of feeling would differ more widely from that 
on which I am at present busied. As to looking 
for a popular subject, this I shall never do ; for, 
in the first place, I believe it to be quite impos- 
sible to say what would be popular, and, second- 
ly, I should not willingly acknowledge to myseh 
that I was influenced by any other motive than 
the fitness of my story to my powers of execution. 

" The laureateship will certainly have this ef- 
fect upon me, that it will make me produce more 
poetry than I otherwise should have done. For 
many years I had w T ritten little, and was permix- 
ting other studies to wean me from it more and 
more. But it w T ould be unbecoming to accept the 
only public mark of honor which is attached to 
the pursuit, and at the same time withdraw from 
the profession. I am, therefore, reviving half- 
forgotten plans, forming new ones, and studying 
my old masters with almost as much ardor and 
assiduity as if I were young again. Some of 
Henry's papers yonder strikingly resemble what 
I used to do twenty years ago, and what I am 
beginning to do again. 

" Thank you for Lord Byron's Ode :* there is 

* Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte. 



306 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^Etat. 40. A 



in it, as in all his poems, great life, r spirit, and 
originality, though the meaning is not always 
brought out with sufficient perspicuity. The last 
time I saw him he asked me if I did not think 
Bonaparte a great man in his villainy. I told 
him no — that he was a mean-minded villain. 
And Lord Byron has now been brought to the 
same opinion. But of politics in my next. I 
shall speedily thank Josiah Conder for his review, 
and comment a little upon its contents. Some 
of his own articles please me exceedingly. I 
wish my coadjutors in the Quarterly had thought 
half as much upon poetry, and understood it half 
as well. 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

"R. SOUTHEY." 

To Mr. James White. 

" Keswick, May 2, 1814. 
" My dear James, 

" I am glad to hear from Neville that you are 
improved in health and spirits. What you say 
of the inconvenience of mathematical studies to 
a man who has no inclination for them, no ne- 
cessity for them, no time to spare for acquiring 
them, and no use for them when they are ac- 
quired, is perfectly true ; and I think it was one 
of the advantages (Heaven knows they were very 
few) which Oxford used to possess over Cam- 
bridge, that a man might take his degree, if he 
pleased, without knowing any thing of the sci- 
ence. A tenth or a fiftieth part of the time em- 
ployed upon Euclid, would serve to make the 
under-graduate a good logician, and logic will 
stand him in good stead, to whatever profession 
he may betake himself. 

" Your repugnance to the expense of time 
which this fatiguing study requires is very natu- 
ral and very reasonable, and the best comfort I 
can offer is to remind you that the time will soon 
come when you will have the pleasure of forget- 
ting all you have learned. Your apprehensions 
of deficiency in more important things are not so 
well founded. The Church stands in need of 
men of various characters and acquirements. 
She ought to have some sturdy polemics, equally 
able to attack and to defend. One or two of 
these are as many as she wants, and as many as 
she produces in a generation ; she can not do 
without them, and yet sometimes they do evil as 
well as good. Horsley was the militant of the 
last generation, Herbert Marsh of the present. 
Next to these stiff canonists and sound theolo- 
gians she requires some who excel in the Uteres 
humaniores, and who may keep up that literary 
character which J. Taylor, South, Sherlock, 
Barrow, &c, have raised, and which of late 
days has certainly declined. Of these a few also 
are sufficient. There are hardly more than half 
a dozen pulpits in the kingdom in which an elo- 
quent preacher would not be out of his place. 
Every where else, what is required of the preach- 
er is to be plain, perspicuous, and in earnest. 
If he feels himself, he will make his congregation 
t>el. But it is not in the pulpit that the minister 



may do most good. He will do infinitely more 
by living with his parishioners like a pastor ; by 
becoming their confidential adviser, their friend, 
their comforter; directing the education of the 
poor, and, as far as he can, inspecting that of 
all, which it is not difficult for a man of good 
sense and gentle disposition to do as an official 
duty, without giving it, in the slightest degree, 
the appearance of officious interference. Teach 
the young what Christianity is ; distinguish by 
noticing and rewarding those who distinguish 
themselves by their good conduct ; see to the 
wants of the poor, and call upon the charity of 
the rich, making yourself the channel through 
which it flows ; look that the schools be in good 
order, that the work-house is what it ought to be, 
that the overseers do their duty ; be, in s.hort, 
the active friend of your parishioners. Sunday 
will then be the least of your labors, and the 
least important of your duties ; and you will very 
soon find that the time employed in making a 
sermon would be better employed in adapting to 
your congregation a dozen, which your prede- 
cessors did not deliver to the press for no other 
purpose than that they should stand idle upon the 
shelves of a divinity library. The pulpit is a 
clergyman's parade, the parish is his field of 
active service. 

" Believe me, my dear James, 

" Yours very affectionately, 

"ROBERT SOUTHEY " 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"May 9, 1814. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" Here is a choice poem for you — the produc- 
tion of a man who keeps a billiard-table at 
Carlisle, and w T ho, having a genius for poetry, 
and not daring to show his productions to his 
wife and daughters, has pitched upon Calvert 
for his confidant. I give it to you literatim, and 
shall content myself with desiring you not to 
imagine, from the lyrical abruptness of the be- 
ginnings, that the poem is imperfect. It is a 
whole, and perfect in its kind. 

'"Not forgetting Lord Wellington, 
When he to Beaudeux came, 
The most noble lord was received 
With great honor to his name. 
The Bourbon cry caled aloud so high, 
That it made Paris shake and trimble. 
May we all se that shock to be 
And make Bonaparte to trimble. 
Rise Paris and let us se 
Shake off that yoke for liberty 
There is a shake now begun, 
Tear it up and pull it down ! 
May we all united be 
In this most noble cause, 
To protect our king, 
Our country, and our laws. 
Louis haste, heare is a call, 
Paris crie is one and all. 
Blucher, by his great power, 
Will protect the every hour. 
May France rejoice and sing, 
Long life to Louis cur king. 
We Britons will rejoice 
To see Louis made their choice 



God bless 



R. Soutiiey 



^F.TAT. 41. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



307 



To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"June 5, 1814. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" Another homo, cui nomen Colburn, lord of 
the New Monthly Magazine, has written for my 
portrait. Now, according to all rules of arith- 
metic (of which I know little) and algebra (of 
which I know nothing) , if a portrait in one maga- 
zine be to do me yeoman's service, portraits in 
two will do the service of two yeomen. So do 
you answer for me to the European, either by 
note or letter, offering your drawing, and I will 
*,end the alter homo to the doctor to make use of 
the bust. Quoad the biographical sketch, nothing 
more need be mentioned than that I was born at 
Bristol, Aug. 12, 1774--— prince and poet having 
the same birth-day — was of Westminster and aft- 
erward of Baliol College, Oxford, and that my 
maternal uncle being chaplain of the British Fac- 
tory at Lisbon, my studies were by that circum- 
stance led toward the literature and history of 
Portugal and Spain. This is what I shall tell 
Colburn, and his merry men may dress it tip as 
he pleases. 

" But Grosvenor ! I have this day thought 
of a third ' Portrait of the author,' to be prefixed 

to the delectable history of Dr. D. D , to 

which history I yesterday wrote the preface with 
a peacock's pen. It is to be the back of the 
writer, sitting at his desk with his peacock's pen 
in his hand. As soon as Roderic is finished, 
which it will very soon be, I think the spirit will 
move me to spur myself on with his delicious 
book by sending it piecemeal to you. Will you 
enter into a commercial treaty with me, and 
send Butler in return? R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jane 16, 1814. 
" My dear Rickman, 
" It came into my head that it might perad- 
venture be a fit thing for the poet laureate to 
write certain verses upon the peace to the per. 



sonasres who are now dras 



all London after 



their horses' heels. I was very well inclined to 
put the thought out of my head, if some of the 
very few persons whom I see here had not shown 
me by their inquiries that it would come into 
other heads as well as mine. The subjects for 
their kind were the best possible ; so I fell to in 
good earnest, and have written three odes* in 
Thalaba's verse. The Carmen was an oration 
in rhyme. These are odes without rhyme, but 
in manner and matter altogether lyric. I shall 
have no time even to correct the press. I have 
written to Croker, saying that it may be proper 
to present copies to the persons be-oded, or that 
such presentations might be improper, and that, 
in my ignorance of such things, I requested him 
to act for me. # # # #= # 

" I am in some trouble about my old corre- 
spondent, Don Manual Abella, a man of letters 
and a stanch friend of the old Cortes, though no 
admirer of the head-over-heels activity of the 

* To the Prince Regent, the Emperor of Russia, and the 
Kin? of Prussia. 



new ones. I think he is in some danger of com- 
ing under a proscription, which seems to make 
little distinction of persons. That Ferdinand 
and the Constitution could long coexist was not 
possible. The king was a mere log, and must 
soon have been treated as such. But he has 
gone vilely to work ; and I will not condemn him 
in toto till it be seen what sort of Constitution he 
means to give the people (encore une Constitu- 
tion !). I very much fear that the old system of 
favoritism will return, and that abominations of 
every kind will be restored as well as the Inqui- 
sition, which blessed office, you see, has been re- 
established, in compliance with the popular cry, 
as a boon ! 

" An officer of Suchet's army, who served at 
the siege of Tarragona, and was afterward taken 
by E roles, was brought here last week by Words- 
worth, to whom he had letters of recommenda- 
tion from France — a young man, and apparently 
one of the best of these Frenchmen. He had 
grace enough to acknowledge that the Spanish 
business was an unjust one, which he said all the 
officers knew ; and he amused me by complain- 
ing that the Spaniards were very hard-hearted. 
To which I replied that they had not invited him 
and his countrymen. He said, ' They did make 
beautiful defense ;' and I gathered from him some 
information upon points of consequence. 

" I have sent to the Courier a doggerel March 
to Moscow, written months ago to amuse the 
children, and chiefly upon the provocation of an 
irresistible rhyme, wilich is not to be printed. I 
give you the suppressed stanza ; for I am sure, 
if you happen to see the song, you will wonder 
how such a hit could have been missed.* 

"The Emperor Nap, he talked so loud, 
That he frightened Mr. Roscoe ; 
John Bull, he cries, if you'll be wise, 
Ask the Emperor Nap if he will please 
To grant you peace upon your knees, 

Because he's going to Moscow ! 
He'll make all the Poles come out of their holes, 
And eat the Prussians, and beat the Russians; 

The fields are green, and the sky is blue, 
Morblue ! Parblue ! 

He'll certainly get to Moscow ! 

" There is some good doggerel in the rest, and 
Morbleu, &c, is the burden of the song. 

"Yours most truly, R. S." 

To Messrs. Longman and Co. 

" Keswick, Sept. 3, 1814. 
■' Dear Sirs, 
" * * * I have had a visit from 
Mr. Canning to-day, who has offered me his 
good offices in Portugal, and to be the means :d 
any communication with Henry Wellesley at 
Madrid. This new opening is so much the more 
acceptable, as my main source of information has 
been cut off, Abella, I fear, being at this time in 
prison. 

" The restoration of the Jesuits is a most im- 
portant measure, and not the least extraordinary 

* This stanza is now printed with the rest of the poem. 



308 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^Etat 41 



of the great events which have lately taken place. 
This concluding volume of Brazil will be the 
only single work which contains the whole his- 
tory of their empire in South America, and of 
their persevering struggle against the Indian 
slave-trade, which was the remote but main 
cause of their overthrow. I am working at this 
from manuscript documents, some of which fa- 
tigue the sight. 

" Murray sent me the other day the two first 
and two last volumes of your translation of Hum- 
boldt, which I shall review. This traveler has 
so encumbered his volumes with science, that I 
think you would do well to extract his travels, 
insert in them the readable part of his other works 
in their proper place, and thus put the generally 
interesting part within reach of the reading pub- 
lic. This is what Pinkerton ought to have done. 
Can you lend me Humboldt's Essay on the Ge- 
ography of Plants ? It must, doubtless, contain 
some Brazilian information. 

" Yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Joseph Cottle, Esq. 

"Keswick, Oct. 17, 1814. 
" My dear Cottle, 
" It is not long since I heard of you from De 
Quincey, but I wish you would let me some- 
times hear from you. There was a time when 
scarcely a day passed without my seeing you, 
and in all that time I do not remember that there 
ever was a passing coldness between us. The 
feeling, I am sure, continues ; do not, then, let 
us be so entirely separated by distance, which in 
cases of correspondence may almost be consider- 
ed as a mere abstraction. * * * * 
* ******* 

" Longman will send you my poem. It has 
been printed about two months, but he delays its 
publication till November, for reasons of which 
he must needs be the best judge. I am neither 
sanguine about its early, nor doubtful about its 
ultimate, acceptation in the world. The passion 
is in a deeper tone than in any of my former 
works ; I call it a tragic poem for this reason ; 
and also that the reader may not expect the same 
busy and complicated action which the term 
heroic might seem to promise. The subject has 
the disadvantage of belonging to an age of which 
little or no costume has been preserved. I was, 
therefore, cut off from all adornments of this kind, 
and had little left me to relieve the stronger 
parts but description, the best of which is from 
the life. 

******* 

" Can you tell me any thing of Coleridge ? A 

few lines of introduction for a son of Mr. , 

of St. James's (in your city), are all that we have 
received since I saw him last September twelve- 
month in town. The children being thus entirely 
left to chance, I have applied to his brothers at 
Otley concerning them, and am in hopes through 
their means, and the aid of other friends, of send- 
ing Hartley to college. Lady Beaumont has 
promised £30 a year for this purpose, Poole £10. 



I wrote to Coleridge three or four months ago, 
telling him that unless he took some steps in 
providing for this object I must make the appli- 
cation, and required his answer within a given 
term of three weeks. He received the letter, and 

in his note by Mr. promised to answer it, 

but he has never taken any further notice of it. 
I have acted with the advice of Wordsworth. 
The brothers, as I expected, promise their con- 
currence, and I daily expect a letter, stating to 
what amount they will contribute. * * 

" Believe me, my dear Cottle, 

" Ever your affectionate old friend. 

" Robert Southey " 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Nov. 8, 1814. 
" My dear Neville, 
" . * * * I was not sorry that we 

did not meet at Ambleside merely to take leave. 
It is one of those things which, since my school- 
boy days, I always avoid when I can ; there are 
but 1»o many of these long good-by's in life ; and 
to one who has experienced in the losses you 
have sustained that fearful uncertainty of life 
which only experience makes us fully feel and 
understand, they are very painful. Our repast 
upon Kirkston* wore a good face of cheerful- 
ness ; but I could not help feeling how soon we 
were to separate, and how doubtful it was that 
the whole of the party would ever be assembled 
together again. ***** 

* ******* 
After our return Isabel was seized with a severe 
attack, and was brought to the very brink of the 
grave. I so verily expected to lose her, that I 
thought at one moment I had seen her for the 
last time. There are heavier afflictions than 
this, but none keener ; and the joy and thankful- 
ness which attend on recovery are proportionately 
intense. She has not yet regained her strength ; 
but every day is restoring her, God be thanked. 

"I am glad you have seen these children. 

* * If, by God's blessing, my life should 
be prolonged till they are grown up, I have no 
doubt of providing for them ; and if Herbert's 
life be spared, he has every thing which can be 
required to make his name a good inheritance 
to him. ****** 

" dear Neville ! how unendurable would life 
be if it were not for the belief that we shall meet 
again in a better state of existence. I do not 
know that person who is happier than myself, 
and who has more reason to be happy ; and never 
was man more habitually cheerful ; but this be- 
lief is the root which gives life to all, and holds 
all fast. God bless you ! 

" Yours very affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Mr. James White. 

"Keswick, Nov. 11, 1814. 
"My dear James, 
"lam grieved to learn from Neville that you 



A mountain pass leading from Ambleside to Patterdale. 



JEtat. 41. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



£09 



are distressing yourself about what I could find 
in my heart to call these cursed examinations.* 
There are few things of which I am more thor- 
oughly convinced, than that the system of feed- 
ing-up young men like so many game cocks for 
a sort of intellectual long-main is every way per- 
nicious. 

" University honors are like provincial tokens, 
not current beyond the narrow limits of the dis- 
trict in which they are coined ; and even where 
they pass current they are not the only currency, 
nor the best. Doubtless there are many men at 
Cambridge in high repute, who have taken no 
honors and gained no prizes ; and should you 
yourself stand for a fellowship or take pupils, you 
will find the opinion of what you might have done 
will act as well in your favor as if your acquire- 
ments had received the seal and stamp of appro- 
bation in the Senate House. Content yourself 
with graduating among the many ; and remem- 
ber that the first duty which you have to perform 
is that of keeping yourself, as far as it can de- 
pend upon yourself, in sound health of body and 
mind, both for your own sake and for the sake 
of those who are most dear to you. If I were 
near you I would rid you of these blue devils. 
When I was about eighteen I made Epictetus 
literally my manual for some twelve months, and 
by that wholesome course of stoicism counteract- 
ed the mischief whic I might else have incur- 
red from a passionate admiration of Werter and 
Rousseau. His tonics agreed with me ; and if 
the old Grecian could know how impassible I 
have ever since felt myself to the ra ova e<p ripilv, 
he would be well satisfied with the effect of his 
lessons. It is not your fault that these university 
distinctions have a local and temporary value, 
but it is your fault if you do not consider how 
local and how temporary that value is ; and if 
you suffer yourself to be agitated by any losses 
and fears concerning what is worth so little. 
My dear James, in this matter, follow, in the 
strict interpretation of the words, the advice of 
Boethius, 

1 Pelle timorera, 
Spemque fugato. 1 

Remember that you only want your degree as 
a passport : content yourself with simply taking 
it ; and if you are disposed to revenge yourself 
afterward by burning your mathematical books 
and instruments, bring them with you to Keswick 
when next you make us a visit, and I will assist 
at the auto-da-fe. We will dine by the side of 
the Lake, and light our fire with Euclid. 

" Neville w T as more fortunate than you in his 
excursion to this land of loveliness. He had de- 
lightful weather, and he made the most of it. 
Never had we a more indefatigable guest, nor one 
who enjoyed the country more heartily. Since 
his return, Neville-like, he has loaded us with 
presents; and no children were ever happier 
than these young ones were when the expected 



* This is strong language ; but it might well be used to 
the brother of poor Kirke White, who, urged by exhorta- 
tions, and kept up by stimulants, won in the race, and — 
died. 



box made its appearance. I happened to be 
passing the evening at the island with General 
Peachcy when it arrived, and they one and all 
laid their injunctions upon their mother not to 
tell me what each had received, that they might 
surprise me with the sight in the morning. Ac- 
cordingly, no sooner was my door opened in the 
morning than the whole swarm were in an up- 
roar, buzzing about me. In an evil moment I 
had begun to shave myself ; before the operation 
was half over, Edith with her work-box was on 
one side, Herbert with his books on the other ; 
Bertha was displaying one treasure, Kate an- 
other, and little Isabel, jigging for delight in the 
midst of them, was crying out mine — mine — 
Mitter White — and holding up a box of Tun- 
bridge ware. My poor chin suffered for all this, 
and the scene would have made no bad subject 
for Wilkie or Bird. God bless you ! 
" Your affectionate friend, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Dr. Gooch. 

" Keswick, Nov. 30, 1814. 
" My dear Gooch, 

" Your letter reminds me that I have some- 
thing to ask of you. You may remember telling 
me of a sailor in Yarmouth Hospital, after Nel- 
son's battle at Copenhagen (if I recollect rightly), 
whom you attended, and who died in consequence 
of neglect after you had ceased to attend him, 
but expressed his delight at seeing you before he 
died. Thougn I have not forgotten, and could 
not forget the circumstances, I have acquired a 
sort of passion for authenticity upon all points 
where it is attainable, and you will oblige me by 
relating the particulars. I am about to compose 
a paper for the Quarterly, the text for which will 
be taken from the Reports of the Poor Society, 
and the object of which is to show what has been 
done in this country toward lessening the quan- 
tum of human suffering, and what remains to do. 
In treating of prevention, correction, and allevi- 
ation, I shall have to treat of schools, prisons, 
and hospitals ; and respecting hospitals, must 
quote the saying of a Frenchman whom Louis 
XVI. sent over to England to inquire into the 
manner in which they were conducted. He 
praised them as they deserved, but added, Mais 
il y manque deux choscs, non cures, et nos hospi- 
talieres. And here, with due caution respecting 
place, &c, I wish to tell your story. 

" I am fully convinced that a gradual improve- 
ment is going on in the world, has been going 
on from its commencement, and will continue till 
the human race shall attain all the perfection of 
which it is capable in this mortal state. This 
belief grows out of knowledge ; that is, it is a 
corollary deduced from the whole history of man- 
kind. It is no little pleasure to believe that in 
no age has this improvement proceeded so rapid- 
ly as in the present, and that there never was so 
great a disposition to promote it in those who 
have the power. The disposition, indeed, is al- 
loyed with much weakness and much supersti- 
tion ; and God knows there are manv disturbing 



310 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 4: 



powers at work. But much has been done, more 
is doing, and nothing can be of more importance 
than giving this disposition a good direction. 
Perceval's death was one of the severest losses 
that England has ever sustained. He was a 
man who not only desired to act well, but de- 
sired it ardently ; his heart always strengthened 
his understanding, and gave him that power 
which rose always to the measure of the occa- 
sion. Lord Liverpool is a cold man : you may 
convince his understanding, but you can only ob- 
tain an inert assent where zealous co-operation 
is wanted. It is, however, enough for us to know 
what ought to be done : the how and the when 
are in the hands of One who knows when and 
how it may be done best. Oh ! if this world of 
ours were but well cultivated, and weeded well, 
how like the garden of Eden might it be made ! 
Its evils might almost be reduced to physical 
suffering and death ; the former continually di- 
minishing, and the latter, always indeed an aw- 
ful thing, but yet to be converted into hope and 

joy. 

" I am much better pleased with 's choice 

than if he had made a more ambitious alliance. 
Give me neither riches nor poverty, said the Wise 
Man. Lead us not into temptation is one of the 
few petitions of that prayer which comprises all 
that we need to ask : riches always lead that 
way. 

" Why have you not been to visit Joanna South- 
cote? If I had been less occupied, I should have 
requested you to go, not for the sake of a pro- 
fessional opinion (Dr. Simms having satisfied me 
upon that score), but that you might have got at 
some of the mythology, and ascertained how 
much was imposture and how much delusion. 
Gregoire has published a Histoire des Sectes, in 
two volumes, beginning with the last century. I 
shall review it as a second part to the article 
upon the Dissenters. 

"You have in Roderic the best which I have 
done, and, probably, the best that I shall do, 
which is rather a melancholy feeling for the au- 
thor. My powei's, I hope, are not yet verging 
upon decay, but I have no right to* expect any 
increase or improvement, short as they are of 
what they might have been, and of what I might 
have hoped to make them. Perhaps I shall never 
venture upon another poem of equal extent, and 
in so deep a strain. It will affect you more than 
Madoc, because it is pitched in a higher key. I 
am growing old, the gray hairs thicken upon me, 
my joints are less supple, and, in mind as well as 
body, I am less enterprising than in former years. 
When the thought of any new undertaking oc- 
curs, the question, Shall I live to complete what 
I have already undertaken ? occurs also. My 
next poem will be, 'A Tale of Paraguay,' about 
a thousand lines only in length. Its object will 
be to plant the grave with flowers, and wreathe 
a chaplet for the angel of death. If you suspect, 
from all this, that I suffer any diminution of my 
usual happy spirits, you will be mistaken. God 
bless you ! 

"R. S." 



To Bernard Barton, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 19, 1814. 
" My dear Sir, 

" You will wonder at not having received my 
thanks for your metrical effusions ; but you will 
acquit me of all incivility when you hear that the 
book did not reach me till this morning, and that 
I have now laid it down after a full perusal. 

" I have read your poems with much pleasure, 
those with most which speak most of your own 
feelings. Have I not seen some of them in the 
Monthly Magazine ? 

" Wordsworth's residence and mine are fifteen 
miles asunder, a sufficient distance to preclude 
any frequent interchange of visits. I have known 
him nearly twenty years, and for about half that 
time intimately. The strength and the character 
of his mind you see in the Excursion, and his life 
does not belie his writings, for in every relation 
of life, and every point of view, he is a truly ex- 
emplary and admirable man. In conversation he 
is powerful beyond any of his cotemporaries ; and 
as a poet — I speak not from the partiality of 
friendship, nor because we have been so absurdly 
held up as both writing upon one concerted sys- 
tem of poetry, but with the most deliberate ex- 
ercise of impartial judgment whereof I am capa- 
ble, when I declare my full conviction that pos- 
terity will rank him with Milton. * * 

" You wish the metrical tales were republish- 
ed ; they are at this time in the press, incorporated 
with my other minor poems, in three volumes. 
Nos hcec novimus esse nihil may serve as motto 
for them all. 

" Do not suffer my projected Quaker poem to 
interfere with your intentions respecting William 
Penn ; there is not the slightest reason why it 
should. Of all great reputations, Penn's is that 
which has been most the effect of accident. The 
great action of his life was his turning Quaker ; 
the conspicuous one his behavior upon his trial. 
In all that regards Pennsylvania, he has no othei 
merit than that of having followed the principles 
of the religious community to which he belonged, 
when his property happened to be vested in colo- 
nial speculations. The true champion for relig- 
ious liberty in America was Roger Williams, the 
first consistent advocate for it in that country, 
and, perhaps, the first in any one. I hold his 
memory in veneration. But, because I value re- 
ligious liberty, I differ from you entirely concern- 
ing the Catholic question, and never would in- 
trust any sect with political power whose doc- 
trines are inherently and necessarily intolerant. 

" Believe me, yours with sincere respect, 
" Robert Southey " 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 22, 1814. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
"If Murray were to offer me d£500 for a 
Register, I certainly should not for a moment 
hesitate. Indeed, I know not whether I ought 
not gladly to catch at the c=£400, circumstanced 
as I am. In that case I should advise him to 
begin with the Peace, for many reasons. First, 



Mr.vv /'A. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



311 



because it would be .so tremendous an undertak- 
ing to bring up the lee- way from the beginning 
of 1812; and, secondly, because there is a great 
advantage in commencing with a new era in his- 
tory. It might be worth while at leisure (if I 
could possibly procure it) to write the volumes 
for 1812-13, for the sake of connecting the for- 
mer volumes with these ; but this I should de- 
spair of. My history of the Peninsula will include 
what is to me the most interesting portion, and 
the only portion which I can do thoroughly as it 
ought to be done. And, more than all, however 
I might spirit myself up to the undertaking, flesh 
and blood are not equal to it. I can not get 
through more than at present, unless I give up 
sleep, or the little exercise which I take (and I 
walk to the Crag* before breakfast) ; and, that 
hour excepted, and my meals (barely the meals, 
for I remain not one minute after them), the pen 
or the book is always in my hand. 

" Had you not better wait for Jeffrey's attack 
upon Roderic ? I have a most curious letter 
upon this subject from Hogg, the Ettric Shep- 
herd, a worthy fellow, and a man of very extra- 
ordinary powers. Living in Edinburgh, he thinks 
Jeffrey the greatest man in the world — an intel- 
lectual Bonaparte, whom nobody and nothing can 
resist. But Hogg, notwithstanding this, has fallen 
in liking with me, and is a great admirer of 
Roderic. And this letter is to request that I 
will not do any thing to nettle Jeffrey while he 
is deliberating concerning Roderic, for he seems 
favorably disposed toward me ! Morbleu ! it is 
a rich letter ! Hogg requested that he himself 
might review it, and gives me an extract from 
Jeffrey's answer, refusing him. ' I have, as 
well as you, a great respect for Southey,' he 
says ; ' but he is a most provoking fellow, and at 
least as conceited as his neighbor Wordsworth.' 
But he shall be happy to talk to Hogg upon this 
and other kindred subjects, and he should be very 
glad to give me a lavish allowance of praise, if 
I would afford him occasion, &c. ; but he must 
do what he thinks his duty, &c. ! I laugh to think 
of the effect my reply will produce upon Hogg. 
How it will make every bristle to stand on end 
like quills upon the fretful porcupine ! 

" God bless you ! R. S. 

" What can I call the ode ? Can you find any 
thing to stand with Carmen ? Annuum I will 
not use, nor will I call it Ode for the New Year, 
for I will do nothing that I can avoid toward per- 
petuating the custom. How would Carmen Hor- 
tatorium do, if there be such a word?" 

To Waller Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 24, 1814. 
" My dear Scott, 
" Are you still engaged with the Lord of the 
Isles, or may I give you joy of a happy deliver- 
ance ? There are few greater pleasures in life 
than that of getting fairly through a great work 
of (his kind, and seeing it when it first comes be- 
fore us in portly form. I envy you the advantage 



* A promontory jutting out into Derwentwater, about a 
mile from Greta Hall. 



which you always derive from a thorough knowl- 
edge of your poetical ground ; no man can be 
more sensible of this advantage than myself, 
though I have in every instance been led to fore- 
go it. 

" Longman was to take care that Roderic 
should be duly conveyed to you. Remember that 
if you do not duly receive every book which has 
the name of R. S. in the title-page, the fault lies 
among the booksellers. My last employment 
has been an Odeous one. I was in good hope 
that this silly custom had been dispensed with, 
but on making inquiry through Croker, the reply 
was that an ode I must write. It would be as 
absurd in me to complain of this, as it is in the 
higher powers to exact it. However, I shall no 
longer feel myself bound to volunteer upon ex- 
traordinary service. I had a ridiculous disap- 
pointment about the intended marriage of the 
Princess Charlotte, which was so mischievously 
broken off. Willing to be in time, as soon as I 
was assured that the marriage was to be, I fell 
to work, and produced some fifty six-lined stanzas, 
being about half of a poem in the old manner, 
which would have done me credit. 

" I do not like the aspect of affairs abroad. 
We make war better than we make peace. In 
war John Bull's bottom makes amends for the de- 
fects of his head ; he is a dreadful fellow to take 
by the horns, but no calf can be more easily led 
by the nose. Europe was in such a state when 
Paris was taken, that a commanding intellect, 
had there been such among the allies, might have 
cast it into whatever form he pleased. The first 
business should have been to have reduced France 
to what she was before Louis XIV. 's time ; the 
second to have created a great power in the north 
of Germany with Prussia at its head ; the third to 
have consolidated Italy into one kingdom or com- 
monwealth. A fairer opportunity was given us 
than at the peace of Utrecht, but moderation and 
generosity were the order of the day, and with 
these words w T e have suffered ourselves to be 
fooled. Here at home the Talents, with that 
folly which seems to pursue all their measures 
like a fatality, are crying out in behalf of Poland 
and Saxony — the restoration of w T hich would be 
creating two powerful allies for France ; and in 
America we have both lost time and credit. Of 
Sir G. Prevost, from his former conduct, I have 
too good an opinion to condemn him until I have 
heard his defense ; but there has evidently been 
misconduct somewhere ; and at Baltimore I can 
not but think that the city would have been taken 
if poor Ross had not been killed. Confidence is 
almost every thing in war. 

" Jeffrey, I hear, has written what his admirers 
call a crushing review of the Excursion. He 
might as well seat himself upon Skiddaw, and 
fancy that he crushed the mountain. I heartily 
wish Wordsworth may one day meet with him, 
and lay him alongside, yard-arm and yard-arm 
in argument. 

" I saw Canning for an hour or two when he 
was in this country, and was far more pleased 
with him than I had expected. He has played 



312 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JE.TAT. 41. 



his ca cds ill. In truth, I believe that nature made 
him for something better than a politician. He 
is gone to a place where I wish I could go. In- 
deed, I should think seriously of going to Spain, 
if the country, were not evidently in a very inse- 
cure state. Some of my old Guerilla friends, for 
want of other occupation, might employ a car- 
tridge upon me. I have still a communication 
with Madrid, but of course we get no informa- 
tion concerning the real state of things ; nor can 
I guess who is the mover of this mischief; for 
Ferdinand is a fool, and is, moreover, exceeding- 
ly popular, which seems as if he were a good- 
natured fool. And a change of ostensible coun- 
selors has produced no change of system. I am 
much gratified by the compliment the Academy 
have paid me, and if the Lisbon Academy should 
follow the example, I should desire no other mark 
of literary honor. The concluding volume of my 
Brazil is in the press, and I am closely employed 
upon it. You will find in it some warfare of the 
old hearty character, the whole history of the 
Jesuits in Paraguay, and much curious informa- 
tion respecting the savages. Remember me to 
Mrs. Scott and your daughter, and believe me, 
" Yours very affectionately, 

".Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Dec. 29, 1814. 

" Laits Deo I Peace with America. All diffi- 
culty about the ode is thus terminated; and in- 
stead of singing be joyful ! I must'Sbt about 
another. So I shall pen one for the fiddlers, and 
alter the other, either to be published separately 
or with it. Coming extra-officially, it can not be 
offensive, and being in the press, it can not be 
suppressed without losing the price of the print- 
er's labor. 

" As for any such possibilities as those at 
which you hint, they are so very like impossibil- 
ities that I do not know how to distinguish them ; 
for, in the first place, you may be sure that if 
the men in power were ever so well disposed to- 
ward me, they would think me already liberally 
remunerated for my literary merits ; they can not 
know that by gaining a pension of d£200 I was 
actually a loser of 6620 a year; they, if they 
thought about it at all, would needs suppose that 
it was a clear addition to my former means, and 
that, if I lived decently before, the addition would 
enable me to live with ease and comfort. Sec- 
ondly, they are never likely to think about me 
further than as I may, in pursuing my own prin- 
ciples, happen to fall in with their view of things. 
This happened in the Spanish war, and would 
have happened in the Catholic question if the 
Quarterly had not been under Canning's influ- 
ence. Thirdly, I am neither enthusiast nor hyp- 
ocrite, but a man deeply and habitually religious 
in all my feelings. 

" No, Grosvenor, I shall never get more from 
government than has already been given me, and 
I am and ought to be well contented with it; 
only they ought to allow me my wine in kind, 
ancj. dispense with the odes. When did this fool's 



custom begin ? Before Cibber's time ? I would 
have made the office honorable, if they would 
have let me. If they will not, the dishonor will 
not be mine. And now I am going to think about 
my rhymes, so farewell for the night. 

" Friday, Dec. 30. 

" I have been rhyming as doggedly and as 
dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye. 
Another dogged fit will, it is to be hoped, carry 
me through the job ; and as the ode will be very 
much according to rule, and entirely good for 
nothing, I presume it may be found unobjection- 
able. Meantime the poor Mus. Doc. has the old 
poem to mumble over. As I have written in 
regular stanzas, I shall dispatch him one by this* 
post to set him his tune. It is really my wish to 
use all imaginable civility to the Mus. Doc, and 
yet J dare say he thinks me a troublesome fellow 
as well as an odd one. 

" God bless you ! R. Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landoi; Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 3, 1815. 

" In one of the first books which I published, 
a crazy compositor took it into his head to cor- 
rect the proofs after me ; and this he did so assid- 
uously, that it cost me no fewer than sixteen 
cancels to get rid of the most intolerable of his 
blunders. One of his principles was, that in 
printing verse, wherever the lines were so in- 
dented that two in succession did not begin in 
the same perpendicular, there was to be a full 
stop at the end of the former; and upon this 
principle he punctuated my verses. I discovered 
it at last in the printing office, upon inquiring 
how it happened that the very faults for which 
a leaf was canceled appeared most perseveringly 
in the reprint. The man then came forward, 
quite in a fit of madness, told me I should have 
made a pretty book of it if he had not corrected 
it for me, and it was as much as the master of 
the office could do to pacify him. 

"You have, I think, at Tours, the grave of 
Ronsard, who would have been a great poet if 
he had not been a Frenchman. I have read his 
works in those odds and ends of time which can 
be afforded to such reading, and have so much 
respect for him, Frenchman as he was, that I 
shall not visit Tours without inquiring for his 
grave. Never did man more boldly promise im- 
mortality to himself — never did man more ardent- 
ly aspire after it ; and no Frenchman has ever 
impressed me with an equal sense of power ; 
but poetry of the higher order is as impossible in 
that language as it is in Chinese. And this re- 
minds me of a certain M. le Mierre, interprete, 
traducteur, &c, who has written to tell me that 
many of my compatriotes, distingues par leur gout 
et leurs connoissances. have spoken to him with 
great eulogies of my poem of Roderic ; where- 
upon he, not having seen the poem, has resolved 
to translate it, and found a bookseller who will 
undertake to print the translation. I wrote him, 
as courtesy required, a civil reply, but expressed 
my doubts whether such a poem would accord 
with the tastes of a French public, and recom- 



AZtat. -kl. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



313 



mended him, if he should persist in his intention I 
when he had read the work, to render it in prose 
rather than in verse. 

" I have begun my Quaker poem, and written | 
the first book in irregular rhyme — a measure 
which allows of a lower key than any structure 
of rhymeless verse, and may be laid aside, when 
the passion requires it, for dialogue. The prin- 
cipal character is rather a Seeker (in the lan- 
guage of that day) than a Quaker, a son of Goffe, 
the king's judge, a godson of Cromwell, a friend 
of Milton, a companion of William Penn. The 
plan is sufficiently made out ; but I have no 
longer that ardor of execution which I possessed 
twenty years ago. I have the disheartening con- 
viction that my best is done, and that to add to 
the bulk of my works will not be to add to their 
estimation. Doubtless I shall go on with the 
poem, and complete it if I live ; but it will be to 
please others, not myself; and will be so long in 
progress, that in all likelihood I shall never begin 
another. You see I am not without those au- 
tumnal feelings which your stanza expresses, and 
yet the decline of life has delights of its own — 
its autumnal odors and its sunset hues. My dis- 
position is invincibly cheerful, and this alone 
would make me a happy man, if I were not so i 
from the tenor of my life ; yet I doubt whether 
the strictest Carthusian has the thought of death ' 
more habitually in his mind. 

"I hope to see you in. the autumn, and will, 
if it be possible. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. J. Neville White. 

"Keswick, Feb. 16, 1815. 
" My dear Neville, 

" Since you heard from me, I have scarcely 
seen a face but those of my own family, nor been 
further from home than Friars' Crag, except one 
fine day, which tempted me to Lord William 
Gordon's. The weeks and months pass by as 
rapidly as an ebb tide. The older we grow, the 
more we feel this. The hour-glass runs always 
at the same rate ; but when the sands are more 
than half spent, it is then only that we perceive 
how rapidly they are running out. I have been 
close at the 'desk this winter. The Quarterly 
takes up a heavy portion of my time. You would 
see in the last number two articles of mine — one 
upon the History of English Poetry, the other 
upon Forbes's Travels, both deplorably injured 
by mutilation. The next number will have a 
pretty full abstract of Lewis and Clarke's Trav- 
els. All these things cost me more time than 
they would any other person, for upon every sub- 
ject I endeavor to read all such books relating 
to it as I had before left unread. 

" I know not that there is any thing further to 
tell you of myself, unless it be that I have written 
the first book of Oliver Newman, and that it is 
in irregular rhymes. We are all, thank God. 
tolerably well. Herbert goes on stoutly with his 
Greek, and last week he began to learn German, 
which I shall acquire myself in the process of 
teaching him. 

" How is James going on p This I am anx- 



ious to hear. The Income Tax was laid on with 
great injustice ; it is taken off, not because it 
pressed with a cruel weight upon those of small 
fortune, but because it took in a proper propor- 
tion from the great landholders and capitalists, 
who can not be got at in an equal degree by any 

other manner. For instance, Lord pays 

probably c£lO,000 a year to this tax. Nothing 
that can be substantiated for it can by possibility 
take from him a tenth part of that sum. The 
tax ought not to be continued ; but I would have 
given it one year longer, that government might 
have been enabled, with as much facility as pos- 
sible, to wind up the accounts of a long war, un- 
exampled alike in its duration, importance, and 
expense. Not to have done this will lower the 
Eng] ish people in the eyes of other nations ; but 
of all people under Heaven who have any coun- 
try t> boast of, we are the least patriotic. 
" Believe me, my dear Neville, 

"Very affectionately yours, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Dr. Southey. 

"Keswick, Feb. 16,1815. 
" My dear Harry, 

"I have got scent of the squid-hound, for 
whom I inquired in the Omniana. Cartwright 
heard of a sort of cuttle-fish of this enormous 
size ; there is a beast of this family on the coast 
of Brazil, which twines its suckers round a swim- 
mer and destroys him ; and Langsdorff, who re- 
lates this, refers with disbelief to a book, which 
I wish you would examine for me. In the His- 
toire Naturelle des Mollusques, par^Denys Mont- 
fort, Paris, An. 10, under the head of Le Poulpe 
Colossal, there must be an account of a fellow 
big enough to claw down a large three-masted 
vessel. Being a modern work of natural history, 
I dare say the book will be at the Royal Institu- 
tion, and I pray you to extract the account for 
me. I shall make use of it in an article about 
Labrador for the Quarterly. Cartwright says, 
he is told they grow to a most enormous size, as 
big as a large whale, and he evidently does not 
disbelieve it. He was not a credulous man, and 
knew upon what sort of authority he was speak- 
ing. The description of the Kraken accords per- 
fectly with this genus. You know, doctor, that 
I can swallow a Kraken. You know, also, that 
I am a mortal enemy to that sort of incredulity 
which is founded upon mere ignorance. 

" Several weeks have elapsed since this letter 
was begun , and in the interim, to my no small 
satisfaction, I have found one of these monsters 
dead, and literally floating many a rood. The 
Frenchman, De Menonville, met with it between 
the Gulf of Mexico and St. Domingo (see Pink- 
erton's Coll., vol. xiii., p. 873), and knew not 
what to make of it. 

" I have heard from many quarters of Lord 
Byron's praise, and regard it just as much as 1 
did his censure. Nothing can be more absurd 
than thinking of comparing any of my poems 
with the Paradise Lost. With Tasso, with Vir- 
gil, with Hcmer, there may be fair grounds o e 



314 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



zEtat. 41 



comparison ; but my mi^d is wholly unlike Mil- ' 
ton's, and my poetry has nothing of his imagina- 
tion and distinguishing character ; nor is there 
any poet who has, except Wordsworth : be pos- ' 
sesses it in an equal degree. And it is entirely 
impossible that any man can understand Milton, ' 
and fail to perceive that Wordsworth is a poet ■ 
of the same class and of equal powers. What- 
ever my powers may be, they are not of that 
class. From what I have seen of the minor I 
poems, I suspect that Chiabrera is the writer 
whom, as a poet, I most resemble in the consti- 
tution of my mind. His narrative poems I have 
never seen. 

" The sale of Roderic is what I expected, nei- ; 
ther better nor worse. It is also just what I j 
should desire, if profit were a matter of indiffer- 
ence to me ; for I am perfectly certain that great { 
immediate popularity can only be obtained by i 
those faults which fall in with the humor of the : 
times, and which are, of course, ultimately fatal 
to the poems that contain them. God bless! 
ycu! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq 

" Keswick, March 9. 1815. j 
" My dear Wynx, 

" It would be needless to say that I am much 
gratified by your general opinion of Roderic. To 
most of your objections I can reply satisfactorily 
to my own judgment. The eleven syllable lines 
(by which we must here understand those which 
have the redundant syllable any where except at 
the end). I justify upon principle and precedent, 
referring to the practice of Shakspeare and Mil- 
ton, as authorities from which there can be no 
appeal. The blending two short syllables into 
the time of one is as well known in versification 
as what are called binding-notes are in music. 

" The descriptive passages are the relief of 
the poem, the time in which the action took place 
not affording me any costume available for this 
purpose: and relief was especially required in a 
work wherein the passion was pitched so high. 

" I can not abbreviate the first scene between 
Julian and Roderic without destroying the con- 
nection ; and for the blinding pf Theodofred, 
where else could it have been introduced with so 
much effect as in its present place, where it is 
so related as at once to mark the character of 
Rusilla ? 

" The words to which you object are, one and 
all, legitimate English words ; and I believe, in 
those places where they ax - e used, the same mean- 
ing could not be expressed without a periphrasis. 
The account of the Spanish towns, &c, was for 
the double purpose of relief and of distinctly 
marking the geography. The auriphrygiate is 
the only piece of pedantry that I acknowledge, 
and I was tempted to it by the grandiloquence 
of the word. You need not be told how desira- 
ble it often is to connect blank verse with sono- 
rous words. 

" The image of the clouds and the moon* I 



* Mefhinks if ye would know 
How visitations of calamity- 



saw from my chamber window at Cintra when 
going to bed, and noted it down with its applica- 
tion the next morning. I have it at this moment 
distinctly before my eyes, with all the accom- 
panying earth-scenery. Thus much for Roderic. 
Shall I ever accomplish another work of equal 
magnitude ? I am an older man in feelings than 
in years, and the natural bent of my inclinations 
would be never again to attempt one. 

' ; The last Register was not mine, nor do I 
know by whom it was written. I have not seen 
it. For the former volume I have never been 
wholly paid, and have lost from c£300 to 66400 
altogether — to me a very serious loss.* At pres- 
ent my time is divided at fits between the His- 
tory of the Spanish War and that of Brazil : the 
latter is in the press, and will be published about 
the close of the year. I shall follow it immedi- 
ately with the History of Portugal, which will 
be by far the most interesting of my historical 
works. 

" Your godson bids fair to walk in the ways of 
his father. He is now in his ninth year, and 
knows about as much Greek as a boy in the un- 
der-fifth. His Latin consists in a decent knowl- 
edge of the grammar, and a tolerable copia ver- 
borum. His sister teaches him French, and he 
and I have lately begun to learn German together. 
Do not fear that we are over-doing him, for he 
has plenty of play, and, indeed, plays at his les- 
sons. He takes it for granted that he must be a 
poet in his turn ; and in this respect, as far as it 
is possible to judge, nature seems to agree with 
him. Be that as it may, there is not a happier 
creature upon this earth, nor could any father de- 
sire a child of fairer promise as to moral and in- 
tellectual qualities. 

"When shall I see you? Alas! how little 
have we seen of each other for many, many years ! 
I might also say, since we used to sit till midnight 
over your claret at Ch. Ch. The first term of 
my lease expires in two years, and some reasons 
would induce me to come near London, if I could 
encounter the expense ; but, though my History 
of the War might possibly enable me to make th8 
arduous removal, the increased costs of house- 
keeping would probably be more than I could 
meet. I know not whether I shall be in London 
this year ; if I go, it will be shortly ; but I can 
ill afford the time, and for weighty reasons ought 
not to afford it. On the other hand, my uncle is 
advancing in years and declining in health ; and 
if my visits are to be at such long intervals as 
they have hitherto been, there can be very few 
more, even upon the most favorable chances of 
life. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

Affect the pious soul, 'tis shown ye there ! 

Look yonder at that cloud, which through the sky, 

Sailing alone doth cross in her career 

The rolling moon ! I watched it as it came, 

And deemed the bright opaque would blot her beams 

But, melting like a wreath of snow, it hangs 

In folds of wavy silver round, and clothes 

The orb with richer beauties than her own ; 

Then passing, leaves her in her light serene. 

Roderic, sect. xxi. 
* Part of this was ultimately paid, but not for several 
years. 



Atat. 41. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



315 



To C. W. W. Wynn, Es^ 

" Keswick, May 20, 1815. 
" My dear Wynn, 

"It is surprising to me that men whose for- 
tunes are not absolutely desperate at home will 
go to India to seek them ; that is, men who have 
any feelings beyond what is connected with the 
sense of touch. Fourteen years' transportation 
is a heavy sentence ; Strachey, I think, has been 
gone seventeen. What a portion of human life is 
this, and of its best years ! After such an ab- 
sence, the pain of returning is hardly less severe, 
and perhaps more lasting, than that of departure. 
He finds his family thinned by death ; his parents, 
if he finds them at all, fallen into old age, and on 
the brink of the grave ; the friends whom he left 
in youth so changed as to be no longer the same. 
What fortune can make amends for this ! It is 
indeed propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas ! I 
grieve to think sometimes that you and I, who 
were once in such daily habits of intimate inter- 
course, meet now only at intervals of two or 
three years ; though, besides our communication 
by letter (too seldom, I confess, rather than com- 
plain), what we do in public serve to keep us in 
sight of each other. However indifferent may be 
the matter of the debate, I always look to see if 
Mr. C. Wynn has spoken. But Strachey must 
almost feel himself in another world. 

" I thought that rascal Murat might have done 
more mischief. The proper termination of his 
career would be that the Sicilian Bourbons should 
catch him and send him to Madrid ; and I think 
Louis the Eighteenth would now be fully justified 
in sending Prince Joseph to the same place. The 
contest in France can not surely be long ; if Bo- 
naparte eould have acted with vigor on the of- 
fensive, he would have found perilous allies in 
Saxony, and little resistance from the Belgians. 
But the internal state of France paralyzes him ; 
and if he acts on the defensive, he can derive no 
advantage from the injustice of the great German 
powers. Two things were wanting last year — 
the British army did not get to Paris, and the 
French were neither punished as they deserved, 
nor humbled as the interests of the rest of the 
world required. It will. I trust, now be put be- 
yond all doubt that they have been conquered, 
and that their metropolis has been taken. 

" The second edition of Roderic is selling well. 
It will probably soon reach to a third, and then 
fall into the slow steady sale of its predecessors. 
The sale will become of importance when by the 
laws of literary property it will no longer benefit 
the author in his family. This is an abominable 
injustice, and will, I suppose, one day be redress- 
ed, but not in our times. I am misemploying 
much time in reviewing for the lucre of gain, 
which nothing but filthy lucre should make me 
do. My History of Brazil, however, gets on in 
the press, and you would be surprised were you 
to see the materials which I have collected for it. 
I did not think it right to postpone this second 
volume till my History of the Spanish War was 
done, for it had already been postponed too long. 
But it is a considerable sacrifice which I thus 



have been making. As soon as this work is off 
my hands, I shall be able to put the History of 
Portugal to press without impeding the more 
profitable work. It is on this that I should wish 
to rest my reputation. As a poet, I know where 
I have fallen short ; and did I consult only my 
own feelings, it is probable that I should write 
poetry no more ; not as being contented with 
what I have done, but as knowing that I can 
hope to do nothing better. I might, were my 
whole heart and mind given to it, as they were 
in youth ; but they are no longer at my own dis- 
posal. As an historian I shall come nearer my 
mark. For thorough research, indeed, and range 
of materials, I do not believe that the History of 
Portugal will ever have been surpassed. 
" God bless you, my dear Wynn ! 

* "Yours very affectionately, R, S." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

"Keswick, June 18, 1815. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 

" You can not think of me more frequently nor 
more affectionately than I do of you. These rec- 
ollections begin to have an autumnal shade of 
feeling ; and habitually joyous as my spirits are, 
I believe that if we were now to meet, my first 
impulse would be to burst into tears. I was not 
twenty when we parted, and one-and-twenty 
years have elapsed since that time. Of the men 
with whom I lived at Oxford, Wynn, Elmsley, 
and yourself are all that are left. Seward is 
dead. Charles Collins is dead, Robert Allen is 
dead, Burnett is dead. I have lost sight of all 
the rest. 

" My family continue in number the same as 
when you heard from me last. I am my son's 
schoolmaster, and, in the process, am recovering 
my Greek, which I had begun to forget at Baliol. 
How long I may continue to abide here is uncer- 
tain : the first term of my lease will expire in 
1817; if I do not remove then, I must remain 
for another seven years, and I am far too sensi- 
ble of the insecurity of life to look beyond that 
time. Having many inducements to remove 
nearer London, and many to remain where I am, 
the trouble and enormous expense of moving (for 
I have not less than 5000 books) will probably 
turn the scale ; certainly they will weigh heavy 
in it. It is not that I have any business in Lon- 
don as poet laureate ; that office imposes upon 
me no such necessity ; it only requires, as a mat- 
ter of decorum, that when I happen to be there 
I should sometimes attend a levee, especially on 
the birth-day, but it is not expected that I should 
make a journey for this purpose, and accordingly 
I have never been at court since I kissed hands 
upon my appointment. * * * * 

" I have just been reading the Ludus Litera- 
rius of my friend Dr.tfell : happy is the school- 
master who profits by it, and reforms his school 
upon the Madras system. I pray you give tho 
subject a serious consideration. The only real 
obstacle is the want of initiatory books, but they 
would be very easily made ; and I believe that 
very few pieces of literary labor would be so 



ie 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 41. 



largely repaid. It is quite certain that his sys- 
tem removes 99 parts in 100 of the miseries of 
the schoolboys and the schoolmaster. 

" Thus. Lightfoot, my life passes as uniformly 
and as laboriously as yours. There is one differ- 
ence in your favor : you, perhaps, look on to an 
end of your labors, which I never must do till 
' my right hand forget its cunning.' But I am 
very happy, and I dare say so are you. ' The 
cheerful man's a king,' says the old song ; and 
if this be true, both you and I are royal by nature. 

' ; God bless you, my dear Lightfoot ! 

" Believe me, most truly and affectionately, 
your old friend, R. Southey." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Keswick, June 18, 1815. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" You have done many things which have 
given me great pleasure since your last letter. 
I never was more rejoiced than when Lord Gren- 
ville gave his full and manly support to a war 
which, beyond all others in which we have been 
involved, is necessary and inevitable. I am very 
glad, also, to see that you are doing something 
to promote vaccination. Much may be done to- 
ward the cure and prevention of diseases by wise 
legislative interference ; and this is one of the 
points in which the state of society is susceptible 
of great improvement. # # # 

" The question of incest was touched upon, 
and you very properly recommended that the 

case of should rest upon the existing law, 

rather than make it the subject of a specific (and 
superfluous) clause in the act of divorce. But 
has it never occurred to you, my dear Wynn, 
that this law is an abominable relic of ecclesias- 
tical tyranny ? Of all second marriages, I have 
no hesitation in saying that these are the most 
natural, the most suitable, and likely to be the 
most frequent, if the law did not sometimes pre- 
vent them. It is quite monstrous to hear judges 
and lawyers speaking, as they have done of late, 
upon this subject, and confounding natural incest 
with what was only deemed to be incestuous, in 
order that the Church might profit by selling dis- 
pensations for its commission — a species of mar- 
riage, too, which was not only permitted by the 
Levitical law T , but even enjoined by it. I should 
be glad to know in what part of the Christian 
dispensation it is prohibited as a crime. The 
probable reason why the law was not swept aw T ay 
in this country at the Reformation was, because 
it involved the cause of that event; but surely 
we owe no such respect to the memory of Henry 
the Eighth, that it should still continue to dis- 
grace a reformed country. 

" Longman was to send you my poems. You 
will perceive how very few have been written 
since I was twenty-five, and that may account 
for the numberless and incorrigible faults, and 
the good-for-nothingness of a great part of them, 
which, had they been my own propei*ty, would 
have gone behind the fire. 

" They have made me member of another 



academy at Madrid — the R. A. of History — a 
body which have rendered most efficient service 
to the literature of that country. This gives me 
some privileges,* wilich I should be very glad 
to profit by, if I could afford a journey to Spain, 
for I should have better access to archives and 
manuscripts than any foreigner has ever enjoyed. 

" You w T ill see in the next Quarterly a picture, 
which I found in M. Larrey's book — Bonaparte 
sleeping in the Desert by a fire of human bodies 
and bones — the remains of travelers who had 
perished there, and been dried by the sun and 
sands ! It is one of the most extraordinary and 
appropriate situations that ever fancy conceiv- 
ed. * * * * 

" God bless you, my dear Wynn ! 
" Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

The important question of marriage with a 
wife's sister, touched upon in the foregoing let- 
ter, is far too summarily disposed of; for, first of 
all, the ecclesiastical prohibition is traced back 
to the primitive ages of Christianity, so that it 
can not be accounted for by the supposition that 
it originated in the wish to multiply dispensations. 
(See the printed evidence of Dr. Pusey, and of 
the Hon. and Rev. A. P. Perceval.) 

Secondly, the Levitical law nowhere author- 
izes, much less enjoins, this particular union. The 
prohibited degrees are, in Leviticus, in most cases, 
stated only on one side, and the Church has sup- 
plied the other ; as, if a man must not marry his 
father's wife, a woman must not marry her moth- 
er's husband. By this mode of interpretation, if 
a man must not marry his brother's wife (Lev., 
xviii., 16, and xx., 21), a woman must not mar- 
ry her sister's husband. The former of these 
connections is twice forbidden, the latter is not 
mentioned, but is inferred. My father's notion is, 
I suppose, based upon the other passage (Deut., 
xxv., 5), where a brother is enjoined to take to 
him his brother's wife. This, however, is only 
an exceptional case, ordered for a special pur- 
pose, and can not be set against the general law 
stated in Leviticus, nor authorize the like excep- 
tion in the case of the woman, the case not ap- 
plying. It is not my wish to say any thing more 
upon this subject than seems called for by the 
opinion given in this letter. If I had not printed 
it, I might, perhaps, have been supposed by some 
who are acquainted with what my father's senti- 
ments were, to have suppressed a statement upon 
a topic of more than common interest at the pres- 
ent time. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 24, 1815. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

Our bells are ringing as they ought to do ; and 



* The same privileges as if he had been a member of 
the royal household. " I do not know," he says in another 
letter, "how this will accord with the English privilege 
which I must use of speaking my free opinion of Ferdi- 
nand's conduct." 



/Etat. 42. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



317 



I, after a burst of exhilaration at the clay's news* 
am in a state of serious and thoughtful thankful- 
ness for what, perhaps, ought to be considered 
as the greatest deliverance that civilized society- 
has experienced since the defeat of the Moors by 
Charles Martel. I never feared or doubted the 
result ; but if we had been thus thoroughly de- 
feated in the first battle, the consequences would 
have been too fatal to think of with composure. 
Perhaps enough has been done to excite a revolt 
in Paris ; but I have a strong impression, either 
upon my imagination or my judgment, that that 
city will suffer some part of its deserved chas- 
tisement. The cannon should be sent home and 
formed into a pillar to support a statue of Wel- 
lington in the center of the largest square in 
London. 

"lam expecting the Review daily. Your hint 
respecting Marlborough does not accord with my 
own opinion of the subject. I could make noth- 
ing of a life of Marlborough. A battle can only 
be made tolerable in narration when it has some- 
thing picturesque in its accidents, scenes, &c, 
&c, which is not the case with any of Marl- 
borough's. The only part which I could make 
valuable would be what related to Louis XIV. 
and the peace of Utrecht. But if the Bibliopole 
of Albemarle Street were to propound sweet re- 
muneration for the Egyptian story, he would do 
wisely. With all his sagacity, he turned a deaf 
ear to the most promising project which ever oc- 
curred to me — that of writing the age of George 
III. This I will do whenever (if ever) I get free 
from the necessity of iaising immediate supplies 
by temporary productions. The subject, as you 
may perceive, is nothing less than a view of the 
w T orld during the most eventful half century of 
its annals — not the history, but a philosophical 
summary, with reference to the causes and con- 
sequences of all these mighty revolutions. There 
never was a more splendid subject, and I have 
full confidence in my own capacity for treating it. 

" Did I tell you of the Yankee's pamphlet, to 
abuse me for an article in the Quarterly which I 
did not write, and (between ourselves) would not 
have written ? He talks of my getting drunk 
with my sack. One especial (and just) cause of 
anger is the expression that ' Washington, we 
believe, was an honest man ;' and I am reviled 
for this in America, when I was consternating 
the lord chamberlain by speaking of Washington 
with respect in a New Year's Ode ! Has Long- 
man sent you the Mioor Poems? The news- 
papers ought to reprint that ode upon Bona- 
parte. =& # # # # 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Richnan, Esq. 

"July 10, 1815. 

" My dear R., 

" I could wish myself in London to be three- 

and-forty hours nearer the news. Was there 

ever such a land battle in modern times ! The 

wreck has been as complete as at the Nile. 



Murray propounds me sweet remuneration tc 
bring it into his next number, which, as I have 
a French history of Massena's campaign before 
me, it w 7 ill be easy to do, the object of that book 
being to prove that the French beat us wherever 
they met us, and that Lord Wellington is no 
general, and, moreover, exceedingly afraid of 
them. The battle of Waterloo is a good an- 
swer to this. The name which Blucher has 
given it will do excellently in verse — the field 
of Fair Alliance ! but I do not like it in prose, 
for we gave them such an English thrashing, 
that the name ought to be one which comes eas- 
ily out of an English mouth. If you can help 
me to any information, I shall know how to use it 

" If Bonaparte comes here, which is very 
likely, I hope no magnanimity will prevent us 
from delivering him up to Louis XVIII. ; unless, 
indeed, we could collect evidence of the murder 
of Captain Wright, and bring him to trial and 
condemnation for that offense. This would be 
the best finish. 

" I am sorry La Fayette has opened his mouth 
in this miserable Assembly. As for the rest of 
them — gallows, take thy course. * 

* * They should all be hanged in their 

robes for the sake of the spectacle, and the bene- 
fit of M. Jean Quetch. What a scene of vile 
flattery shall we have when the Bourbons are 
restored ! 

" Yours truly, R. S." 

To Dr. Southey. 

"Keswick, Aug. 23, 1815. 
" My dear Harry, 
" According to all form, I ought to write you 
a letter of congratulation ;* but some unlucky 
ingredient in my moral, physical, and intellect- 
ual composition has all my life long operated 
upon me with respect to forms, like that antip- 
athy w 7 hich some persons feel toward cats, or 
other objects equally inoffensive. I get through 
them so b&dly at all times, that, whenever I am 
obliged to the performance, my chief concern is, 
how to slink out of it as expeditiously as possi- 
ble. I have, moreover, a propensity which may 
seem at first not very well to accord with that 
constitutional hilarity which is my best inherit- 
ance. Occasions of joy and festivity seem rath- 
er to depress the barometer of my spirits than to 
raise it ; birth-days and wedding-days, therefore, 
pass uncelebrated by me ; and with the stron- 
gest conviction of the good effects of national 
holidays, and with a feeling toward them w T hich 
men, who are incapable of understanding what 
is meant by the imaginative faculty, might call 
superstition, I yet wish, if it w T ere possible, that 
Christmas and New Year's Day could be blotted 
from my calendar. It might not be difficult to 
explain why this is, but it would be somewhat 
metaphysical, which is bad, and somewhat sen- 
timental, which is worse. 



Of the battle of Waterloo. 



* On his marriage. On some similar occasion, my fa- 
ther remarks, " I never wish people joy of their marriage ; 
that they will find for themselves : what I wish them is- 
patience." 



31P 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 418 



" Monday, the 21st of August, was not a 
more remarkable day in your life than it was in 
that of my neighbor Skiddaw, who is a much 
older personage. The weather served for our 
bonfire,* and never, I believe, was such an as- i 
semblage upon such a spot. To my utter aston- { 
ishment, Lord Sunderlin rode up, and Lady S., 
who had endeavored to dissuade me from going ; 
as a thing too dangerous, joined the walking j 
party. Wordsworth, with his wife, sister, and 
eldest boy, came over on purpose. James Bos- 
well arrived that morning at the Sunderlins. 
Edith, the Senhora,t Edith May, and Herbert 
were my convoy, with our three maid-servants, 
some of our neighbors, some adventurous lakers, 
and Messrs. Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, made up 
the rest of the assembly. We roasted beef and 
boiled plum-puddings there ; sung ' God save 
the king' round the most furious body of flaming 
tar-barrels that I ever saw ; drank a huge wood- 
en bowl of punch ; fired cannon at every health 
with three times three, and rolled large blazing 
balls of tow and turpentine down the steep side 
of the mountain. The effect was grand beyond 
imagination. We formed a huge circle round 
the most intense light, and behind us was an im- 
measurable arch of the most, intense darkness, 
for our bonfire fairly put out the moon. 

" The only mishap which occurred will make 
a famous anecdote in the life of a great poet, if 
James Boswell, after the example of his father, 
keepeth a diary of the sayings of remarkable 
men. When we were craving for the punch, a 
fry went forth that the kettle had been knocked 
over, with all the boiling water ! Colonel Bar- 
ker, as Boswell named the Senhora, from her 
having had the command on this occasion, im- 
mediately instituted a strict inquiry to discover 
the culprit, from a suspicion that it might have 
been done in mischief, water, as you know, be- 
ing a commodity not easily replaced on the sum- 
mit of Skiddaw. The persons about the fire 
declared it was one of the gentlemen — they did 
not know his name ; but he had a red cloak on ; 
they pointed him out in the circle. The red 
cloak (a maroon one of Edith's) identified him ; 
Wordsworth had got hold of it, and was equip- 
ped like a Spanish Don — by no means the worst 
figure in the company. He had committed this 
fatal faux pas, and thought to slink off undis- 
covered. But as soon as, in my inquiries con- 
cerning the punch, I learned his guilt from the 
Senhora, I went round to all our party, and com- 
municated the discovery, and getting them about 
him, I punished him by singing a parody, which 
they all joined in : ' 'Twas you that kicked the 
kettle down ! 'twas you, sir, you !' 

" The consequences were, that we took all 
the cold water upon the summit to supply our 
loss. Our myrmidons and Messrs. Rag and Co. 
had, therefore, none for their grog ; they neces- 
sarily drank the rum pure ; and you, who are 
physician to the Middlesex Hospital, are doubt- 



* In honor of the battle of Waterloo, 
t Miss Barker, a lady with whom my father first be- 
came acquainted at Cintra. 



less acquainted with the manner in which aLo- 
hol acts upon the nervous system. All our 
torches were lit at once by this mad company, 
and our way down the hill was marked by a 
track of fire, from flambeaux dropping the pitch, 
tarred ropes, &c. One fellow was so drunk that 
his companions placed him upon a horse, with 
his face to the tail, to bring him down, them- 
selves being just sober enough to guide and hold 
him on. Down, however, we all got safely by 
midnight ; and nobody, from the old lord of sev- 
enty-seven to my son Herbert, is the woise for 
the toil of the day, though we were eight hours 
from the time we set out till we reached home 

" God bless you. R. S." 

" I heard of your election from your good \nd 
trusty ally, Neville White. If that man's me?'ns 
were equal to his spirit, he would be as rich as 
Croesus." 



CHAPTER XX. 

feelings of rejoicing at the termination 

of the war with france journey to 

waterloo account of beguinages at 

ghent notices of flanders of the 

field of battle purchase of the acta 

sanctorum detention by the illnes? of 

his daughter at aix-la-chapelle re- 
turn home picture of his domestic hap- 
piness in the pilgrimage to waterloo 

multitude of correspondents meeting 

with spanish liberales in london rapid 

flight of time declining facility of 

poetical composition politics regrets 

for the death of young dusautoy the 

pilgrimage to waterloo scott's lord of 

the isles the history of brazil evils 

in society want of english beguinages 

early english poetry death of his 

son poetical criticism feelings of res- 
ignation circumstances of his early 

life geology and botany better stud- 
ies than chemical and physical science 

Thomson's castle of indolence — youthful 

feelings owen of lanark remarks on 

his own fortunes and character col- 
LEGE life — Wordsworth's poems. — 1815 
1816. 

How deep an interest my father had taken in 
the protracted contest between France and En- 
gland, the reader has seen ; nor will he, I think, 
if well acquainted with the events of those times, 
and the state of feeling common among young 
men of the more educated classes at the close 
of the last century, be apt to censure him as 
grossly inconsistent, because he condemned the 
war at its outset, and augured well at the com- 
mencement of Bonaparte's career, and yet could 
earnestly desire that war, in its later stages, " to 
be carried on with all the heart, and all the soul,' 
and all the strength of this mighty empire," and 
could rejoice in the downfall 



JEtat. 42. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



319 



"Of him who, while Europe crouched under his rod, 
Put his crust in his fortune, and not in his God ;" 

for the original commencement of the war in 
1792-3 had been the combination of other Eu- 
ropean powers against revolutionary France — a 
direct act of aggression supported by England, 
which would now be condemned by most men, 
and was then naturally denounced by all those 
who partook, in any degree, of Republican feel- 
ing.* But in the lapse of years the merits of 
the contest became quite altered ; and from about 
the time when Bonaparte assumed the imperial 
crown, all his acts were marked by aggressive- 
ness and overbearing usurpation. Not to speak 
of those personal crimes which turned my father's 
feelings toward the man into intense abhorrence, 
his political measures with respect to Switzer- 
land, Holland, Egypt, and Malta were those of 
an unscrupulous and ambitious conqueror ; and 
the invasion of Portugal, with his insolent treach- 
ery toward the Spanish royal family, made his 
iniquity intolerable. The real difference between 
my father and the mass of writers and speakers 
in England at that time was, that he never laid- 
aside a firm belief that the Providence of God 
would put an end to Napoleon's wicked career, 
and that it was the office of Great Britain to be 
the principal instrument of that Providence. 

But in addition to the national feelings of joy 
and triumph at the successful termination of this 
long and arduous warfare, my father had some 
grounds for rejoicing more peculiar to himself. 
When one large and influential portion of the 
community, supported by the Edinburgh Review, 
prognosticated constantly the hopelessness of the 
war, the certain triumph of Bonaparte, and espe- 
cially the folly of hoping to drive him out of 
Spain — when their language was, " France has 
conquered Europe ; this is the melancholy truth ; 
shut our eyes to it as we may, there can be no 
doubt about the matter ; for the present, peace 
and submission must be the lot of the vanquish- 
ed ;" he had stood forth among the boldest and 
most prominent of those who urged vigorous 
measures and prophesied final success. And 
well might he now rejoice — kindle upon Skid- 
daw the symbol of triumph ; and when contrast- 
ing the language he had held with that of those 
persons, exclaim, " Was I wrong ? or has the 
event corresponded to this confidence ?' 

'Aftipui Infaonroi 
Maprvpes oo(Pu)t<itoi. 

Bear witness, Torres Vedras, Salamanca, and 
Vittoria ! Bear witness, Orthies and Thoulouse ! 
Bear witness, Waterloo ! 

With these feelings it was very natural that he 
should have been among the crowd of English 
who hastened over to view the scene of that 



* He himself says of the Peace of Amiens : " No act of 
amnesty ever produced such conciliatory consequences as 
that peace. It iestored in me the English feeling which 
had long been deadened, and placed me in sympathy with 
my country ; bringing me thus into thatnatural and healthy 
state ol mind, upon which time, and knowledge, and re- 
flection weie sure to produce their proper and salutary 
effects."— From a MS. Preface to the Fenhisular War. 



"fell debate.'' on the issue of which had so late- 
ly hung the fate of Europe. 
To quote his own words : 

"And as I once had journeyed to survey 
Far off Ourique's consecrated field, 
Where Portugal, the faithful and the bold, 
Assumed the symbols of her sacred shield. 
More reason now that I should bend my way, 
The field of British glory to survey. 

" So forth I set upon this pilgrimage, 
And took the partner of my life with me, 
And one dear girl, just ripe enough of age 
Retentively to see what I should see ; 
That thus, with mutual recollections fraught, 
We might bring home a store for after thought" 

Of this journey, as was his custom, he kept a 
minute and elaborate journal ; bu" it is of too 
great length, and not possessing sufficient novel- 
ty, to be inserted here. The following letters, 
however, may not be without interest : 

To John Hickman, Esq. 

"Brussels, Oct. 2, 1815. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" I wish you had been with me at Ghent, where 
the Beguines have their principal establishment. 
The Beguinage is a remarkable place, at one 
end of the city, and entirely inclosed. You en- 
ter through a gateway, where there is a statue 
of S. Elizabeth of Hungary, the patroness of the 
establishment. The space inclosed is, I should 
think, not less than the area of the whole town 
of Keswick or of Christ Church ; and the Be- 
guinage itself, unlike alms-house, college, village, 
or town : a collection of contiguous houses of dif- 
ferent sizes, each with a small garden in front, 
and a high brick wall inclosing them all ; over 
every door the name of some saint under whose 
protection the house is placed, but no opening 
through which any thing can be seen. There are 
several streets thus built, with houses on both 
sides. There is a large church within the inclos- 
ure, a burying-ground without any grave-stones ; 
and a branch from one of the innumerable rivers 
with which Ghent is intersected, in which the 
washing of the community is performed from a 
large boat ; and a large piece of ground, planted 
with trees, w T here the clothes are dried. One, 
who was the second person in the community, 
accosted us, showed us the interior, and gave us 
such explanation as we desired, for we had with 
us a lady w T ho spoke French. It is curious that 
she knew nothing of the origin of her order, and 
could not even tell by whom it was founded ; but 
I have purchased here the Life of S. Bega, from 
whom it derived its name, and in this book I ex- 
pect to find the whole history. 

" There are about 6000 Beguines in Brabant 
and Flanders, to which countries they are con- 
fined; 620 were residents in the Beguinage. 
They w T ere rich before the Revolution. Their 
lands w r ere then taken from them, and they were 
obliged to lay aside the dress of the order ; but 
this was only done in part, because they were 
supported by public opinion ; and being of evi- 
dent utility to all ranks, few were disposed to in- 
jure them. They receive the sick who come to 
them, and support and attend them as long as 



320 



LIFE AJND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



./Etat. 42 



the illness requires. They are bound by no tow, 
and my informant assured me, with evident pride, 
that no instance of a Beguine leaving the estab- 
lishment had ever been known. She herself had 
entered it after the death of her husband : and I 
suppose their numbers are generally, if not whol- 
ly, filled up by women who seek a retreat, or 
need an asylum from the world. The property 
which a Beguine brings with her reverts to her 
heir-at-law. At the Revolution, the church of 
the Beguinage was sold, as confiscated religious 
property. This sale was a mere trick, or, in 
English phrase, a job to accommodate some par- 
tisan of the ruling demagogues with ready mon- 
e}^. Such a man bought it, and in the course of 
two or three weeks resold it to two sisters of the 
community for 300 Louis d'ors, and they made 
it over again to the order. There is a refectory, 
where they dine in common if they please, or, if 
they please, have dinner sent from thence to their 
own chambers. We went into three chambers 
— small, furnished with little more than neces- 
sary comforts, but having all these, and remark- 
ably clean. In one, a Beguine, who had been 
bedridden many years, was sitting up and knit- 
ting. We were taken into the chamber, because 
it amused her to see visitors. She was evident- 
ly pleased at seeing us, and remarkably cheer- 
ful. In another apartment two sisters were spin- 
ning, one of eighty-five, the other of eighty-three 
years of age. In all this there is less information 
than I should have given you, if my tongue had 
not been the most anti-Galiican in the world, and 
the Flemish French not very intelligible to my 
interpreter. The dress is convenient, but abom- 
inably ugly. I shall endeavor to get a doll 
equipped in it. The place itself I wish you could 
see ; and, indeed, you would find a visit to Bru- 
ges and Ghent abundantly overpaid by the sight 
of those cities (famous as they are in history), 
and of a country, every inch of which is well 
husbanded. 

" Bruges is, without exception, the most strik- 
ing place I ever visited, though it derives nothing 
from situation. It seems to have remained in the 
same state for above 200 years ; nothing has been 
added, and hardly any thing gone to decay. What 
ruin has occurred there was the work of frantic 
revolutionists, who destroyed all the statues in 
the niches of the Stadt House, and demolished an 
adjoining church, one of the finest in the town. 
The air of antiquity and perfect preservation is 
such, that it carries you back to the age of the 
Tudors or of Froissart ; and the whole place is 
in keeping. The poorest inhabitants seem to be 
well lodged ; and if the cultivation of the ground 
and the well-being of the people be the great 
objects of civilization, I should almost conclude 
that no part of the world was so highly civilized 
as this. At Ghent there is more business, more 
inequality, a greater mixture of French manners, 
and the alloy of vice and misery in proportion. 
Brussels, in like manner, exceeds Ghent, and is, 
indeed, called a second Paris. The modern part 
of the city is perfectly Parisian ; the older, and 
especially the great square, Flemish. 



' ; We have seen the whole field of battle, oi 
rather all the fields, and vestiges enough of the 
contest, though it is almost wonderful to observe 
how soon nature recovers from all her injuries 
The fields are cultivated again, and wild flow- 
ers are in blossom upon some of the graves.* 
The Scotchmen — ' those men without breeches' 
— have the credit of the day at Waterloo. 

"The result of what I have collected is an 
opinion that the present settlement of these 
countries is not likely to be durable. The peo- 
ple feel at present pretty much as a bird who is 
rescued from the claw of one eagle by the beak 
of another. The Rhine is regarded as a proper 
boundary for Prussia ; and it is as little desired 
that she should pass that river as that France 
should reach it. There is a spirit of independ- 
ence here, which has been outraged, but from 
which much good might arise if it were con- 
ciliated. This, I am inclined to think, would be 
best done by forming a wide confederacy, leav- 
ing to each of the confederates its own territory, 
laws, &c. ; and this might be extended from the 
frontiers of France to the Hanseatic cities. One 
thing I am certain, that such arrangements would 
satisfy every body, except those sovereigns who 
would lose by it. I am aware how short a time 
I have been in the country, and how liable men 
under such circumstances, are to be deceived 
but I have taken the utmost pains to acquire all 
the knowledge within my reach, and have been 
singularly fortunate in the means which have' 
fallen in my way. The merest accident brought 
me acquainted with a Liegois, a great manufac- 
turer, &c, and I have not found that men talk 
to me with the less confidence because I am not 
a Free-mason. #=*### 

" We turn our face homeward to-morrow, by 
way of Maestricht and Louvaine to Brussels. 
The delay here will possibly oblige us to give 
up Antwerp. However, on the whole, I have 
every reason to be pleased with the journey. 
No month of my life was ever better employed. 
God bless you! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Liege, Oct. 6, 1815, 6 P.M. 
' : ^NIy dear Friend, 
" I have a happy habit of making the best of 
all things ; and being just at this time as un- 
comfortable as the dust and bustle, and all the 
disagreeables of an inn in a large, filthy manu- 
facturing city can make me, I have called for 
pen, ink, and paper, and am actually writing in 
the bar, the door open to the yard opposite to 
this unwiped table, the doors open to the public 
room, where two men are dining and talking 
French, and a woman servant at my elbow light- 
ing a fire for our party. Presently the folding- 
doors are to be shut, the ladies are to descend 
* " The passing season had not yet effaced 

The stamp of numerous hoofs impressed by force, 
Of cavalry, whose path might still be traced. 
Yet Nature every where resumed her course ; 
Low pansies to the sun their purple gave, 
And the soft poppy blossomed on the grave." 

Pilgrimage to Waterloo. 



jEtat. 42. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



321 



from their chambers, the Dar will be kept ap- 
propriated to our house, the male part of the 
company will get into good humor, dinner will 
be ready, arv] then I must lay aside the gray 
goose-quill. As a preliminary to these promised 
comforts, the servant is mopping the hearth, 
which is composed (like a tesselated pavement) 
of little bricks about two inches long by half an 
inch wide, set within a broad black stone frame. 
The fuel is of fire-balls, a mixture of pulverized 
coal and clay. I have seen a great deal, and 
heard a great deal — more, indeed, than I can 
keep pace with in my journal, though I strive 
hard to do it ; but I minute down short notes in 
my pencil-book with all possible care, and hope, 
in the end, to lose nothing. As for Harry and 
his party, I know nothing more of them than 
that they landed at Ostend a week before us, 
and proceeded the same day to Bruges. To- 
morrow we shall probably learn tidings of them 
at Spa. Meantime, we have joined company 
with some fellow-passengers, Mr. Vardon, of 
Greenwich, with his family, and Mr. Nash, an 
artist, who has lived many years in India. Flan- 
ders is a most interesting country. Bruges, the 
most striking city I have ever seen, an old city 
in perfect preservation. It seems as if not a 
house had been built during the last two centu- 
ries, and not a house suffered to pass to decay. 
The poorest people seem to be well lodged, and 
there is a general air of sufficiency, cleanliness, 
industry, and comfort, which I have never seen 
in any other place. The cities have grown 
worse as we advanced. At Namur we reached 
a dirty city, situated in a romantic country ; the 
Meuse there reminded me of the Thames from 
your delightful house, an island in size and shape 
resembling that upon which I have often wished 
for a grove of poplars, coming just in the same 
position. From thence along the river to this 
abominable place, the country is, for the greater 
part, as lovely as can be imagined, especially at 
Huy, where we slept last night, and fell in with 
one of the inhabitants, a man of more than ordi- 
nary intellect, from whom I learned much of the 
state of public opinion, &c. 

" Our weather hitherto has been delightful. 
This was especially fortunate at Waterloo and 
at Ligny, where we had much ground to walk 
over. It would surprise you to see how soon 
nature has recovered from the injuries of war. 
The ground is plowed and sown, and grain, and 
flowers, and seeds already growing over the field 
of battle, which is still strewn with vestiges of 
the slaughter, caps, cartridges, boxes, hats, &c. 
We picked up some French cards and some bul- 
lets, and we purchased a French pistol and two 
of the eagles which the infantry wear upon their 
caps. What I felt upon this ground, it would 
be difficult to say : what I saw, and still more 
what I heard, there is no time at present for say- 
ing. In prose and in verse you shall some day 
hear the whole. At Les Quatre Bras I saw two 
graves, which probably the dogs or the swine 
had opened. In the one were the ribs of a hu- 
man body, projecting through the mold ; in the 
X 



other, the whole skeleton exposed. Some of 
our party told me of a third, in which the worms 
were at work, but I shrunk from the sight. You 
will rejoice to hear that the English are as well 
spoken of for their deportment in peace as in 
war. It is far otherwise with the Prussians. 
Concerning them there is but one opinion : their 
brutality is said to exceed that of the French, 
and of their intolerable insolence I have heard 
but too many proofs. That abominable old 
Frederic made them a military nation, and this 
is the inevitable consequence. This very day 
we passed a party on their way toward France 
— some hundred or two. Two gentlemen and 
two ladies of the country, in a carriage, had 
come up with them ; and these ruffians would 
not allow them to pass, but compelled them to 
wait and follow the slow pace of foot soldiers ! 
This we ourselves saw. Next to the English, 
the Belgians have the best character for discipline. 
" I have laid out some money in books — four 
or five-and-twenty pounds — and I have bargained " 
for a set of the Acta Sanctorum to be completed 
and sent after me — the price 500 francs. This 
is an invaluable acquisition. Neither our time 
nor money will allow us to reach the Rhine. We 
turn back from Aix-la-Chapelle, and take the 
route of Maestricht and Louvaine to Antwerp, 
thence to Ghent again, and cross from Calais. 
I bought at Bruges a French History of Brazil, 
just published by M. Alphouse de Beauchamp, 
in three volumes octavo. He says, in his Preface, 
that having finished the two first volumes, he 
thought it advisable to see if any new light had 
been thrown upon the subject by modern authors. 
Meantime, a compilation upon this history had 
appeared in England, but the English author, 
Mr. Southey, had brought no new lights ; he had 
promised much for his second volume, but the 
hope of literary Europe had been again deceived, 
for this second volume, so emphatically promised, 
had not appeared. I dare say no person regrets 
this delay so much as M. Beauchamp, he having 
stolen the whole of his two first volumes, and 
about the third part of the other, from the very 
Mr. Southey whom he abuses. He has copied 
my references as the list of his own authorities 
(manuscripts and all), and he has committed 
blunders which prove, beyond all doubt, that he 
does not understand Portuguese. I have been 
much diverted by this fellow's impudence. 

" The table is laid, and the knives and forks 
rattling a pleasant note of preparation, as the 
woman waiter arranges them. 

" God bless you ! I have hurried through the 
sheet, and thus pleasantly beguiled what would 
have been a very unpleasant hour. We are all 
well, and your god-daughter has seen a live em- 
peror at Brussels. I feel the disadvantage of 
speaking French ill, and understanding it by the 
ear worse. Nevertheless, I speak it without 
remorse, make myself somehow or other under- 
stood, and get at what I want to know. Once 
more, God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Believe me always most affectionately yours, 

"R.S." 



322 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 42, 



To John May, Esq. 

"Brussels, Friday, Oct. 20, 1315. 
"My dear Friend, 

" I wrote to you from Liege, up to which time 
all had gone on well with us. Thank God, it is 
well with us at present ; but your god-daughter 
has been so unwell, that we were detained six 
days at Aix-la-Chapelle in a state of anxiety 
which you may well imagine, and at a hotel 
where the Devil himself seemed to possess the 
mistress and the greater part of the domestics. 
Happily, I found a physician who had graduated 
at Edinburgh, who spoke English, and pursued a 
rational system ; and happily, also, by this pain- 
ful and expensive delay I was thrown into such 
society, that, now the evil is over, I am fully 
sensible of the good to which it has conduced. 
The day after my letter was written we reached 
Spa, and remained there Sunday and Monday — 
a pleasant and necessary pause, though the pleas- 
ure was somewhat interrupted by the state of 
my own health, which was somewhat disordered 
there — perhaps the effect of the thin Rhenish 
wines and the grapes. Tuesday we would have 
slept at Verones (the great clothing town) if we 
could have found beds. An English party had 
preoccupied them, and we proceeded to Herve, 
a little town half way between Liege and Aix- 
la-Chapelle, in the old principality of Limbourg. 
* # * # # 

" When we arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle, your 
god-daughter was so ill that, after seeing her laid 
in bed (about one o'clock in the afternoon), I 
thought it necessary to go to the banker's, and 
request them to recommend me to a physician. 
You may imagine how painful a time we passed. 
It was necessary for her to gargle every hour, 
even if we waked her for it ; but she never slept 
an hour continuously for the three first nights. 
Thank God, however, she seems thoroughly re- 
covered, and I can estimate the good with calm- 
ness. While I acted as nurse and cook (for we 
were obliged to do every thing ourselves), our 
party dined at the table d'hote, and there, as the 
child grew better, I found myself in the company 
of some highly distinguished Prussian officers. 
One of these, a Major Dresky, is the very man 
who was with Blucher at Ligny, when he was 
ridden over by the French; the other, Major 
Petry, is said by his brother officers to have won 
the battle of Donowitz for Blucher. Two more 
extraordinary men I never met with. You would 
have been delighted to hear how they spoke of 
the English, and to see how they treated us, as 
representatives of our country. Among the toasts 
which were given, I put this into French : ' The 
Belle-alliance between Prussia and England — 
may it endure as long as the memory of the bat- 
tle.' I can not describe to you the huzzaing, and 
hob-nobbing, and hand-shaking with which it was 
received. But the chief benefit which I have re- 
ceived was from meeting with a certain Henry 
de Forster, a major in the German Legion, a Pole 
by birth, whose father held one of the highest of- 
fices in Poland. Forster, one of the most inter- 
esting men I ever met with, has been marked for 



misfortune from his birth. Since the age of thir- 
teen he has supported himself, and now supports 
a poor brother of eighteen, a youth of high prin- 
ciples and genius, who has for two years suffered 
with an abscess of the spleen. Forster entered 
the Prussian service when a boy, was taken pris- 
oner and cruelly used in France, and escaped, al- 
most miraculously, on foot into Poland. In 1809 
he joined the Duke of Brunswick, and was one of 
those men who proved true to him through all 
dangers, and embarked with him. The duke was 
a true German in patriotism, but without conduct, 
without principle, without gratitude. Forster en- 
tered our German Legion, and was in all the hot 
work in the Peninsula, from the lines of Torres 
Vedras till the end of the war. The severe duty 
of an infantry officer proved too much for his con- 
stitution, and a fall of some eighty feet down a 
precipice in the Pyrenees brought on a haemor- 
rhage of the liver, for which he obtained unlim- 
ited leave of absence, and came to Aix-la-Cha- 
pellle. I grieve to say that he had a relapse on 
the very day that we left him. I never saw a 
man whose feelings and opinions seemed to co- 
incide more with my own. When we had be- 
come a little acquainted, he shook hands with me 
in a manner so unlike an ordinary greeting, that 
I immediately understood it to be (as really it 
was) a trial whether I was a Free-mason. This 
gave occasion to the following sonnet, which I 
put into his hands at parting : 

" The ties of secret brotherhood, made known 
By secret signs, and pressure of link'd hand 
Significant, 1 neither understand 
Nor censure. There are countries where the throne 
And altar, singly, or with force combined, 
Against the welfare of poor human kind 
Direct their power perverse : in such a land 
Such leagues may have their purpose ; in my own, 
Being needless, they are needs but mockery. 
But to the wise and good there doth belong, 
Ordained by God himself, a surer tie ; 
A sacred and unerring sympathy : 
Which bindeth them in bonds of union strong 
As time, and lasting as eternity. 

" He has promised me to employ this winter 
in writing his memoirs — a task he had once per- 
formed, but the paper was lost in a shipwreck. 
He has promised, also, to come with the MSS. 
(if he lives) to England next summer, when I 
hope and expect that the publication will be as 
beneficial to his immediate interests as it will be 
honorable to his memory. 

"We left Aix on Tuesday for Maestricht, 
slept the next night at St. Tron, Thursday at 
Louvaine, and arrived here to-day. To-morrow 
I go again with Nash to Waterloo, for the pur- 
pose of procuring drawings of Hougoumont. On 
Sunday we go for Antwerp, rejoin the Vardons 
on Monday night at Ghent, and then make the 
best of our way to Calais and London. God 
bless you, my dear friend ! 

"Yours most affectionately, R. S " 

To John May, Esq. 
"Keswick, Wednesday Dec. 6, 18lJ» 
" My dear Friend, 
" You will be glad to hear that we arrived 
safely this day, after a less uncomfortable jour- 



,Etat. 42. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



323 



ney than might have been apprehended from the 
season of the year. We found all well, God 
be thanked, and Edith, who complained a little 
me first day, got better daily as we drew nearer 
home. She complains of a headache now ; but 
that is the natural effect of ovcr-excitcment, on 
seeing her brother and sisters and her cousin, and 
displaying the treasures which we have brought 
for them. We reached Wordsworth's yesterday 
about seven o'clock. Three hours more would 
have brought us home, but I preferred passing 
the night at his house ; for, had we proceeded, 
we should have found the children in bed, and a 
return home, under fortunate circumstances, has 
something the character of a triumph, and re- 
quires daylight. Never, I believe, was there seen 
a happier household than this when the chaise 
drew up to the door. 1 find so many letters to 
answer, that to-morrow will be fully employed 
in clearing them off. 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

I can not resist here quoting from the Pilgrim- 
age to Waterloo the account of the return home. 
Many readers will not have seen it before. Those 
who have will not be displeased to see it again, 
giving, as it does, so vivid, so true a picture of 
his domestic happiness. 

" O joyful hour, when to our longing home 

The long-expected wheels at length drew nigh ! 
When the first sound went forth, 'They come, they 
come I' 
And hope's impatience quicken'd every eye ! 
Never had man whom Heaven would heap with bliss 
More glad return, more happy hour than this. 

" Aloft on yonder bench, with arms dispread, 

My boy stood, shouting there his father's name, 
Waving his hat around his happy head ; 

And there, a younger group, his sisters came: 
Smiling they stood with looks of pleased surprise, 
While tears of joy were seen in elder eyes. 

M Soon all and each came crowding round to share 
The cordial greeting, the beloved sight ; 

What welcomings of hand and lip were there ! 
And when those overflowings of delight 

Subsided to a sense of quiet bliss, 

Life hath no purer, deeper happiness. 

M The young companion of our weary way 
Found here the end desired of all her ills ; 
She who in sickness pining many a day 

Hunger'd and thirsted for her native hills, 
Forgetful now of sufferings past and pain, 
liejoiced to see her own dear home again. 

" Recover'd now, the home-sick mountaineer 

Sat by the playmate of her infancy, 
The twin-like comrade— render' d doubly dear 

For that long absence : full of life was she, 
With voluble discourse and eager mien 
Telling of all the wonders she had seen. 

'' Here silently between her parents stood 
My dark-eyed Bertha, timid as a dove ; 
And gently oft from time to time she woo'd 
Pressure of hand, or word, or look of love, 
With impulse shy of bashful tenderness, 
Soliciting again the wish'd caress. 

"The younger twain in wonder lost were they, 

My gentic Kate and my sweet Isabel : 
Long of our promised coming, day by day 

It had been their delight to hear and tell ; 
And now, when that long-promised hour was come, 
Surprise and wakening memory held them dumb. 



" Soon they grew blithe as they were wont to be ; 

Her old endearments each began to seek : 
And Isabel drew near to climb my knee, 

And pat with fondling hand her father's cheek , 
With voice, and touch, and look reviving thus 
The feelings which had slept in long disuse. 

" But there stood one whose heart could entertain 
And comprehend the fullness of the joy ; 
The father, teacher, playmate, was again 

Come to his only and his studious boy . 
And he beheld again that mother's eye, 
Which with such ceaseless care had watch d his infancy 

" Bring forth the treasures now — a proud display — 
For rich as Eastern merchants we return ! 
Behold the black Beguine, the 6ister gray, 

The friars whose heads with sober motion turn, 
The ark well fill'd with all its numerous hives, 
Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japhet, and their wivei 

" The tumbler, loose of limb; the wrestlers twain; 

And many a toy beside of quaint device, 

Which, when his fleecy troops no more can gain 

Their pasture on the mountains hoar with ice, 

The German shepherd carves with curious knife, 

Earning with easy toil the food of frugal life. 

" It was a group which Richter, had he view'd, 
Might have deem'd worthy of his perfect skill ; 
The keen impatience of the younger brood, 

Their eager eyes and fingers never still ; 
The hope, the wonder, and the restless joy 
Of those glad girls, and that vociferous boy ! 

" The aged friend* serene with quiet smile, 

Who in their pleasure finds her own delight; 
The mother's heart-felt happiness the while ; 

The aunts, rejoicing in the joyful sight ; 
And he who in his gayety of heart, 
With glib and noisy tongue perform'd the showman 
part 

" Scoff ye who will ! but let me, gracious Heaven, 
Preserve this boyish heart till life's last day ! 
For so that inward light by Nature given 

Shall still direct, and cheer me on my way, 
And, brightening as the shades of life descend, 
Shine forth with heavenly radiance at the end. 

Pilgrimage to Waterloo ; Pkoem 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq. 

"Keswick, Dec. 15, 1815. 
"My dear Wynn, 

The infrequency of my letters, my dear Wynn, 
God knows, is owing to no distaste. The press- 
ing employments of one who keeps pace with 
an increasing expenditure by temporary writings 
— the quantity which, from necessity as well as 
inclination, I have to read, and the multiplicity 
of letters which I have to write, are the sufficient 
causes. You do not know the number of letters 
which come to me from perfect strangers, who 
seem to think a poet laureate has as much patron- 
age as the lord chancellor. Not unfrequently the 
writers remind me so strongly of my own youngei 
days, that I have given them the best advice I 
could, with earnestness as well as sincerity ; and 
more than once been thus led into an occasional 
correspondence. The laureateship itself with me 
is no sinecure. I am at work in consequence of 
it at this time. Do not suppose that I mean to 
rival Walter Scott. My poem will be in a very 
different strain. # # # * # 

"During my stay in London I scarcely ever 
went out of the circle of my private friends. I 
dined in company with Mina and some other 
Liberals — a set of men who (while I can not but 
respect them as individuals, and feel that under 



* Mrs. Wilson, who is referred to occasionally in thl* 
volume 



324 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT.42 



the late administration I myself might probably 
have felt and acted with them) do certainly jus- 
tify Ferdinand, not in his capricious freaks of 
favor and disfavor, but in the general and decided 
character of his measures. They are thorough 
atheists, and would go the full length of then- 
principles, being, I believe, all of them (as is, 
mdeed, the character of the nation) of the same 
iron mold as Cortes and Pizarro. Mina is a 
finer character — young and ardent, and speak- 
ing of his comrades with an affection which con- 
ciliates affection for himself. 

# # # _ # * # * 

" There is but one point in your letter in which 
I do not agree with you, and that regards the 
army. The necessity of maintaining it appears 
to me manifest, and the contingent danger imag- 
inary. Our danger is not from that quarter. 
If we are to suffer from the army, it will be by 
their taking part against the government (as in 
France), and siding in a mob revolution. In my 
judgment, we are tending this way insensiblyto 
our rulers and to the main part of the people, but 
I fear inevitably. The foundations of govern- 
ment are undermined. The props may last dur- 
ing your lifetime and mine, but I can not conceal 
from myself a conviction that, at no very distant 
day, the whole fabric must fall ! God grant that 
this ominous apprehension may prove false. 

" God bless you, my dear Wynn ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Jan. 8, 1816. 
" My dear Neville, 
"Did you ever watch the sands of an hour- 
glass ? When I was first at Oxford, one of these 
old-fashioned measurers of time was part of my 
furniture. I rose at four o'clock, and portioned 
out my studies by the hour. When the sands ran 
low, my attention was often attracted by observ- 
ing how much faster they appeared to run. Ap- 
plying this image to human life, which it has so 
often been brought to illustrate (whether my 
sands run low or not, is known only to Him by 
whom this frail vessel was made, but assuredly 
they run fast), it seems as if the weeks of my 
youth were longer than the months of middle 
age, and that I could get through more in a day 
then than in a week now. Since I wrote to you, 
I have scarcely done any thing but versify ; and 
certain it is that twenty years ago I could have 
produced the same quantity of verses in a fourth 
part of the time. It is true they would have 
been more faulty; but the very solicitude to 
avoid faults, and the slow and dreaming state 
which it induces, may be considered as indica- 
tions that the season for poetry is gone by — that 
I am falling into the yellow leaf, or, to use a 
more consoling metaphor, and perhaps a more 
applicable one, that poetry is but the blossom of 
an intellect so constituted as mine, and that with 
me the fruit is set — in sober phrase, that it would 
be wisely done if henceforth I confined myself to 
sober prose. And this I could be well content 
to do, from a conviction in my own mind that I 



shall ultimately hold a higher place among his- 
torians (if I live to complete what is begun) than 
among poets. # # # * 

"The affair of Lavalette, in France, pleases 
me well, except as far as regards the treatment 
of his wife for having done her duty. The king 
ought not to have pardoned him, and the law 
ought to have condemned him : both did as they 
ought, and, as far as depended upon them, his 
civil life was at an end. I should have had no 
pity for him if the ax had fallen ; but a con- 
demned criminal making his escape becomes a 
mere human creature striving for life, and the 
Devil take him, say I, who would not lend a hand 
to assist him, except in cases of such atrocious 
guilt as make us abhor and execrate the perpe- 
trator, and render it unfit that he should exist 
upon earth. 

" Of home politics, I grieve to say that the 
more I think of them, the worse they appear. 
All imaginable causes which produce revolution 
are at work among us ; the solitary principle of 
education is the only counteracting power ; and 
God knows this is very partial, very limited, and 
must be slow in its effects, even if it were upon 
a wider scale and a more permanent foundation. 
If another country were in this st%te, I should 
say, without hesitation, that revolution was at 
hand there, and that it was inevitable. If I hesi- 
tate at predicting to myself the same result here, 
it is from love or from weakness, from hope that 
we may mercifully be spared so dreadful a chas- 
tisement for our follies and our sins, and from 
fear of contemplating the evils Under which we 
should be overwhelmed. God bless you ! 
"Yours most affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 4, 1816. 
" My dear G., 

"I have an official from the Treasury this 
evening, telling me, as you anticipated, that the 
prayer of my petition* is inadmissible. To be 
sure, it is much better they should repeal the 
duty than grant an exemption from it spcciali 
gratia ; but if they will do neither the one nor 
the other, it is too bad. 

" Is it true that the Princess Charlotte is likely 
to be married ? You will guess why I wish to 
know ; though, if I had not written half a mar- 
riage poem, I certainly would not begin one, for, 
between ourselves, I have not been well used 
about the laureateship. They require task verses 
from me — not to keep up the custom of having 
them befiddled, but to keep up the task — instead 
of putting an end to this foolery in a fair and 
open manner, which would do the court credit, 
and save me a silly expense of time and trouble. 
I shall complete what I have begun, because it 
is begun, and to please myself, not to obtain favor 
with any body else ; but when these things are 
done, if they continue to look for New Years' Odes 
from the laureate, they shall have nothing else. 

* A petition that some foreign books might come in duty 



jEtat. 42. 



ROBERT SOUTKEY. 



32o 



" Tom has been here for the last fortnight, 
looking about for a house. I can not write 
verses in the presence of any person except my 
wife and children. Tom, therefore, without 
knowing it, has impeded my Pilgrimage ; but I 
can prosify, let who will be present, and Brazil 
is profiting by this interruption. 

" Were you not here when poor Lloyd intro- 
duced M. Simond ? and have you seen the said 
M. Simond's Travels in England, by a native 
of France ? You will like the liveliness and the 
pervading good sense ; and you will smile at the 
complacency with which he abuses Handel, Ra- 
phael, and Milton. He honors me with a couple 
of pages — an amusing mixture of journalizing, 
personal civility, and critical presumption. My 
poems and Milton's, he says, have few readers, 
although they have many admirers. He applies 
to me the famous speech of the cardinal to Ari- 
osto, Dove Diavolo, &c, and thinks I write non- 
sense. However, it is better than Milton's, both 
Milton's love and theology being coarse and 
material, whereas I have tenderness and spirit- 
uality ! ! ! He sets down two or three things 
which I told him, states my opinions as he is 
pleased to suppose, and concludes that the rea- 
son why I disapprove of Mr. Malthus's writings 
is that I do not understand them. Bravo, M. 
Simond ! Yet, in the main, it is a fair and able 
book, and I wonder how so sensible a man can 
write with such consummate self-assurance upon 
things above his reach. 

" I long to have my Brazilian History finish- 
ed, that that of the war may go to press in its 
stead ; and could I abstain from reviewing, three 
months would accomplish this desirable object : 
but 'I must live,' as the French libeler said to 
Richelieu, and, unlike the cardinal, I know you 
will see the necessity for my so doing. How- 
ever, I am in a fair train, and verily believe that 
after the present year I and the constable shall 
travel side by side in good fellowship. You will 
be glad to hear that I have got the correspond- 
ence of the Portuguese committee, with the offi- 
cial details of the conduct of Massena's army, 
and the consequent state of the people and the 
country. If I live to complete this work, I ver- 
ily believe it will tend to mitigate the evils of 
war hereafter, by teaching men in command 
what ineffaceable infamy will pursue them if 
they act as barbarians. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Chauncey Hare Townshend, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 10,1816. 
" A natural but melancholy association re- 
minds me of you. Between three and four years 
ago, a youth, as ardent in the study of poetry as 
yourself, but under less favorable circumstances 
of fortune, sent me some specimens of his poems, 
and consulted me concerning the course of life 
which he should pursue. He was the eldest of 
a very large family, and the father a half-pay 
officer. He wished to go to London, and study 
the law, and support himself while studying it 
by his pen. I pointed out to him the certain 



[ misery and ruin in which such an event would 
involve him, and recommended him to go to 
Cambridge, where, with his talents and acquire- 
ments, he could not fail of making his way, un- 
less he was imprudent. I interested myself for 
him at Cambridge ; he was placed at Emmanuel, 
won the good- will of his college, and was in the 
sure road both to independence and fame, when 
the fever of last year cut him off. I do not think 
there ever lived a youth of higher promise. His 
name was James Dusautoy. This evening I 
have been looking over his papers, with a view 
of arranging a selection of them for the press. 
In seeking to serve him, I have been the means 
of sending him prematurely to the grave. I will 
at least endeavor to preserve his memory.* 

" Of the many poets, young and old, whom I 
have known only by letter, Kirke White, Dusau- 
toy, and yourself have borne the fairest blossom. 
In the blossom they have been cut off. May 
you live to bring forth fruit ! 

" I think you intimated an intention of going 
to Cambridge. The fever has broken out there 
again; physicians know not how to treat it; it 
has more the character of a pestilence than any 
disease which has for many years appeared in 
this island ; and unless you have the strongest 
reasons for preferring Cambridge, the danger 
and the probability of the recurrence of this con- 
tagion are such, that you would do well to turn 
your thoughts toward Oxford on this account 
alone. 

" Your sonnets have gratified me and my 
family. Study our early poets, and avoid all 
imitation of your cotemporaries. You can not 
read the best writers of Elizabeth's age too oft- 
en. Do you love Spenser ? I have him m my 
heart of hearts. 

" God bless you, sir ! 

" Robert Southey." 

To Waller Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 17, 1816. 
"My dear Scott, 

" I have a debt upon my conscience which 
has been too long unpaid. You left me a letter 
of introduction to the Duchess of Richmond, 
which I was graceless enough to make no use 
of, and, still more gracelessly, I have never yet 
thanked you for it. As for the first part of the 
offense, my stay at Brussels was not very long. 
I had a great deal to see there ; moreover, I got 
among the old books ; and having a sort of in- 
stinct which makes me as much as possible get 
out of the way of drawing-rooms, because I have 
an awkward feeling of being in the way when 
in them, I was much more at my ease when 
looking at emperors and princes in the crowd, 
than I should have been in the room with them. 

" How I should have rejoiced if we had met 
at Waterloo ! This feeling I had and expressed 
upon the ground. You have pictured it with 
your characteristic force and animation. My 
poem will reach you in a few weeks : it is so 



See ante, p. 293. 



326 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 42. 



different in its kind, that, however kindly malice 
may be disposed, it will not be possible to insti- 
tute a comparison with yours. I take a differ- 
ent point of time and a wider range, leaving the 
battle untouched, and describing the field only 
such as it was when I sun-eyed it. * * 

" Mountaineer as I am, the cultivated scen- 
ery of Flanders delighted me. I have seen no 
town so interesting as Bruges — no country in a 
state so perfect as to its possible production of 
what is beautiful and useful, as the environs of 
that city and the Pays de Waes. Of single ob- 
jects, the finest which I saw were the market- 
place at Brussels and at Ypres, and the town- 
house at Louvain : the most extraordinary, as 
well as the most curious, the cathedral at Aix- 
la-Chapelle, which is, perhaps, the most curious 
church in existence. The most impressive were 
the quarries of Maestricht. I found a good deal 
of political discontent, particularly in the Liege 
country — a general sense of insecurity — a very 
prevalent belief that England had let Bonaparte 
loose from Elba, which I endeavored in vain to 
combat ; and a very proper degree of disap- 
pointment and indignation that he had not been 
put to death as he deserved — a feeling in which 
I heartily concurred. 

" Did I ever thank you for the Lord of the 
Isles ? There are pictures in it which are not 
surpassed in any of your poems, and in the first 
part especially, a mixuhre of originality, and an- 
imation, and beauty, which is seldom found. I 
wished the Lord himself had been more worthy 
of the good fortune which you bestowed upon 
him. The laurel which it has pleased you, 
rather than any other person, to bestow upon 
me, has taken me in for much dogged work in 
rhyme ; otherwise, I am inclined to think that 
my service to the Muses has been long enough, 
and that I should, perhaps, have claimed my 
discharge. The ardor of youth is gone by ; 
however I may have fallen short of my own as- 
pirations, my best is done, and I ought to prefer 
those employments which require the matured 
faculties and collected stores of declining life. 
You will receive the long-delayed conclusion of 
my Brazilian History in the course of the sum- 
mer. It has much curious matter respecting 
savage life, a full account of the Jesuit estab- 
lishments, and a war in Pernambuco, which will 
be much to your liking. 

" Remember me to Mrs. Scott and your 
daughter, who is old enough to be entitled to 
these courtesies, and believe me, my dear Scott, 
" Yours very affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Sharon Turner, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 2, 1816. 
" My dear Turner, 
" You will shortly, I trust, receive my Pil- 
grimage, the notes and title-page to which would 
have been at this time in the printers hands, if 
I had not been palsied by the severe illness of 
my son, who is at this time in such a state that 
I know not whether there be more cause for 



fear or for hope. In the disposition of mind 
which an affliction of this kind induces, there is 
no person whom I feel so much inclined to con- 
verse with as with you. 

" I have touched, in the latter part of my 
poem, upon the general course of human events, 
and the prospects of society. But perhaps I 
have not explained myself as fully and as clear- 
ly as if I had been writing in prose. The pre- 
ponderance of good, and the progressiveness of 
truth, and knowledge, and general well-being, I 
clearly perceive ; but I have delivered an opin- 
ion that this tendency to good is not an over- 
ruling necessity, and that that which is, is not 
necessarily the best that might have been, for 
this, in my judgment, would interfere with that 
free agency upon which all our virtues, and, in- 
deed, the great scheme of Revelation itself, are 
founded. 

"Time, my own heart, and, more than all 
other causes, the sorrows with which it has been 
visited (in the course of a life that, on the whole, 
has been happy in a degree vouchsafed to few, 
even among the happiest), have made me fully 
sensible that the highest happiness exists, as the 
only consolation is to be found, in a deep and 
habitual feeling of devotion. Long ere this 
would I have preached what I feel upon this 
subject, if the door had been open to me ; but it 
is one thing to conform to the Church, preserv- 
ing that freedom of mind which in religion, more 
than in all other things, is especially valuable, 
and another to subscribe solemnly to its articles. 
Christianity exists nowhere in so pure a form as 
in our own Church ; but even there it is mingled 
with much alloy, from which I know not how it 
will be purified. I have an instinctive abhor- 
rence of bigotry. "When Dissenters talk of the 
Establishment, they make me feel like a High- 
Churchman ; and when I get among High-Church- 
men, 1 am ready to take shelter in dissent. 

" You have thrown a new light upon the York 
and Lancaster age of our history, by showing the 
connection of those quarrels with the incipient 
spirit of Reformation. I wish we had reformed 
the monastic institutions instead of overthrowing 
them. Mischievous as they are in Catholic coun- 
tries, they have got this good about them, that 
they hold up something besides worldly distinc- 
tion to the respect and admiration of the people, 
and fix the standard of virtues higher than we 
do in Protestant countries. Would that we had 
an order of Beguines in England ! There are 
few subjects which have been so unfairly dis- 
cussed as monastic institutions : the Protestant 
condemns them in the lump, and the Romanist 
crams his legends down your throat. The truth 
is, that they began in a natural and good feeling, 
though somewhat exaggerated — that they pro- 
duced the greatest public good in their season, 
that they were abominably perverted, and that 
the good which they now do, wherever they ex- 
ist, is much less than the evil. Yet, if you had 
seen, as I once did, a Franciscan of fourscore, 
with a venerable head and beard, standing in the 
cloister of his convent, where his bro'hers lay 



JEtat. 42. 



ROD E 



S O U T II E Y. 



327 



S beneath his feet, and telling his beads, with a 
countenance expressive of the most perfect and 
peaceful piety, you would have felt with me how 
desirable it was that there should be such insti- 
tutions for minds so constituted. The total ab- 
sence* of religion from our poor-houses, alms- 
houses, and hospitals, is as culpable in one way 
as the excess of superstition is in another. I was 
greatly shocked at a story which I once heard 
from Dr. Gooch. A woman of the town was 
brought to one of the hospitals, having been acci- 
dentally poisoned. Almost the last words which 
she uttered were, that this was a blasted life, and 
she was glad to have done with it ! Who will 
not wish that she had been kissing the crucifix, 
and listening in full faith to the most credulous 
priest ! I say this more with reference to her 
feelings at that moment, and the effect upon oth- 
ers, than as to her own future state, however 
awful that consideration may be. The mercy of 
God is infinite ; and it were too dreadful to be- 
lieve that they who have been most miserable 
here, shpuld be condemned to endless misery 
hereafter. 

"But I will have done with these topics, be- 
cause I wish to say something respecting your 
second volume. You have surprised me by the 
additions you have made to our knowledge of 
our own early poetry. I had no notion that the 
Hermit of Hampole was so considerable a per- 
sonage, nor that there remained such a mass of 
inedited poetry of that age. The Antiquarian 
Society would do well to publish the whole, how- 
ever much it may be. You are aware how much 
light it would throw upon the history of our lan- 
guage, of our manners, and even of civil trans- 
action ; for all these things I should most gladly 
peruse the whole mass. St. Francisco Xavier 
is not the Xavier who wrote the Persian Life of 
Christ. In p. 3 you mention some novel verses 
which relate to Portuguese history. If the Scald 
Halldon's poem be not too long, may I request 
you to translate it for me, as a document for my 
history. Observe, that this request is purely 
conditional, as regarding the extent of the poem. 
If it is more than a half hour's work, it would 
be unreasonable to ask for time which you em- 
ploy so well, and of which you have so little to 
spare. 

" Remember us to Mrs. Turner, Alfred, and 
your daughter. We are in great anxiety, and 
with great cause, but there is hope. My wish 
at such time is akin to Macbeth's, but in a dif- 
ferent spirit — a longing that the next hundred 
years were over, and that we were in a better 
world, where happiness is permanent, and there 
is neither change nor evil. 

" God bless you ! 

M Yours very affectionately, 

" R. SoUTHEY." 

In the foregoing letter, my father speaks of 
his being at that time in a state of great anxiety, 
on account of (he illness of his only boy Herbert, 
then ten years old, and in all respects a child 
after his father's own heart. Having been not 



only altogether educated by his father, but also 
his constant companion and play-fellow, he was 
associated with all his thoughts, and closely con- 
nected with all the habits of his daily life. 

He seems, indeed, with all due allowance for 
parental partiality, to have been one of those 
children, of only too fair a promise, possessing a 
quietness of disposition hardly natural at that 
active age, and generally indicative of an innate 
feebleness of constitution, and evincing a quick- 
ness of intellect and a love of study which seem 
to show that the mind has, as it were, outgrown 
the bod}^. 

This I gather, not merely from my father's 
own letters, but from those who well remember 
the boy himself, and who speak of him as having 
been far beyond his age in understanding, and 
as bearing this painful and fatal illness with a 
patience and fortitude uncommon even in riper 
years. 

This illness had now lasted for several weeks, 
and being of a strange and complicated nature, 
the want of that medical skill and experience 
which is only to be found in large towns, added 
much to the parents' anxiety and distress. 

Subsequent examination, however (showing a 
great accumulation of matter at the heart) , proved 
that no skill could have availed. After a period 
of much suffering, he was released on the 17th 
of April. The following letters have a painful 
interest : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq 

"Wednesday, April 17, 1810. 
" My dear Bedford, 

" Here is an end of hope and of fear, but not 
of suffering. His sufferings, however, are over, 
and, thank God ! his passage was perfectly eas} r . 
He fell asleep, and is now in a better state of 
existence, for which his nature was more fitted 
than for this. You, more than most men, can 
tell what I have lost, and yet you are far from 
knowing how large a portion of my hopes and 
happiness will be laid in the grave with Herbert. 
For years it has been my daily prayer that I 
might be spared this affliction. 

" I am much reduced in body by this long and 
sore suffering, but I am perfectly resigned, and 
do not give way to grief. 

" In his desk there are the few letters which 1 
had written to him, in the joy of my heart. I wil" 
fold up these and send them to you, that thej 
may be preserved when I am gone, in memory 
of him and of me.* Should you survive me, you 
will publish such parts of my correspondence a? 
are proper, for the benefit of my family. M> 
dear Grosvenor, I wish you would make the se- 
lection while you can do it without sorrow, while 
it is uncertain which of us shall be left to regret 
the other. You are the fit person to do this ; 
and it will be well to burn in time what is to be 
suppressed. 

" I will not venture to relate the boy's conduct 
during his whole illness. I dare not trust my- 

* These letters have not come into my hands. It does 
not appear that they have been preserved. 



328 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 42. 



self to attempt this. But nothing could be more 
calm, more patient, more collected, more dutiful, 
more admirable. 

" Oh ! that I may be able to leave this coun- 
try ! The wound will never close while I remain 
in it. You would wonder to see me, how com- 
posed I am. Thank God, I can control myself 
for the sake of others ; but it is a life-long grief, 
and do what I can to lighten it, the burden will 
be as heavy as I can bear. R. S. 

" I wish you would tell Knox* what has hap- 
pened. He was very kind to Herbert, and de- 
serves that I should write to him." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"April 18, 1816. 

" My dear Grosvexor, 

" Wherefore do I write to yen ? Alas ! be- 
cause I know not what to do. To-morrow, per- 
haps, may bring with it something like the be- 
ginning of relief. To-day I hope I shall support 
myself, or rather that God will support me, for 
I am weak as a child, in body even more than 
in mind. My limbs tremble under me ; long 
anxiety has wasted me to the bane, and I fear it 
will be long before grief will suffer me to recruit. 
I am seriously apprehensive for the shock which 
my health seems to have sustained; yet I am 
wanting in no effort to appear calm and to con- 
sole others ; and those who are about me give 
me credit for a fortitude which I do not possess. 
Many blessings are left me — abundant blessings, 
more than I have deserved, more than I had ever 
reason to expect or even to hope. I have strong 
ties to life, and many duties yet to perform. Be- 
lieve me, I see these things as they ought to be 
seen. Reason will do something, Time more, 
Religion most of all. The loss is but for this 
world ; but as long as I remain in this world 1 
shall feel it. 

" Some way my feelings will vent themselves. 
I have thought of endeavoring to direct their 
course, and may, perhaps, set about a monument 
in verse for him and for myself, which may make 
our memories inseparable. 

" There would be no wisdom in going from 
home. The act of returning to it would undo 
all the benefit I might receive from change of 
circumstance for some time yet. Edith feels 
this ; otherwise, perhaps, we might have gone to 
visit Tom in his new habitation. Summer is at 
hand. While there was a hope of Herbert's re- 
covery, this was a frequent subject of pleasura- 
ble consideration; it is now a painful thought, 
and I look forward with a sense of fear to the 
season which brings with it life and joy to those 
who are capable of receiving them. You, more 
than most men, are aware of the extent of my 
loss, and how, as long as I remain here, every 
object within and without, and every hour of ev- 
ery day, must bring it fresh to recollection. Yet 
the more I consider the difficulties of removing, 
the greater they appear ; and perhaps by the time 
it would be possible, I may cease to desire it. 

* A school-fellow of my father's at Westminster, who 
was afterward one af the masters there. 



(: Whenever I have leisure (will that ever be?) 
I will begin my own memoirs, to serve as a post- 
obit for those of my family who may survive me. 
1 They will be so far provided for as to leave me 
no uneasiness on that score. My life insurance 
! is c£4000 ; my books (for there is none to inherit 
j them now) may be worth ^1500; my copy- 
' rights, perhaps, not less ; and you will be able 
to put together letters and fragments, which, 
j when I am gone, will be acceptable articles in 
! the market. Probably there would, on the whole, 
! be d£'l 0,000 forthcoming. The whole should be 
j Edith's during her life, and afterward divided 
J equally among the surviving children. I shall 
j name John May and Neville White for executors 
— both men of business, and both my dear and 
: zealous friends. But do you take care of my 
: papers, and publish my remains. I have, per- 
haps, much underrated the value of what will be 
left. A selection of my reviewals may be re- 
printed, with credit to my name and with profit. 
j You will not wonder that I have fallen into this 
strain. One grave is at this moment made ready ; 
j and who can tell how soon another may be re- 
| quired ? I pray, however, for continued life. 
I There may be, probably there are, many afflic- 
I tions for me in store, but the worst is past. I 
have more than once thought of Mr. Roberts ; 
when he hears of my loss, it will for a moment 
I freshen the recollection of his own. 

"It is some relief to write to you, after the 
calls which have this day been made upon my 
fortitude. I have not been found wanting ; and 
Edith, throughout the whole long trial, has dis- 
played the most exemplary self-control. We 
never approached him but with composed coun- 
tenances and words of hope ; and for a mother to 
do this, hour after hour, and night after night, 
while her heart was breaking, is perhaps the ut- 
most effort of which our nature is capable. Oh ! 
how you would have admired and loved him, had 
you seen him in these last weeks ! But you 
know something of his character. Never, per- 
haps, was child of ten years old so much to his 
father. Without ever ceasing to treat him as a 
child, I had made him my companion, as well as 
playmate and pupil, and he had learned to inter- 
est himself in my pursuits, and take part in all 
my enjoyments. 

"I have sent Edith May to Wordsworth's. 
Poor child, she is dreadfully distressed ; and it 
has ever been my desire to save them from all 
the sorrow that can be avoided, and to mitigate, 
as far as possible, what is inevitable. Something 
it is to secure for them a happy childhood. Never 
was a happier than Herbert's. He knew not 
what unkindness or evil was, except by name. 
His whole life was passed in cheerful duty, and 
love and enjoyment. If I did not hope that I 
have been useful in my generation, and may still 
continue to be so, I could wish that I also had 
gone to rest as early in the day ; but my child- 
hood was not like his. 

" Let me have some money when you can, that 
I these mournful expenses may be discharged. For 
) five weeks my hand has been palsied, and this 



jEtat. 42. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



1129 



brings with if a loss of means — an evil insepara- 
ble from my way of lite. To-morrow I shall en- 
deavor to resume my employments. You may 
be sure, also, that I shall attend to my health; 
nothing which exercise and diet can afford will 
be neglected ; and whenever I feel that change 
of air and of scene could benefit me, the change 
shall be tried. I am perfectly aware how im- 
portant an object this is ; the fear is, lest my sense 
of its moment should produce an injurious anxie- 
ty. God bless you ! R. S. 

" You would save me some pain by correct- 
ing the remaining' proofs,* for the sight of that 
book must needs be trying to me." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Saturday, April 20 >81S. 
" Mr dear Grosvenor, 

" Desire Gifford to reserve room for >ne in this 
number : I will not delay it beyond the first week 
in May ; he may rely upon this : 1 am diligent- 
ly at work ; the exertion is wholesome for me at 
this season, and I want the money. It is the 
La Vendee article. 

" A proof has reached me, so your trouble on 
that score may be spared. 

"I am in all respects acting as you would 
wish to see me, not unmindful, of the blessings 
which are left and the duties which I have to 
perform. But indeed, Grosvenor, it is only a 
deep, heartfelt, and ever-present faith which could 
support me. If what I have lost were lost for- 
ever, I should sink under the affliction. Through- 
out the whole sorrow, long and trying as it has 
been, Edith has demeaned herself with a strength 
of mind and a self-control deserving the highest 
admiration. To be as happy ever again as I 
have been, is impossible; my future happiness 
must be of a different kind, but the difference 
will be in kind rather than degree ; there will be 
less of this world in it, more of the next, there- 
fore will it be safe and durable. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 22, 1816. 
" My dear Friend, 

" I thank you for your letter, for your sympa- 
thy, and for your prayers. We have been sup- 
ported even beyond my hopes, and according to 
our need. I do not feel any return of strength, 
but it will soon be restored; anxiety has worn 
me to the bone. While that state continued I 
was incapable of any employment, and my time 
was passed day and night alternately in praying 
that the worst might be averted, and in prepar- 
ing for it if it might take place. 

" Three things I prayed for — the child's re- 
covery, if it might please God ; that, if this might 
not be, his passage might be rendered easy ; and 
that we might be supported in our affliction. 
The two latter petitions were granted, and lam 
truly thankful. But when the event was over, 



* Of the Pilgrimage to Wnterloo. 



then, like David, I roused myself, and gave no 
way to unavailing grief, acting in all things as I 
should wish others to act when my hour also is 
come. I employ myself incessantly, taking, how- 
ever, every day as much exercise as I can bear 
without injurious fatigue, which is not much. 
My appetite is good, and I have now no want of 
sleep. Edith is perfectly calm and resigned. 
Her fortitude is indeed exemplary to the highest 
degree, but her employments do not withdraw 
her from herself as mine do, and therefore I fear 
she has more to struggle with. Perhaps we were 
too happy before this dispensation struck us. 
Perhaps it was expedient for us that our hearts 
should be drawn more strongly toward another 
world. This is the use of sorrow, and to this 
use I trust our sorrow will be sanctified. 

"Believe me, my dear friend, ever most truly 
and affectionately yours, 

"Robert Southey." 

To William Wordsworth, Esq. 

"Monday, April 22, 1816 
" My dear Wordsworth, 
" l r ou were right respecting the nature of my 
support under this affliction ; there is but one 
source of consolation, and of that source I have 
drunk largely. When you shall see how I had 
spoken of my happiness but a few weeks ago, 
you will read with tears of sorrow what I wrote 
with tears of joy. And little did I think how 
soon and how literally another part of this mourn- 
ful poem was to be fulfilled, when I said in it, 

' To earth I should have sunk in my despair, 
Had I not clasped the Cross, and been supported there ' 

" I thank God for the strength with which we 
have borne this trial. It is not possible for 
woman to have acted with more fortitude than 
Edith has done through the whole sharp suffer- 
ing ; she has rather set an example than followed 
it. My bodily frame is much shaken. A little 
time and care will recruit it, and the mind is 
sound. I am fully sensible of the blessings 
which are left me, which far exceed those of 
most men. I pray for continued life, that I may 
fulfill my duties toward those whom I love. I 
employ myself, and I look forward to the end 
with faith and with hope, as one whose treasure 
is laid up in Heaven ; and where the treasure 
is, there will the heart be also. 

" At present it would rather do me hurt than 
good to see you. I am perfectly calm and in 
full self-possession ; but I know my own weak- 
ness as well as my strength, and the wholesomest 
regimen for a mind like mine is assiduous appli- 
cation to pursuits which call forth enough of its 
powers to occupy without exhausting it. It is 
well for me that I can do this. I take regular 
exercise, and am very careful of myself. 

" Many will feel for me, but none can tell 
what I have lost : the head and flower of my 
earthly happiness is cut off. But I am not un- 
happy. 

" God bless you ! R. S " 



330 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 4 .» 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Wednesday, April 24, 1816. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" You remember the two remedies for grief 
of which Pelayo speaks.* I practice what I 
preach, and have employed myself with a power 
of exertion at which I nryself wonder, taking 
care so to vary my employments as not for any 
one to possess my mind too fully. I take regu- 
lar exercise ; I take tonics : 1 4 eat, drink, and 
sleep. See if this be not doing well. I con- 
verse as usual, and can at times be cheerful, but 
my happiness can never again be what it has 
been. Many blessings do I possess, but the 
prime blessing, the flower of my hopes, the cen- 
tral jewel of the ring, is gone. An early ad- 
miration of what is good in the stoical philoso- 
phy, and an active and elastic mind, have doubt- 
less been great means of supporting me ; but 
they would have been insufficient without a deep- 
er principle ; and I verily believe that were it 
not for the consolations which religion affords — 
consolations which in time will ripen into hope 
and joy — I should sink under an affliction which 
is greater than any man can conceive. You 
best can judge what the privation must be, and 
you can but judge imperfectly. 

" Enough of this. I shall soon find a better 
mode of at once indulging and regulating these 
feelings. Upon this subject I have thoughts in 
my head which will, by God's blessing, produce 
good and lasting fruit. 

" At present one of my daily employments is 
+ he Carmen Nuptiale, which is now nearly com- 
pleted. It will extend to about a hundred and 
ten stanzas, the same meter as the Pilgrimage, 
which, printed in the same manner, may run to 
seventy pages — say three sheets. Its English 
title the Lay of the Laureate, which is not on]/ 
a taking title for an advertisement, but a ie^ 
markably good one. It is for Longman to de- 
termine in what form he will print it, and A T hat 
number of copies : quarto pamphlets, I tUnk, 
are not liked, for their inconvenient size. 

"There must be a presentation cop" bound 
for the princess. Through what channel shall I 
convey it ? Lord William Gordon w aid deliver 
it for me if I were to ask him. Car. you put me 
in a better way ? Would Herrie? like to do it, 
or is it proper to ask him ? 

"In a few days I shall send T , ou the MSS. ; 
the printing will be done presently. It comes 
too close upon the Pilgrim? ge ; but, whatever 
may be thought of it at cour ,, it will do me credit 
now and hereafter. I air rery desirous of com- 
pleting it, that I may hr /o leisure for what lies 
nearer my heart. 

" I will have a cop^ for Edith bound exactly 
like the court copy. Vv hat would it cost to have 
both these printed upon vellum ? more, I suspect, 
than the fancy is worth. 

" Press upon Gifford my earnest desire that 



" Nature hath assigned 
Two sovereign remedies for human grief: 
Religion— surest, firmest, first, and best ; 
And strenuous action next." 

Roderic, canto xiv. 



the article of which the first portion accompa- 
nies this note may appear in the present number. 
It is of consequence to me, and the subject is ir» 
danger of becoming stale if it be delayed : dwell 
• upon this point. It will be as interesting a pa 
I per as he has ever received from me. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 26, 1816. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" Herbert died on the 17th, and he was in the 
tenth year of his age ; say nothing more than 
this. How much does it contain to me, and t& 
the world how little ! 

" I have great power of exertion, and this if 
of signal benefit at this time. My mind is close- 
ly employed throughout the whole day. I do 
more in one day than I used to do in three . 
hitherto the effect is good, but I shall watch my 
self we'll, and be carefol not to exact more thar 
the system will endure. 1 have certainly gainec 
strength; but, as yju may suppose, every cir- 
cumstance of spring und of leviving nature bring? 
with it thoughts that touch me in my heart of 
hearts. Do no*, however, imagine that I aix 
unhappy. I know what I have lost, and that nc 
loss could possibly have been greater ; but it if 
only for a time ; and you know what my habitual 
and rootf J. feelings are upon this subject. 

"It is not unlikely that Gifford will do for 
me in this number what he has done by me in 
others — displace some other person's article to 
make room for mine. He will act wisely if he 
dojs so, for the freshness of the subject will else 
evaporate. I shall finish it with all speed upon 
this supposition. It would surprise you were 
' you to see what I get through in a day. 

" The remainder of the proofs might as well 
have been sent me. Surrounded as I am with 
mementoes, there was little reason for wishing 
to keep them at a distance. And however 
mournful it must ever be to remember the Pro- 
em, and the delight which it gave when the 
proof-sheet arrived, I am glad that it was writ- 
ten, and Edith feels upon this point as I do. The 
proofs had better come to me, if it is not too late. 
I can verify the quotations, which it is impossi- 
ble for you to do, and may, perhaps, add some- 
thing. 

" Tell Pople I shall be obliged to him if he 
will make some speed with the History of Bra- 
zil ; that I find it impossible to comprise it in 
two volumes ; a third there must be, but it will 
go to press as soon as the second is printed ; and 
that there will be no delay on my part (that is, 
as far as man can answer for himself) till the 
whole is completed. I send a portion of copy in 
the frank which covers this. If I mistake not, 
this second volume will be found very amusing 
as well as very curious. 

" Edith May returned from Wordsworth's this 
morning ; we missed her greatly, and yet her 
return was a renewal of sorrow. Her mother 
behaves incomparably well : it is not possible 
that any mother could suffer more, or support 



iETAT.42. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



.-.31 



her sufferings better. She knows that we have 
abundant blessings left, but feels that the flower 
of all is gone ; and this feeling must be for life. 
Bitter as it is, it is wholesome. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" April 30, 1816. 
" My dear Grosvetsor, 

" Time passes on. I employ myself, and have 
recovered strength ; but in point of spirits I 
rather lose ground. The cause, perhaps, is ob- 
vious. At first, we make great efforts to force 
the mind from thoughts which are intolerably 
painful ; but as, from time, they become endur- 
able, less effort is made to avoid them, and the 
poignancy of grief settles into melancholy. Both 
with Edith and myself, this seems to be the case. 
Certain I am that nothing but the full assurance 
of immortality could prevent me from sinking 
under an affliction which is greater than any 
stranger could possibly believe ; and thankful I 
am that my feelings have been so long and so 
habitually directed tow T ard this point. You prob- 
ably know my poems better than most people, 
and may perceive how strongly my mind has 
been impressed upon this most consoling subject. 

*' Yesterday I finished the main part of the 
Lay. There remain only six or eight stanzas 
as a L 'Envoy, which I may, perhaps, complete 
this night ; then I shall send you the w T hole in 
one packet through Gifford. I have said noth- 
ing about it to Longman, for I think it very prob- 
able that you may advise me not to publish the 
poem now it is written, lest it should give of- 
fense ; and having satisfied myself by writing it, 
it is quite indifferent to me whether it appears 
now T or after my decease. The emolument to 
be derived from it is too insignificant to be 
thought of, and the credit which I should gain 
I can very well do without. So take counsel 
with any body you please, and remember that I, 
who am easily enough persuaded in any case, 
am in this perfectly unconcerned ; for were it a 
thing of course that I should produce a poem on 
this occasion, there is at this time, God knows, 
sufficient reason why I might stand excused. 

" Do not imagine that the poem has derived 
the slightest cast of coloring from my present 
state of mind. The plan is precisely what was 
originally formed. William Nichol is likely to 
judge as well as any man whether there be any 
unfitness in publishing it. You are quite aware 
that I neither wish to court favor nor to give 
offense, and that the absurdity of taking offense 
(if it were taken) would excite in me more pity 
than resentment. 

" Good night ! I am going to the poem in 
hope of completing it. I can not yet bear to be 
unemployed, and this I feel severely. You know 
how much I used to unbend, and play w 7 ith the 
children, in frequent intervals of study, as though 
I were an idle man. Of this I am quite incapa- 
ble, and shall long continue so. No circum- 
stance of my former life ever brought with it so 
great a change as that which I daily and hourly 



feel, antLperhaps shall never cease to feel. Yet 
I am thankful for having possessed this child so 
long ; for worlds I would not but have been his 
father. Of all the blessings which it has pleased 
God to vouchsafe me, this was and is the great- 
est. R. S." 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Friday, May 3, 1816. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

" You will have seen, by my last letters, that 
I am not exhausting myself by over-exertion. 
On the contrary, for many days I have been 
forcing myself to the more difficult necessity of 
bearing my own recollections. Time will soft- 
en them down ; indeed, they now have, and y- 
ways have had, all the alleviation which an as- 
sured hope and faith can bestow ; and when I 
give way to tears, which is only in darkness o\ 
in solitude, they are not tears of unmingled pain . 
I begin to think that change of place w T ould not 
be desirable, and that the pain of leaving a place 
where I have enjoyed so many years of such 
great happiness, is more than it is wise to incur 
without necessity. Nor could I reconcile either 
Edith or myself to the thought of leaving pooi 
Mrs. Wilson,* whose heart is half broken al- 
ready, and to whom our departure would be a 
death-stroke. Her days, indeed, must neces- 
sarily be few, and her life-lease will probably 
expire before the end of the term to which we 
are looking on. 

" Murray has sent me 6650 for the La Vendw 
article, which makes me indifferent when it ap- 
pears ; and proposes to me half a dozen other 
subjects at c€l00 each, at which rate I suppose 
in future I shall supply him with an article ev- 
ery quarter. This will set me at ease in money 
matters, about which, thank God and the easy 
disposition with which he has blessed me, I have 
never been too anxious. 

"It is needless to say I shall be glad to see 
you here, but rather at some future time, when 
you will find me a better companion, and w 7 hen 
your company would do me more good. Nor, 
indeed, must you leave your mother ; her deliv- 
erance from the infirmities of life can not be long 
deferred by any human skill, or any favorable 
efforts of nature. Whenever that event takes 
place, you will need such relief as change of 
scene can afford ; and whenever it may be, I 
hold myself ready to join you and accompany 
you to the Continent, for as long a time as you 
can be spared from your office, and as long a 
journey as that time may enable us to take. 
Remember this, and look to it as a fitting ar- 



* Mrs. Wilson (the "aged friend" mentioned in the 
stanzas quoted from the Pilgrimage to Waterloo) had 
been housekeeper to Mr. Jackson, the former owner of 
Greta Hall, and she continued to occupy part of one of 
the two houses, which, though altogether in my father'3 
occupation, had not been wholly thrown together as was 
afterward done. She had once been the belle of Keswick, 
and was a person of a marvelous sweetness of temper 
and sterling good sense, as much attached to the children 
of the family as if they had been her own, and remem- 
bered still by every surviving member of it with respect 
and affection. 



332 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 42. 



rangement which will benefit us both. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To Chauncey Hare Townshend, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 16, 1816. 

" * * * The loss which I have 
sustained is, I believe, heavier than any like 
affliction would have proved to almost any other 
person, from the circumstance of my dear son's 
character, and the peculiar habits of my life. 
The joyousness of my disposition has received its 
death- wound; but there are still so many bless- 
ings left me, that I should be most ungrateful did 
I not feel myself abundantly rich in the only 
treasures which I have ever coveted. Three 
months ago, when I looked around, I knew no 
man so happy as myself — that is, no man who 
so entirely possessed all that his heart desired, 
those desires being such as bore the severest scru- 
tiny of wisdom. The difference now is, that what 
was then the flower of my earthly happiness is 
now become a prominent object of my heavenly 
hopes — that I have this treasure in reversion in- 
stead of actually possessing it ; but the reversion 
is indefeasible, and when it is restored to me it 
will be forever ; the separation which death 
makes is but for a time. 

" These are my habitual feelings, not the off- 
spring of immediate sorrow, for I have felt sor- 
row ere this, and, I hope, have profited by it. 

" The Roman Catholics go too far in weaning 
their hearts from the world, and fall, in conse- 
quence, into the worst practical follies which 
could result from Manicheism. We lay up treas- 
ure in heaven when we cherish the domestic 
charities. ' They sin who tell us love can die,'* 
ana they also err grievously who suppose that 
natural affections tend to wean us from God. 
Far otherwise ! They develop virtues, of the 
existence of which in our own hearts we should 
else be unconscious ; and binding us to each 
other, they bind us also to our common Parent. 

"Let me see your poem when you have finish- 
ed it, and tell me something more of yourself, 
where your home is, and where you have been 
educated. Any thing that you may communi- 
cate upon this subject will interest me. In my 
communication with Kirke White and with poor 
Dusautoy, I have blamed myself for repressing 
the expression of interest concerning them when 
it has been too late. Perhaps they have thought 
me cold and distant, than which nothing can be 
further from my nature ; but may your years be 
many and prosperous. God bless you ! 
" Your affectionate friend, 

"R. SOUTHEY." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

"May, 1816. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 
" I thank you for your letter. You may re- 
member that in my youth I had a good deal of 
such practical philosophy as may be learned from 
Epictetus ; it has often stood me in good stead ; 

* Kehama, canto ii., v. 10. 



it affords strength, but no consolation ; consola- 
tion can be found only in religion, and there I 
find it. My dear Lightfoot, it is now full two- 
and-twenty years since you and I shook hands 
at our last parting. In all likelihood, the separa- 
tion between my son and me will not be for so 
long a time ; in the common course of nature it 
can not possibly be much longer, and I may be 
summoned to rejoin him before the year, yea, be- 
fore the passing day or the passing hour be gone. 
Death has so often entered my doors, that he and 
I have long been familiar. The loss of five broth- 
ers and sisters (four of whom I remember well), 
of my father and mother, of a female cousin who 
grew up with me, and lived with me ; of two 
daughters, and of several friends (among them 
two of the dearest friends that ever man possess- 
ed), had very much weaned my heart from this 
world, or, more properly speaking, had fixed its 
thoughts and desires upon a better state wherein 
there shall be no such separation, before this last 
and severest affliction. Still it would be sense- 
less and ungrateful to the greatest degree if I 
were not to feel and acknowledge the abundant 
blessings that I still possess, especially believing, 
trusting, knowing, as I do, in the full assurance 
of satisfied reason and settled faith, that the 
treasure which has been taken from me now is 
laid up in heaven, there to be repossessed with 
ample increase. 

" Whenever I see Crediton, I must journey 
into the West for that sole purpose. My last 
ties with my native city were cut up by the 
roots two years ago, by the death of one of my 
best and dearest friends, and I shall never have 
heart to enter it again. Will you not give me 
one of your summer holidays, and visit, not only 
an old friend, but the part of England which is 
most worth visiting, and which attracts visitors 
from all parts ? * - * * * 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

To the Rev. Herbert Hill 

" Keswick, May 4, 1816. 
" My dear Uncle, 
" My estimate of human life is more favorable 
than yours. If death were the termination of 
our existence, then, indeed, I should wish rather 
to have been born a beast, or never to have been 
born at all ; but considering nothing more cer- 
tain than that this life is preparatory to a higher 
state of being, I am thankful for the happiness I 
have enjoyed, for the blessings which are left me, 
and for those to which I look with sure and cer- 
tain hope. With me the enjoyments of life have 
more than counterbalanced its anxieties and its 
pains. No man can possibly have been happier ; 
and at this moment, when I am suffering under 
almost the severest loss which could have befallen 
me, I am richer both in heart and hope than if 
God had never given me the child whom it hath 
pleased him to take away. My heart has been 
exercised with better feelings during his life, and 
is drawn nearer toward Heaven by his removal. 



jEtat. 42. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



333 



I do not recover spirits, but my strength is ma- 

iterially recruited, and I am not unhappy. 
" I have employed myself with more than or- 
dinary diligence. You will receive portions of 
my History in quick succession. I find abundant 
materials for a third volume, and have therefore 
determined not to injure a work wiiich has cost 
me so much labor, by attempting to compress it 
because the public would prefer two volumes to 
three. # # # You will see that 

the story of Cardenas* is not an episode : it is 
the beginning of the great struggle with the 
Jesuits. This volume will bring the narrative 
down to the beginning of the last century, and 
conclude with the account of the manners of 
Brazil at that time, and the state of the country, 
as far as my documents enable me to give it. * 

" You see I have not been idle ; indeed, at 
present there is more danger of my employing 
myself too much than too little. * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mr. Neville Wliite. 

" Keswick, May 4, 1816. 
" My dear Neville. 

" Thank you for your letter. I have had the 
prayers and the sympathy of many good men, 
and perhaps never child was lamented by so 
many persons of ripe years, unconnected with 
him by ties of consanguinity. But those of my 
friends who knew him loved him for his own 
sake, and many there are who grieve at his loss 
for mine. I dare not pursue this subject. My 
health is better, my spirits are not. I employ 
myself as much as possible ; but there must be 
intervals of employment, and the moment that 
my mind is off duty, it recurs to the change which 
has taken place : that change, I fear, will long 
be the first thought when I wake in the morning, 
and the last when I lie down at night. Yet, 
Neville, I feel and acknowledge the uses of this 
affliction. Perhaps I was too happy ; perhaps 
my affections were fastened by too many roots 
to this world ; perhaps this precarious life was 
too dear to me. 

"Edith sets me the example of suppressing 
her own feelings for the sake of mine. We have 
many blessings left — abundant ones, for which 
to be thankful. I know, too, to repine because 
Herbert is removed, would be as selfish as it 
would be sinful. Yea, I believe that, in my 
present frame of mind, I could lay my children 
upon the altar, like Abraham, and say, ' Thy will 
be done.' This I trust will continue, when the 
depressing effects of grief shall have passed away. 
I hope in time to recover some portion of my 
constitutional cheerfulness, but never tolose that 
feeling with w T hich I look on to eternity. I al- 
ways knew the instability of earthly happiness ; 
this woeful experience will make me contemplate 
more habitually and more ardently that happiness 
which is subject neither to chance nor change. 

" Do not suppose that I am indulging in tears, 
or giving way to painful recollections. On the 

* Hist, of Brazil., ch. xxv. 



contrary, 1 make proper exertions, and employ 
myself assiduously for as great a portion of the 
day as is compatible with health. For the first 
week I did as much every day as would at other 
times have seemed the full and overflowing prod- 
uce of three. This, of course, I could not con- 
tinue, but at the time it was salutary. God bless 
you, my dear Neville ! 

" Yours most affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"May 15, 1816. 
" My dear G., 

If egotism* in poetry be a sin, God forgive all 
great poets ! But perhaps it is allowable in them 
when they have been dead a few centuries, and 
therefore they may be permitted to speak of them- 
selves and appreciate themselves, provided they 
leave especial orders that such passages be not 
made public until the statute of critical limita- 
tion expires. Who can be weak enough to sup- 
pose that the man who wrote that third stanza 
would be deterred from printing it by any fear of 
reprehension on the score of vanity ? Who is to 
reprehend him ? None of his peers assuredly ^ 
not one person who will sympathize with him as 
he reads ; not one person who enters into his 
thoughts and feelings ; not one person who can 
enter into the strain and enjoy it. Those per- 
sons, indeed, may who live wholly in the pres- 
ent; but I have taken especial care to make it 
known, that a faith in hereafter is as necessary 
for the intellectual as for the moral character, 
and that to the man of letters (as w T ell as the 
Christian) the present forms but the slightest por- 
tion of his existence. He who would leave any 
durable monument behind him, must live in the 
past and look to the future. The poets of old 
scrupled not to say this; and who is there who 
is not delighted with these passages, whenever 
time has set his seal upon the prophecy which 
they contain ? 

" My spirits do not recover : that they should 
again be what they have been, I do not expect ; 
that, indeed, is impossible. But, except when 
reading or writing, I am deplorably depressed : 
the worst is, that I can not conceal this. To 
affect any thing like my own hilarity, and that 
presence of joyous feelings which carried with it 
a sort of perpetual sunshine, is, of course, impos- 
sible ; but you must imagine that the absence of 
all this must make itself felt. The change in my 
daily occupations, in my sports, my relaxations, 
my hopes, is so great, that it seems to have 
changed my very nature also. Nothing is said, 
but I often find anxious eyes fixed upon me, and 
watching my countenance. The best thing I can 
say is, that time passes on, and sooner or later 
remedies every thing. 



* This refers to some observations which had been 
made upon the Proem to the marriage song for the Prin- 
cess Charlotte. 



33 4 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 42. 



t; I will have the books bound separately, be- 
cause a book is a book, and two books are worth 
as much again as one ; and if a man's library 
comes to the hammer, this is of consequence • and 
whenever I get my knock-down blow, the poor 
books will be knocked down after me. But why 
did I touch upon this string ? Alas ! Grosvenor, 
it is because all things bear upon one subject, the 
center of the whole circumference of all my nat- 
ural associations. # # # # # 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Chauncey Hare Townshend, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 5, 1816. 

" Thank you for both your letters. The his- 
tory of your school-boy days reminds me of my 
own childhood and youth. I had a lonely child- 
hood, and suffered much from tyranny at school, 
till I outgrew it, and came to have authority my- 
self. In one respect, my fortune seems to have 
been better than yours, or my nature more ac- 
commodating. Where intellectual sympathy was 
not to be found, it was sufficient for me if moral 
sympathy existed. A kind heart and a gentle 
disposition won my friendship more readily than 
brighter talents, where these were wanting. * 

" I left Westminster in a perilous state — a 
heart full of feeling and poetry, a head full of 
Rousseau and Werter, and my religious prin- 
ciples shaken by Gibbon : many circumstances 
tended to give me a wrong bias, none to lead me 
right, except adversity, the wholesomest of all 
discipline. An instinctive modesty, rather than 
any purer cause, preserved me for a time from 
all vice. A severe system of stoical morality 
then came to its aid. I made Epictetus, for 
many months, literally my manual. The French 
Revolution was then in its full career. I went to 
Oxford in January, 1793, a Stoic and a Repub- 
lican. I had no acquaintance at the college, 
which was in a flagitious state of morals. I re- 
fused to wear powder, when every other man in 
the University wore it, because I thought the 
custom foolish and filthy ; and I refused even to 
drink more wine than suited my inclination and 
my principles. Before I had been a week in the 
college, a little party had got round me, glad to 
form a sober society, of which I was the center. 
Here I became intimate with Edmund Seward, 
whose death was the first of those privations 
which have, in great measure, weaned my heart 
from the world. He confirmed in me all that 
was good. Time and reflection, the blessings 
and the sorrows of life, and I hope I may add, 
with unfeigned humility, the grace of God, have 
done the rest. Large draughts have been ad- 
ministered to me from both urns. No man has 
suffered keener sorrows, no man has been more 
profusely blessed. Four months ago no human 
being could possibly be happier than I was. or 
richer in all that a wise heart could desire. The 
difference now is. that what was then my chief 
treasure is now laid up in Heaven. 

" Your manuscript goes by the next coach. I 
shall be glad to see the conclusion, and any other 
of your verses, Latin or English. Is any portion 



of your time given to modern languages ? If not, J 

half an hour a day might be borrowed for Ger- »| 

man, the want of which I have cause to regret. 1 

I was learning it with my son, and shall never j 
have heart to resume that as a solitary study 

which in his fellowship was made so delightful. I 

The most ambitious founder of a family never j 

built such hopes upon a child as I did on mine ; j 

and entirely resembling me as he did, if it had I 

been God's will that he should have grown up on j 

earth, he would have shared my pursuits, par- I 

taken all my thoughts and feelings, and have in I 

this manner succeeded to my plans and papers as I 
to an intellectual inheritance. God bless you ! 
"Robert Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 12, 181o. 
" My dear Friend, 
"I have not written to you for some weeks. 
Time passes on, and the lapse of two months may 
perhaps enable me now to judge what permanent 
effect this late affliction may produce upon my 
habitual state of mind. It will be long before I 
shall cease to be sensible of the change in my re- 
laxations, my pleasures, hopes, plans, and pros- 
pects ; very long, I fear, will it be before a sense 
of that change will cease to be my latest thought 
at night and my earliest in the morning. Yet I 
am certainly resigned to this privation ; and this 
I say, not in the spirit with which mere philoso- 
phy teaches us to bear that which is inevitable, 
but with a Christian conviction that this early re- 
moval is a blessing to him who is removed. We 
read of persons who have suddenly become gray 
from violent emotions of grief or fear. I feel in 
some degree as if I had passed at once from boy- 
hood to the decline of life. I had never ceased* 
to be a boy in cheerfulness till now. All those 
elastic spirits are now gone ; nor is it in the 
nature of things that they should return. I am 
still capable of enjoyment, and trust that there 
| is much in store for me ; but there is an end of 
' that hilarity which I possessed more uninter- 
ruptedly, and in a greater degree, than any per- 
son with whom I was ever acquainted. You 
| advised me to write down my recollections of 
j Herbert while they were fresh. I dare not un- 
j dertake the task. Something akin to it, but in 
| a different form, and with a more extensive pur- 
pose, I have begun ; but my eyes and my head 
suffer too much in the occupation for me to pur- 
sue it as yet ; and as these effects can not be con- 
cealed, I must avoid as much as possible all that 
would produce them. This, believe me, is an 
effort of forbearance, for my heart is very much 
set upon completing what I have planned. The 
effect upon Edith will be as lasting as upon my- 
self; but she had not the same exuberance of 
spirits to lose, and therefore it will be less per- 
ceptible. The self-command which she has ex- 
ercised has been truly exemplary, and commands 
my highest esteem. Your god-daughter, thank 
God ! is well. Her daily lesson will long be a 
melancholy task on my part, since it will be a 
solitarv one. She is now so far advanced that I 



jEtat. 42. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



335 






can make some of her exercises of use, and set 
her to translate passages for ray notes from 
French, Spanish, or Portuguese. Of course this 
is not done without some assistance and some 
correction. Still, while she improves herself she 
is assisting me, and the pleasure that this gives 
me is worth a great deal. She is a good girl, 
with a ready comprehension, quick feelings, a 
tender heart, and an excellent disposition. I 
pray God that, her life may be spared to make me 
happy while I live, and some one who may be 
worthy of her when it shall be time for her to 
contract other ties and other duties. 

" I suppose you will receive my Lay in a few 
days. God bless you, my dear friend ! 
" Yours most affectionately, 

x "Robert Southey." 

In this series of melancholy letters there have 
been several allusions to a monument in verse 
which my father contemplated raising to the 
memory of his dear son. This design was nev- 
er completed, but several hints and touching 
thoughts were noted down, and about fifty lines 
written, which seem to be the commencement. 
The latter part of these I quote here : 

" Short time hath passed since, from my pilgrimage 
To my rejoicing home restored, I sung 
A true thanksgiving song of pure delight. 
Never had man whom Heaven would heap with bliss 
More happy day, more glad return than mine. 
Yon mountains with their wintry robe were clothed 
When, from a heart that overflow'd with joy, 
I poured that happy strain. The snow not yet 
Upon those mountain sides hath disappeared 
Beneath the breath of spring, and in the grave 
Herbert is laid, the child who welcomed me 
With deepest love upon that happy day. 
Herbert, my only and my studious boy ; 
The sweet companion of my daily walks ; 
Whose sports, whose studies, and whose thoughts I 
Yea, in whose life I lived ; in whom I saw [shared, 
My better part transmitted and improved. 
Child of my heart and mind, the flower and crown 
Of all my hopes and earthly happiness." 

These fragments are published in the latest 
edition of his poems. 

To Chauncey Hare Townshcnd, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 22, 1816. 
"My dear Chauncey, 
" * * * It will be unfortunate if 

chance should not one day bring me within reach 
of you ; but I would rather that chance should 
bring you to Cumberland, when you can spare a 
few weeks for such a visit. You will find a bed, 
plain fare, and a glad welcome ; books for wet 
weather, a boat for sunny evenings ; the loveli- 
est parts of this lovely county within reach and 
within sight ; and myself one of the best guides 
to all the recesses of the vales and mountains. 
As a geologist, you will enjoy one more pleasure 
than I do, who am ignorant of every branch of 
science. Mineralogy and botany are the only 
branches which I wish that I had possessed, not 
from any predilection for either, but because op- 
portunities have fallen in my way for making 
observations (had I been master of the requisite 
knowledge) by which others might have been 
interested and guided. These two are sciences 
which add to our out-door enjoyments, and have 



no injurious effects. Chemical and physical 
studies seem, on the contrary, to draw on very 
prejudicial consequences. Their utility is not 
to be doubted ; but it appears as if man could 
not devote himself to these pursuits without 
blunting his finer faculties. 

" This county is very imperfectly visited by 
many of its numerous guests. They take the 
regular route, stop at the regular stations, as- 
cend one of the mountains, and then fancy they 
have seen the lakes, in which, after a thirteen 
years' residence, I am every year discovering 
new scenes of beauty. Here I shall probably 
pass the remainder of my days. Our church, as 
you may perhaps recollect, stands at a distance 
from the town, unconnected with any ot er build- 
ings, and so as to form a striking and b lutiful 
feature in the vale. The church-yard is as open 
to the eye and to the breath of heaven as if it 
were a Druid's place of meeting. There I shall 
take up my last abode, and it is some satisfac- 
tion to think so — to feel as if I were at anchor, 
and should shift my berth no more. A man 
whose habitual frame of mind leads him to look 
forward, is not the worse for treading the church- 
yard path, with a belief that along that very path 
his hearse is one day to convey him. 

" Do not imagine that I am of a gloomy tem- 
per ; far from it ; never was man blessed with a 
more elastic spirit or more cheerful mind ; and 
even now the liquor retains its body and its 
strength, though it will sparkle no more. 

" Your comments upon the Castle of Indo- 
lence express the feeling of every true poet ; the 
second part must always be felt as injuring the 
first. I agree with you, also, as respecting the 
Minstrel, beautiful and delightful as it is. It 
still wants that imaginative charm which Thom- 
son has caught from Spenser, but which no poet 
has ever so entirely possessed as Spenser him 
self. Among the many plans of my ambitious 
boyhood, the favorite one was that of completing 
the Faery Queen. For this purpose I had col- 
lected every hint and indication of what Spenser 
meant to introduce in the progress of his poem, 
and had planned the remaining legends in a 
manner which, as far as I can remember after a 
lapse of four or five-and-twenty years, was not 
without some merit. What I have done as a 
poet falls far short of what I had hoped to do ; 
but in boyhood and in youth I dreamed of poetry 
alone ; and I suppose it is the course of nature, 
that the ardor which this pursuit requires should 
diminish as we advance in life. In youth we 
delight in strong emotions, to be agitated and 
inflamed with hope, and to weep at tragedy. In 
maturer life we have no tears to spare ; it is 
more delightful to have our judgment exercised 
than our feelings. 

" God bless you ! Come and visit me when 
you can. I long to see you. R. S." 

To Chauncey Hare Townshend, Esq. 

" Keswick, August 17, 1816. 
" My dear Chauxcey, 
"I was from home for a few days absence 



336 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 43 



when your letter arrived. I have seen too many 
instances of unjust prepossession to be surprised 
at them now. Much of my early life was em- 
bittered by them when I was about your age ; 
and in later years I have been disinherited by 
two uncles in succession, for no other assignable 
or possible reason than the caprice of weak minds 
and misgoverned tempers. In this manner was 
I deprived of a good property, which the ordi- 
nary course of law would have given me. These 
things never robbed me of a moment's tranquil- 
lity — never in the slightest degree affected my 
feelings and spirits, nor ever mingled with my 
dreams. There is little merit in regarding such 
things with such philosophy. I suffered no loss, 
no diminution of any one enjoyment, and should 
have despised myself if any thing so merely ex- 
ternal and extraneous could have disturbed me. 
It is not in the heel, but in the heart, that I am 
vulnerable : and in the heart I have now been 
wounded : how deeply, He only who sees the 
heart can tell. 

" Whenever you come I shall rejoice to see 
you. Do not, however, wind up your expecta- 
tions too high. In many things I may, in some 
things I must, disappoint the ideal which you 
have formed. No man has ever written more 
faithfully from his heart ; but my manners have 
not the same habitual unreserve as my pen. A 
disgust at the professions of friendship, and feel- 
ing, and sentiment in those who have neither the 
one nor the other, has, perhaps, insensibly led 
me to an opposite extreme ; and in wishing rath- 
er esse quam videri, I may sometimes have ap- 
peared what I am not. 

" I would not have you look on to the Uni- 
versity with repugnance or dread. My college 
years were the least beneficial and the least 
happy of my life ; but this was owing to public 
and private circumstances, utterly unlike those 
in which you will be placed. The comfort of 
being, domesticated with persons whom you love, 
you will miss and feel the want of. In other 
respects, the change will bring with it its ad- 
vantages. To enter at college is taking a de- 
gree in life, and graduating as a man. I am 
not sure that there would be either schools or 
universities in a Utopia of my creation; in the 
world as it is, both are so highly useful, that the 
man who has not been at a public school and at 
college feels his deficiency as long as he lives. 
You renew old acquaintances at college ; you 
confirm early intimacies. Probably, also, you 
form new friendships at an age when they are 
formed with more judgment, and are therefore 
likely to endure. And one who has been bap- 
tized in the springs of Helicon is in no danger 
of falling into vice, in a place where vice appears 
in the most disgusting form. 

'" There is a paper of mine in the last Quar- 
terly upon the means of bettering the condition 
of the poor. You will be interested by a story 
which it contains of an old woman upon Exmoor. 
In Wordsworth's blank verse it would go to ev- 
eiy heart. Have you read The Excursion? and 
have you read the collection of Wordsworth's 



other poems, in two octavo volumes ? If you 
have not, there is a great pleasure in store for 
you. I am no blind admirer of Wordsworth, 
and can see where he has chosen subjects which 
are unworthy in themselves, and where the 
strength of his imagination and of his feeling is 
directed upon inadequate objects. Notwithstand- 
ing these faults,' and their frequent occurrence, 
it is by the side of Milton that Wordsworth will 
have his station awarded him by posterity. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 25, 1816. 
"My dear Rickman, 

" I have been long in your debt ; my summers 
are more like those of the grasshopper than of 
the ant. Wynn was here nearly a week, and 
when he departed I rejoined him with my friend 
Nash at Lowther. * * * This, and 

a round home by way of Wordsworth's, employed 
a week ; and w T hat with the King of Prussia's 
librarian, the two secretaries of the Bible Society, 
and other sue l out-of-the-way personages who 
come to me by a sort of instinct, I have had little 
time and less leisure since my return. 

" The last odd personage who made his ap- 
pearance was Owen of Lanark,* who is neither 
more nor less than such a Pantisocrat as I was 
in the days of my youth. He is as ardent now 
as I was then, and will soon be cried down as a 
visionary (certainly he proposes to do more than 
I can believe practicable in this generation) ; 
but I will go to Lanark to see what he has done. 
I conversed with him for about an hour, and, not 
knowing any thing about him, good part of the 
time elapsed before I could comprehend his views 
— so little probable did it appear that any person 
should come to me with a leveling system of so- 
ciety, and tell me he had been to the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, and the ministers, &c. But he 
will be here again in a day or two, and meantime 
I have read a pamphlet which is much more in- 
judicious than his conversation, and will very 
probably frustrate the good which he might by 
possibility have produced. 

" To this system he says we must come 
speedily. # # # What he says of the 
manufacturing system has much weight in it; 
the machinery which enables us to manufacture 
for half the world has found its way into other 
countries ; every market is glutted ; more goods 
are produced than can be consumed ; and every 
improvement in mechanism that performs the 
work of hands, throws so many mouths upon the 
public — a growing evil, which has been increas- 
ing by the premature employment of children, 
bringing them into competition with the grown 
workmen when they should have been at school 
or at play. He wants government to settle its 
paupers and supernumerary hands in villages 
upon waste lands, to live in community, urging 
that we must go to the root of the evil at once. 
He talks of what he has done at Lanark (and 

* On tlu9 subject see Colloquier, vol. i., p. 132, &c 



/Etat. 43. 



ROBERT SOUTHE I. 



337 



this, indeed, has been much talked of by others) ; 
but his address to his people there has much that 
is misplaced, injudicious, and reprehensible. Did 
you see him in London ? Had we met twenty 
years ago, the meeting might have influenced 
both his life and mine in no slight degree. Dur- 
ing those years he has been a practical man, and I 
have been a student ; we do not differ in the main 
point, but my mind has ripened more than his. 

" You talk of brain transfusion, and placing 
one man's memory upon another man's shoulders. 
That same melancholy feeling must pass through 
the mind of every man who labors hard in acquir- 
ing knowledge ; for, communicate what we can, 
and labor as assiduously as we may, how much 
must needs die with us ? This reflection makes 
me sometimes regret (as far as is allowable) the 
time which I employ in doing what others might 
do as well, or what might as well be left undone. 
The Quarterly might go on without me, and 
should do so if I could go on without it. But 
what would become of my Portuguese acquire- 
ments and of yonder heap of materials, which 
none but myself can put in order, if I were to be 
removed by death ? 

" For the two voted monuments, I want one 
durable one, which should ultimately pay itself — ■ 
a pyramid not smaller than the largest in Egypt, 
the inside of which should serve London for Cat- 
acombs : some such provision is grievously want- 
ed for so huge a capitol. God bless you ! 

"R. S." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CHANGES IN HIS POLITICAL OPINIONS CAUSES 

WHICH MADE HIM A POLITICAL WRITER HE 

IS REQUESTED TO GO TO LONDON TO CONFER 
WITH THE GOVERNMENT REASONS FOR DE- 
CLINING TO DO SO GLOOMY ANTICIPATIONS 

• " MEASURES NECESSARY FOR PREVENTING A 

REVOLUTION HE It HATED BY THE RADICALS 

AND ANARCHISTS THOUGHTS CONCERNING HIS 

SON'S DEATH PLAN OF A WORK UPON THE 

STATE OF THE COUNTRY PROPOSED REFORMS 

EFFORT TO ASSIST HERBERT KJN'OWLES TO 

GO TO CAMBRIDGE LETTER FROM HIM HIS 

DEATH FEARS OF A REVOLUTION LITERARY 

EMPLOYMENT AND HOPES SYMPATHY WITH A 

FRIEND'S DIFFICULTIES MOTIVES FOR THANK- 
FULNESS MELANCHOLY FEELINGS BLIND- 
NESS OF MINISTERS. 1816. 

The cessation of the war, as it put an end to 
some of the great public interests which had for 
so long a time filled my father's thoughts and 
imagination, so left him more free to brood over 
a new class of subjects, not less important in 
themselves, and pressing, if possible, still more 
closely upon his personal hopes and fears. He 
viewed with great alarm the internal condition 
of England, and the danger arising from anarch- 
ical principles among the poor. Upon this sub- 
ject, as we have seen, he had already written in 
the Quarterly Review, and his letters to Mr. 



Rickman have shown in brief, some of his reflec- 
tions. I conceive that no one who reads the rec- 
ords of his mind given in this work, can need bo 
told that in all expressed opinions he was sincer- 
ity itself. That changes took place in his polit- 
ical views, no man was more ready to acknowl- 
edge ; but they were not so many nor of such 
importance as has been fancied and pretended by 
his opponents. In his youth he was an abstract 
Republican, theoretically conceiving (I know not 
with what limitations) that men ought to be equal 
in government and rank, but practically caring 
very little for his own share in such things, leav- 
ing government to take care of itself, and devot- 
ing himself almost entirely to other pursuits. It 
is plain, from the whole course of the letters of 
his early life, that political discussion made no 
part of his every-day existence ; and it is more 
than probable that, had he not been impelled by 
necessity to employ himself in periodical writ- 
ings, after his first feverish enthusiasm had passed 
away, he would have continued tranquilly em- 
ployed in his poetical or historical labors, and 
have left the field of politics to busier and more 
ambitious spirits than himself. 

At a period much earlier than that which we 
are now speaking of, he had contracted a gloomy, 
misanthropical way of speaking, because circum- 
stances had forced upon his unwilling mind the 
fact that human nature was not so good as he 
had fancied it — that, in short, men in general 
were not qualified to be worthy members of his 
Republic. Like many other ardent spirits, he 
had been dreaming of a Respublica Platonis, and, 
waking, he had found himself in fcece Romuli. 
In a letter of January, 1814, he says, "I was a 
Republican ; I should be so still, if I thought we 
were advanced enough in civilization for such a 
form of society." His whole habit of mind was 
changed in the progress from youth to middle 
age; but on many of the details of political ques- 
tions which occupied his pen, he can not be said 
to have undergone alteration, because they had 
not presented themselves at all to him during his 
youthful and enthusiastic state. 

The thoughts which made him a political writ- 
er were roused wholly by a fear of revolution in 
England. This feeling was not an unnatural one. 
He was deeply impressed with the horrors of the 
French Revolution, and having contemplated the 
progress and operation in England of the same 
causes which had led to those horrors in France, 
he inferred that similar consequences must ensue 
at home, unless prompt measures were taken to 
avert them. He accordingly devoted himself to 
the task of using that power which he had ob- 
tained as a periodical writer for this object — a 
higher object could hardly be named — of expos- 
ing the evils in the social condition of the poor ; 
of rousing his countrymen to acknowledge them ; 
of patiently seeking out and suggesting, where 
practicable, the proper remedies : among the 
first and foremost of which may be named, the 
general education of the lower classes, based 
upon fipund religious principles, of which he was 
one of the earliest and most active advocates. 



33? 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 4s. 



As :>ne of these evils which he wrote against ' 
was the incessant corrupting of men's minds by 
the revolutionary, the infidel, and the immoral j 
part of the press, he unavoidably stirred up a, 
host of enemies. But the work itself upon which ! 
he was engaged, taken as a whole, places him j 
in the front rank of those who have labored for j 
the benefit of mankind ; and very many of the par- 
ticular measures he labored to bring about are j 
now generally acknowledged to be undoubted 
improvements. In uttering his sentiments, he, ' 
was then, as we see, a leader of men in power 
instead of a follower ; and in later days his serv- 
ices were amply acknowledged by men whose 
good opinion was praise indeed. 

In the summer of this year (1816) a circum- 
stance occurred which showed he had not writ- 
ten wholly in vain, and which, had he been less 
scrupulous, he might doubtless have turned to 
good account as respected his worldly circum- 
stances, whatever might have, been the effect 
upon his present comfort or his permanent repu- 
tation. 

It appears that some of his papers in the Quar- 
terly Review had attracted the especial notice of 
the ministry of that day, and a communication 
was privately made to him through various chan- 
nels, and finally by Mr. Bedford, to the effect that 
Lord Liverpool wished to have an interview with 
him, for which purpose he was requested to go 
immediately to London. 

This was certainly as high a compliment as 
could be paid to his powers as a political writer. 
He was, however, as the reader will see, too pru- 
dent hastily to catch at what most persons would 
have deemed a golden opportunity, and too inde- 
pendent to place himself unreservedly under the 
orders of the government. He was, indeed, ready 
enough, at any risk of unpopularity, to state the 
line of policy and the sort of measures he consider- 
ed necessary at that time ; but he preferred, like 
the bold Smith in "the Fair Maid of Perth," to 
"fight for his own hand;" and he took care not 
to afford the shadow of a foundation for those 
accusations which were often falsely brought 
against him, of "purchased principles and hire- 
ling advocacy." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Sept 8, 1816. 
"My Dear Grosvenor, 

" I have seldom taken up a pen with so little 
knowledge of what was to proceed from it as on 
this occasion ; for after sleeping upon your let- 
ters, and thinking on them, and breakfasting upon 
them, I am at a loss how to reply or how to act. 
If it be necessary, I will certainly go to London. 
Do you, after what I may say, talk with Herries, 
and determine whether it be so. * * 

" It is very obvious that a sense of danger has 
occasioned this step. Look at my first Paper 
upon the Poor in the 16th Quarterly; had the 
ministry opened their eyes four years ago, had 
they seen what was passing before their eyes, the 
evil might then have been checked. The events 
of a successful war would have enabled them to 



pursue a vigorous policy at home. It will be 
more difficult now, and requires more courage. 
And less is to be done by administering antidotes 
than by preventing the distribution of the poison. 
Make, by all means, the utmost use of the press 
in directing the public opinion, but impose some 
curb upon its license, or all efforts will be in 
vain. 

" In any way that may be thought desirable, 1 
will do my best ; but alas ! Grosvenor, what can 
I do that I have not been doing ? A journal 
with the same object in view as the Anti-Jacobin, 
but conducted upon better principles, might be 
of service. I could contribute to it from a dis- 
tance. But to you it must be obvious, that as my 
head and hands are not, like Kehama's, multi- 
pliable at pleasure, I can exert myself only in one 
place at a time, and government would gain noth- 
ing by transferring me from the Quarterly to 
any thing else which they might be willing to 
launch. It may be said that the Q. R. is estab- 
lished ; that this engine is at work, and will go 
on, and that it is desirable to have more engines 
than one. I admit this. =* * * In 

short, whatever ought to be done I am ready to 
do, and to do it fearlessly. The best thing seems 
to write a small book or large pamphlet upon the 
state of the nation. 

" In all this I see nothing which would require 
a change of residence ; that measure would in- 
duce a great sacrifice of feeling, of comfort, and 
of expense, and draw on a heavily increased ex- 
penditure. They would provide for this ; but in 
what manner ? A man is easily provided for 
who is in a profession, or is capable of holding 
any official character ; this is not my case. * 

" You will understand that I will has*en to 
London if it be thought necessary, but that in 
my own calm judgment it is quite unnecessary, 
and I even believe that any conversation which 
the men in power might have with me would 
operate to my disadvantage. I should appear 
confused and visionary — an impracticable sort 
of man. On the whoie, too, I do not think I 
could leave this country, where I am now, in a 
manner, attached to the soil by a sort of moral 
and intellectual serfage, which I could not break 
if I would, and would not if I could ; and Edith 
is to be considered even more than myself. . 

" It is better that I should write either to you 
or Hemes a letter to be shown, than that I should 
show myself. Good may undoubtedly be done 
by exposing the anarchists, and awakening the 
sound part of the country to a sense of their 
danger. This I can do; but it will be of no 
avail unless it be followed by effective measures. 
* * * * The immediate distress 

can best be alleviated by finding employment 
for the poor. * * * * I am 

very desirous that Mr. Owen's plan for em- 
ploying paupers in agriculture should be tried: 
he writes like a madman, but his practice ought 
not to be confounded with his metaphysics ; the 
experiment is worth trying. I do not doubt its 
success ; and the consequences which he so fool- 
ishly anticipates will triumph should be regard- 



/E'i'AT. 43. 



ROIVRRT SOUTHEY 



339 



ed as the dreams of an enthusiast, tint as reasons 
hi deter government from the most plausible 
means of abolishing the poor-rates which has 
been (or in my judgment can be) proposed. I 
have seen Owen, and talked with him at great 
length. 

"God bless you! R. S." 

To John Rickrnan, Esq. 

. " Sept. 9, 1816. 

"My DearTI., 

" About manufactures we shall not differ much, 
when we fully understand each other. I have no 
time now to explain ; there are strangers com- 
ing to tea, and I seize the interval after dinner 
to say something relative to your prognostics — 
a subject which lies as heavy at my heart as any 
public concerns can do, for I fully and entirely 
partake your fears.* 

" Four years ago I wrote in the Q. R. to explain 
the state of Jacobinism in the country, and with 
the hope of alarming the government. At pres- 
ent they are alarmed ; they want to oppose pen 
to pen, and I have just been desired to go up to 
town and confer with Lord Liverpool. God help 
them, and is it come to this ! It is well that the 
press should be employed in their favor ; but if 
they rely upon influencing public opinion by such 
means, it becomes us rather to look abroad where 
we may rest our heads in safety, or to make ready 
for taking leave of them at home. 

" I wish to avoid a conference which will only 
sink me in Lord Liverpool's judgment : what 
there may be in me is not payable at sight ; give 
me leisure, and 1 feel my strength. So I shall write 
.to Bedford (through whom, via Herries, the ap- 
plication has been made) such a letter as may be 
laid before him, and by this means I shall be able 
to state my opinion of the danger in broader 
terms than I could well do, perhaps, in conver- 
sation. The only remedy (if even that be not 
too late) is to check the press ; and I offer my- 
self to point out the necessity in a manner which 
may waken the sound part of the country from 
their sleep. My measures would be to make 
transportation the punishment for sedition, and to 
suspend the Habeas Corpus: and thus I would 
either have the anarchists under way for Botany 
Bay or in prison within a month after the meet- 
ing of Parliament. Irresolution will not do. 

" I suppose that they will set up a sort of Anti- 
Jacobin journal, and desire me to write upon the 
state of the nation before the session opens. If 
they would but act as I will write — I mean as 



* " I am in a bad state ol mind, sorely distrusted at the 
prevalence of that mock humanity, which is now becom- 
ing the instrument of dissolving all authority, government, 
and, I apprehend, human society itself. Again we shall 
have to go through chaos and all "its stages. It is of no use 
to think, or to try to act for the benefit of mankind, while 
this agreeable poison is in full operation, as at present. 
I retire hopeless into my nutshell till I am disturbed 
there, which will not be long if the humanity men prevail ; 
the revolution will not, I expect, be less tremendous or 
less mischievous than that of France— the mock humanity 
being only a mode of exalting the majesty of the people, 
and putting all things into the power of the mob. I wish 
1 may be wron<* in my prognostics on this subject." — 
J.R.ioR.S.. Sept. 7, 1816. 



much in earnest and as fearlessly — the country 
would be saved, and I would stake my head up- 
on the issue, which very possibly may be staked 
upon it without my consent. 

" Of course no person knows of this applica- 
tion except my wife. By the time my letter 
(which will go to-morrow) can be answered, I 
shall be able to start for London, if it be still re- 
quired. Most likely it will be. Meantime I 
should like to know your opinion of my views. 
They want you for their adviser. They who 
tremble must inevitably be lost. R. S." 

To the Rev. James White. 

" Keswick, Sept. 17, 1810. 
"My dear James, 

" Never, I entreat you, think it necessary to 
apologize for, or to explain any long interval of 
correspondence on your part, lest it should seem 
to require a like formality on mine, and make 
that be regarded in the irksome character of a 
debt which is only valuable in proportion as it is 
voluntary. We have both of us business always 
to stand in our excuse, nor can any excuses ever 
be needed between you and me. I thank you 
for your letter and your inquiries. Time is pass- 
ing on, and it does its healing work slowly, but 
will do it effectually at last. As much as I was 
sensible of the happiness which I possessed, so 
much must I unavoidably feel the change which 
the privation of that happiness produces. My 
hopes and prospects in life are all altered, and 
my spirits never again can be what they have 
been. But I have a living faith, I am resigned 
to what is (if I know my own heart, truly and 
perfectly resigned), thankful for what has been, 
and happy in the sure and certain hope of what 
will be, when this scene of probation shall be 
over. 

" I shall be glad to receive your communica- 
tions upon the distresses of the manufacturers ; 
they might probably have been of great use had 
they reached me when the last Quarterly was in 
the press. But I may, perhaps, still turn them to 
some account. There is another paper of mine 
upon the poor in the sixteenth number of the 
Quarterly, written when the Luddites, after their 
greatest outrages, seemed for a time to be quiet. 
In that paper I had recommended, as one means 
of employing hands that were out of work, the 
fitness of forming good foot-paths along the road 
side, wherever the nature of the soil was not 
such as to render it unnecessary. This was 
(foolish enough) cut out by the editor ; but when 
the great object is to discover means of employ- 
ing willing industry, the hint might be of some 
service wherever it is applicable. In the way 
of palliating an evil of which the roots lie deeper 
than has yet, perhaps, been stated, your efforts 
should be directed toward finding employment, 
and making the small wages that can be afforded 
go as far as possible; the reports of the Better- 
ing Society show what may be done by saving 
the poor from the exactions of petty shop-keep- 
ers ; and as witter approaches, great relief may 
be given by obtaining through the London Asso- 



340 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



.ZEtat. 43. 



ciation supplies of fish. Believe me, that person ! 
who should instruct the poor how to prepare 
cheap food in the most savory manner would 
confer upon them a benefit of the greatest im- 
portance, both to their comfort, health, and hab- 
its ; for comforts produce good habits, unless 
there be a strong predisposition to evil. I have 
much yet to say upon this subject, which may, 
perhaps, furnish matter for a third paper in the 
Review. Sooner or later, I trust, we shall get 
the national schools placed upon a national estab- 
lishment ; this measure I shall never, cease to 
recommend till it be effected. 

"I believe I have never congratulated you on 
your emancipation from mathematics, and on 
your ordination. This latter event has placed you 
in an active situation ; you have duties enough to 
perform, and no man who performs his duty con- 
scientiously can be unhappy. He may endure 
distress of mind as well as of body, but under 
any imaginable suffering he may look on to the 
end with hope and with joy. 

" Believe me, my dear James, 

" Yours very truly, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Sept. 11, 1816. 
" My dear Bedford, 
"Upon mature deliberation, I am clearly of 
opinion that it would be very imprudent and im- 
politic for me to receive any thing in the nature 
of emolument from government at this time, in 
any shape whatsoever. Such a circumstance 
would lessen the worth of my services (I mean 
it would render them less serviceable), for what- 
ever might come from me would be received 
with suspicion, which no means would be spared 
to excite. As it concerns myself personally, 
this ought to be of some weight ; but it is en- 
titled infinitely to greater consideration if you re- 
flect how greatly my influence (whatever it may 
be) over a good part of the public would be di- 
minished, if I were looked upon as a salaried 
writer. I must, therefore, in the most explicit 
and determined manner, decline all offers of this 
kind ; but, at the same time, I repeat my offer 
to exert myself in any way that may be thought 
best. The whole fabric of social order 1 * in this 
country is in great danger ; the revolution, j 
should it be effected, will not be less bloody nor , 
less ferocious than it was in France. It will be 
effected unless vigorous measures be taken to , 
arrest its progress ; and I have the strongest 
motives, both of duty and prudence, say even 
self-preservation, for standing forward to oppose 
it. Let me write upon the State of Affairs (the 
freer I am the better I shall write), and let there 
be a weekly journal established, where the vil- 
lainies and misrepresentations of the Anarchists 
and Malignants may be detected and exposed. 
But. all will be in vain unless there be some check 
given to the licentiousness of the press, by one 



* What think you of a club of atheists meeting twice a 
week at an ale-house in Keswick, and the landlady of their 
way of thinking ?— To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., Sept. 11, 1816. 



or two convictions, and an adequate (that is to 
say), an effectual punishment. 

" It would be superfluous to assure you that, 
in declining any immediate remuneration, I act 
from no false pride or false delicacy. Proof 
enough of this is, that at first I was willing to 
accept it. But I feel convinced that it would 
(however undeservedly) discredit me with the 
public. Every effort, even now, is making i 
discredit me, as if I had sold myself for the lau- 
reateship. While I am as I am, these efforts re- 
coil upon the enemy, and I even derive advantage 
from them. Do not argue that I suffer them to 
injure me if I refuse what might be offered me 
for fear of their censures. It is not their cen- 
sures ; it is the loss of ostensible independence, 
however really independent I should be. At 
present, in defiance of all that malignity can 
effect, I have a weight of character, and the ras- 
cals fear me while they hate me. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Sept. 20, 1816. 
" My dear R., 
" If I am again desired to come to London, it 
will be very foolish, after the letters I have writ- 
ten. They are to this purport, to express my 
full opinion upon the real state of things, and ex- 
pose the actual danger in broad terms ; to rec- 
ommend, as the only means of averting it, that the 
batteries which are now playing in breach upon 
the government be silenced ; in other words, that 
the punishment for sedition be made such as to 
prevent a repetition of the offense. * * 

I have endeavored to make the necessity of these, 
measures felt, and show that, for my own part, 
I can not be better employed any where than 
here ; and that if it be thought advisable that 1 
should either covertly or openly give up some 
time to political writing, it would counteract, in 
great measure, the effect of any thing, if I were 
to accept of any thing in shape of office or aug- 
mented pension. This, therefore, I have de- 
cidedly declined, but have offered to employ my 
pen zealously in recommendation and defense of 
vigorous measures. Should I therefore be again 
desired to visit London, my journey will pass as 
an ordinary occurrence, and nothing extraordi- 
nary will occur in it, except that I shall be in- 
troduced to some of the first officers of govern- 
ment instead of the second, to whom my ac- 
quaintance has hitherto been limited, and this 
may pass for a very natural occurrence. I can 
only repeat in conversation what I have already 
said in writing, and perhaps concur in arranging 
a journal, of which most certainly I will not un- 
dertake the management. That office is beneath 
me, and would require a sacrifice of character as 
well as time. The matter of danger is one which 
could not fail to present itself; and for that mat- 
ter, I know very well what I have at stake in 
the event of a revolution, were the Hunts and 
Hazlitts to have the upper hand. There is no 
man whom the Whigs and the Anarchists hate 
more inveterately, because there is none whom 



/Etat. 43. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



341 



they fear so much. Nothing that I could do 
could increase the good disposition toward me, 
and it would be folly to dream of abating it. 
If the government will but act vigorously and 
promptly, all may yet be well ; if they will not, 
I shall have no time to spare from my History 
of Brazil. 

" I heartily wish you were in an efficient situ- 
ation. Every thing may be clone with foresight 
and intention ; without them, every thing must 
go to ruin. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Richnan, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 2, 1816. 
" My dear R., 
"I have received no further communication 
from Bedford, which is very well, as I must finish 
some few things, and rid my hands of them, be- 
fore I set seriously to work in the good cause. 
Meantime the subject occupies my mind in all 
intervals of employment. # # I shall 

take a wide range ; and I feel just now as if it 
were in my power to produce a work which, 
whatever might be its immediate effect, should 
be referred to hereafter as a faithful estimate of 
these times. 

"Davy was here last week, and told me a valu- 
able fact. A friend of his, who, applying philo- 
sophical knowledge to practical purposes, has 
turned manufacturer at Clitheroe, went abroad 
immediately after the peace, not to seek for or- 
ders, but to examine with his own eyes the state 
of the manufacturers on the Continent. He re- 
turned with a conviction that it was necessary to 
draw in; reduced his produce in time, and, in 
consequence, is doing well, while his neighbors 
are breaking all around. Certain it is that man- 
ufactures depending upon machinery advanced 
very rapidly during the last war. No prohibi- 
tion or penalties, however severe, can prevent 
machinery and workmen from finding their way 
abroad ; to this we must make up our mind, and 
it is better that it should be so. A little time 
sets these things to rights. 

u I incline to think there will come a time 
when public opinion will no more tolerate the 
extreme of poverty in a large class of the com- 
munity, than it now tolerates slavery in Europe. 
Meantime it is perfectly clear that the more we 
can improve the condition of the lower classes, 
the greater number of customers we procure for 
the home market ; and that, if we can make peo- 
ple pay taxes instead of claiming poor-rates, the 
wealth as well as security of the state is increas- 
ed. The poor-rates are a momentous subject, 
and I have long believed you were the only man 
who could grapple with it. I see, or think I see, 
palliatives and alteratives, in providing the labor- 
ers with garden and grass land, in establishing 
savings' banks, in national education, and in af- 
fording all possible facilities and encouragement 
for emigration, and in colonizing at home upon 
our waste lands. 

" The state of the Church is another important 



question, assailed as it is on all sides. I think it 
would be possible to take in the Methodists as a 
sort of Cossacks, or certainly to employ those 
persons henceforward in aid of the Establishment, 
who, if not thus employed, will swell the num- 
bers of the Methodists and act against it. There 
are no differences of doctrine in the way ; it is 
but to let the license come from the clergyman 
instead of the magistrate, to invent some such 
name as coadjutor for those who have a ' call ;' 
let them catechise the children, convert the wom- 
en, reclaim the reprobates, and meet on week 
days, or at extra hours on Sundays in the church, 
to expound or sing psalms ; a little condescen- 
sion, a little pay, and a little flattery. 

" By nature I am a poet, by deliberate choice 
an historian, and a political writer I know not 
how — by accident, or the course of events. Yet 
I think I can do something toward awakening the 
country, and that I can obtain the confidence of 
well-disposed minds by writing honestly and sin- 
cerely upon things in which all persons are con- 
cerned. 

" Were I to accept a good berth, which is held> 
out to me, it would very much counteract the im- 
pression which I am aiming to produce. Instead 
of attempting to answer my arguments and asser- 
tions, the anarchists would then become the as- 
sailants, and attack me as one who had sold him- 
self. God bless you ! R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 5, 1816. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I have not looked with impatience for further 
news from you, because, whatever news you 
might have to send, I must needs finish a paper 
in time for the present number — for the love of 
66100. I have no intention of going to London 
unless there be a necessity for it. Application 
was made to me, some months ago, to revise a 
great book by Raffles upon the Island of Java be- 
fore it goes to press ; I lent ear to it for the lucre 
of gain, but have heard nothing more. Had it 
come to any thing, it might have brought me to 
town in November ; but if I could be as well 
employed, quoad money, at home (which seems 
likely), in other respects home employment would 
be better. I could wish myself independent of 
such considerations, if it were worth a wish as 
long as our necessities are supplied. It is my 
fate to have more claimants upon me than usu- 
ally fall to the share of a man who has a family 
of his own ; and if Tom's circumstances could be 
mended by a lift in his profession, it would be a 
relief to me as well as to him. 

" That I shall make an appeal to the good sense 
of the country upon the existing state of things, 
and the prospect before us, is very likely, since 
my attention has been thus called to it. Indeed, 
if there be a probability of doing good, there 
seems little reason for any further stimulus, and 
the thing may be done certainly as well, and per- 
haps more becomingly, without any further inti- 
mation from the powers above. I incline at 
present to write anonymously, or under some 



312 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



vEtat. 43 



fictitious name ; for, were the book to attract 
notice (and if it does not it will be useless), a 
mystery about the author would very much in- 
crease its sale. In that case a change of pub- 
lishers would contribute to keep the secret ; and, 
if I seek a new one, Nicoll would obviously be 
the man. In meditating upon this work I grow 
ambitious, and think of presenting such a view 
of things as, whether it produce immediate benefit 
or not, may have a permanent value both for mat- 
ter and composition. 

" Pray inform me with the least possible de- 
lay whether, as P. L., I am exempt from serving 
parish offices, the people of Keswick having this 
day thrust honor upon me in the office of survey- 
or (what it means they best know) ; my appeal 
against the appointment must be made on the 1 2th 
of this month. Whatever the office be, I have 
neither knowledge, leisure, nor inclination for it. 

' : Abuse does good, and of that I have plenty 
but praise is more useful, and is not so liberally 
bestowed. I have seen a number of the Cham- 
pion, in which my name stands for text to a 
sermon nothing relating to me ; but at the con- 
clusion it is said that the change in my opinions, 
as implied in my last writings, is that I recom- 
mend implicit submission; hence it should appear 
that the said Champion had not read those writ- 
ings. Hunt and Hazlitt, I know, incessantly at- 
tack me ; this barking makes a noise, and noise 
calls attention ; so that as long as they have it 
not in their power to pass sentence upon me as 
a counter-revolutionist, such enmity is in its de- 
gree useful. 

" The children, thank God ! are well, and so 
am I, as far as the husk is concerned ; but the 
interior is as unlike what it was twelve months 
ago, as the darkest November day is unlike the 
bright sunshine of a genial May morning ; and, 
whenever I relapse into recollections of what has 
been (and every hour brings with it something 
that calls up these thoughts), it is an effort to 
refrain from tears. I go about my business as 
usual, perform the ordinary functions of life, 
see company, go out visiting, take Nash up the 
mountains, talk, reason, jest, but my heart, mean- 
while, is haunted ; and though, thank God ! I nei- 
ther undervalue the uses of this world, nor wish 
in any way to shrink from my part in it, I could 
be right willing to say Valete. 

" This is too deep a strain. Give me my cap 
and bells! #'###■#* 

" Can you send me some money ? I am pau- 
per et inops. The next number will float me. I 
have a thousand things to say to you if you were 
here, and have planned many expeditions into the 
vales and up the mountains when next you come. 
Remember me to all at home. God bless you ! 

"R. SOTJTHEY." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 20, 1316. 
" My dear R., 

About the poor I am very anxious to be informed 
thoroughly, and very sensible how deficient I am 



in the right sort of knowledge on this subject; 
that is, how the great evil is to be remedied — 
that of the poor-rates. My present views can 
reach no further than to the slow alterations and 
preventives, of good instruction in youth and en- 
couragement to frugality and industry afterward 
by means of hope. Concerning immediate alle- 
viations. I entirely agree with you in the great 
advantage of undertaking great public works, and 
stated it strongly some years ago in the first pa- 
per about the poor, which is in some respects 
better than the last, and which, if it had wrought 
duly upon the men in power, would have pre- 
vented all danger now. The anarchists felt its 
force, and for that reason have been spitting their 
venom at me ever since. # # # 

" My scheme is something of this kind (but, 
though I am always long, even to dilatoriness, 
in planning whatever I write, the plan is very 
much altered in the course of execution) : 1st. 
State in which the war has left us, political and 
moral. 2d. Necessity of that war, and Bona- 
parte drawn to the life, as the Perfect Emperor 
of the English friends of freedom. 3d. Sketch of 
the history of anarchical opinions in this country 
from Charles the First's time. Wilkes and Ju- 
nius the root in modern times — the first fruit was 
the American war ; the French Revolution the 
second. This leads to, 4th. A view of the unit- 
ed reformers, i. e., the enemies of government, 
under their several classes ; their modes of opera- 
tion ; their various plans of reform, and the sure 
consequences of each. 

" All this will be well liked, and if I looked 
for favor it would be prudent to stop here ; but 
it is not from any such motive that I put myself 
in the front of the battle. But here I wish to 
begin upon an exposure of the evils which exist 
in our state of society, and which it is the duty 
and interest of government, as far as possible, to 
mitigate and remove. Some things should be 
got rid of as matters of scandal. To destroy in- 
fluence in elections would be neither wise if it 
were possible, nor possible if it were wise ; but 
it is not fit that men should sell seats in Parlia- 
ment, though very fit that they should be bought. 
I would have these bought openly, like commis- 
sions in the army, and the money applied to form 
a fund for public works, either national or pro- 
vincial ; a scandal is got rid of and a good pro- 
duced, and the species of property which would 
be touched by it is one which ought not to have 
existed, as having always been contrary to posi- 
tive law. I think, too, that the few great sine- 
cures which still exist should be given up, and 
applied during the lives of the present incumbents 
to some purposes of public splendor, that they 
may give them up with a grace. I would also 
give members to the great towns which have 
none, restricting the voters by such qualifications 
as should, as far as may be, disqualify the mere 
mob. I would lay no stress on these things fur- 
ther than as depriving the anarchists of the only 
topics which give a shadow of plausibility to 
their harangues. 



^Etat. 43. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



343 



" The great evil is the state of the poor, which, 
with our press and our means of communication, 
constantly exposes us to the horrors of a helium 
servile, and sooner or later, if not remedied, will 
end in one. ###*## 

" There are also great evils in the delays of 
law, which are surely capable of remedy, and in 
the expense of criminal law. # # # 

A greater still in the condition of women ; here 
we are upon your old ground ; and passing from 
morals to religion, I think I could show how a 
great comprehension is practicable — that is, how 
the Church might employ those who would else 
be enlisted against her. And if there be a mode 
by which the tithes could be placed upon such a 
footing, or so commuted as to get rid of that per- 
petual cause of litigation, you are, of all men, 
most likely to point it out. 

* " One topic more, which is not introduced here 
in its proper place, may conclude this long out- 
line. All professions, trades, and means of get- 
ting a livelihood among us are overstocked. 
We must create a new layer of customers at 
home by bettering the condition of the lower 
classes, and giving them more wants, with more 
means of gratifying them. We must extend 
establishments instead of diminishing them — 
more clergymen, more colleges, more courts of 
law ; and, lastly; we must colonize upon the true 
principle of colonization, and cultivate every 
available acre at home. God bless you ! 

" Yours very truly, " R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Nov. 23, 1816. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

"I want to raise c£30 a year for four years 
from this time, and for this purpose : 

" There is a lad at Richmond school (York- 
shire), by name Herbert Knowles, picked out 
from a humble situation for his genius (he has 
neither father nor mother), and sent to this school 
(a very excellent one) by Dr. Andrews, dean of 
Canterbury, and a clergyman, by name D'Oyle 
(so the name is written to me) ; if it should turn 
out to be D'Oyley, of the Bartlett's Building So- 
ciety and the Quarterby, so much the better. 
From these and another clergyman he was prom- 
ised d£20 a year, his relations promised c£30, 
and Tate the schoolmaster, a good and an able 
man, gave him the run of his school (more he 
could not do, for this valid reason, that he has a 
wife and ten children) ; so his boarding, &c., 
were to be provided for. The plan was, that, 
when qualified here, he was to go as a sizar to 
St. John's ; and this has been defeated by the in- 
ability of his relations to fulfill their engagements, 
owing to unforeseen circumstances, connected, I 
suppose, with the pressure of the times. 

" In this state of things, Herbert Knowles, 
God help him! thought the sure way to help 
himself was to publish a poem. Accordingly, he 
writes one, and introduces himself by letter to 
me, requesting leave to dedicate it to my wor- 
ship, if, upon perusal, I think it worthy, and so 
forth. Of course I represented to him the folly 



of such a scheme, but the poem is brimful of 
power and of promise. I have written to his 
master, and received the highest possible char- 
acter of him both as to disposition and conduct ; 
and now I want to secure for him that trifling 
assistance, which may put him in the right path, 
and give him at least a fair chance of rendering 
the talents, with which God has endowed him, 
useful to himself and beneficial to others. 

" Of the <£ 30 which are wanting for the pur- 
pose, I will give 6610, and it is not for want of 
will that I do not supply the whole. Perhaps 

if you were to mention the circumstance to 

and to , it might not be necessary to go 

further. He must remain where he is till Oc- 
tober next, and by that time will be qualified for 
St. John's. God bless you! R. S." 

It does not appear that Mr. Bedford's appli- 
cations were successful, and my father then ap- 
plied to Mr. Rogers, with whose willingness to 
give assistance to struggling genius he was well 
acquainted, and who promptly and most kindly 
expi-essed his pleasure at this opportunity being 
afforded him, and also conveyed the promise of 
the third portion of the sum required from Lord 
Spencer, whose guest he chanced to be at the 
time my father's letter reached him. All dif- 
ficulties now seemed removed, and the tidings 
were gladly communicated by my father to Her- 
bert Knowles, whose grateful and sensible reply 
will, I think, not be deemed misplaced here. 

Herbert Knowles to R. Southey, Esq. 

" Gomersal, near Leeds, Dec. 28, 1816. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I have duly received your two last letters, 
both of which have filled me with pleasure and 
gratitude, not so much for the solid advantage 
which 3-our kindness affords and has obtained 
for me, as for the tender manifestation which it 
gives me of your concern for my welfare. 

" And now, my dear sir, I will freely state to 
you my feelings and my sentiments at the pres- 
ent hour. Upon reading the Life of Kirke White 
I was struck with surprise at the distinguished 
success which he met with at the University; 
and from his inordinate anxiety and immoderate 
exertions* to obtain it, I was insensibly led into 



* I extract here the melancholy record of some of these 
exertions. " During his first term, one of the university 
scholarships became vacant ; and Henry, young as he was 
in college, and almost self-taught, was advised by those 
who were best able to estimate his chance of success to 
offer himself as a competitor for it. He passed the whole 
term in preparing himself for this ; reading for college 
subjects in bed, in his walks, or, as he says, where, when, 
and how he could ; never having a moment to spare, and 
often going to his tutor without having read at all. His 
strength sunk under this ; and though he had declared 
himself a candidate, he was compelled to decline : but this 
was not the only misfortune. The general college ex- 
amination came on ; he was utterly unprepared to meet 
it, and believed that a failure here would have ruined his 
prospects forever. He had only about a fortnight to read 
what other men had been the whole tenn reading. Once 
more he exerted himself beyond what his shattered health 
could bear ; the disorder returned ; and he went to his 
tutor, Mr. Carton, with tears in his eyes, and told him 
that he could not go into the hall to be examined. Mr. 
Catton, however, thought his success here of so much 



344 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 43. 



the opinion, not that his success at college was 
considered as a sine qua non for the benevolence 
of his patrons, but that that benevolence was 
given under the impression, and accompanied 
with the expectation, that he would make a cor- 
responding compensation in the credit reflected 
upon them from his distinction at college. 

" I will not deceive. If I thought the bounty 
of my friends was offered under the same im- 
pression, I would immediately decline it. Far be 
it from me to foster expectations which I feel I 
can not gratify. My constitution is not able to 
hear half the exertion under which Kirke White 
<unk; double those exertions would be insuffi- 
cient to obtain before October next his attain- 
ments, or insure his success at St. John's. Two 
years ago I came to Richmond, totally ignorant 
of classical and mathematical literature. Out 
of that time, during three months and two long 
vacations, I have made but a retrograde course ; 
during the remaining part of the time, having 
nothing to look forward to, I had nothing to exert 
myself for ; and, wrapped in visionary thought, 
and immersed in cares and sorrows peculiarly 
my own, I was diverted from the regular pur- 
suit of those qualifications which are requisite 
for University distinction. # # * # 

I need not say much more. If I enter into com- 
petition for University honors, I shall kill myself. 
Could I twine (to gratify my friends) a Laurel 
with the Cypress, I would not repine ; but to sac- 
rifice the little inward peace which the wreck of 
passion has left behind, and relinquish every hope 
of future excellence and future usefulness in one 
wild and unavailing pursuit, were indeed a mad- 
man's act, and worthy of a madman's fate. 

" Yet will I not be idle ; but, as far as health 
and strength allow, I will strive that my passage 
through the University, if not splendid, shall be 
respectable; and if it reflect no extraordinary 
credit on my benefactors, it will, I trust, incur 
them no disgrace. 

" I am at a loss to convey to you the high 
sense I feel of your proffered kindness, and that 
of your friends. The common professions of 
gratitude all can use, and extraordinary ones are 
unnecessary. Suffice it, then, to say, I thank 
you from my heart ; let time and my future con- 
duct tell the rest. 

" I know not how I should act with respect to 
Lord Spencer and Mr. Rogers. Will you direct 
me ? Should I write to them ? If so, will you 
give me their respective addresses ? * * 

With the highest esteem for your character, pro- 
found veneration for your talents, and the warm- 



importance, that he exhorted him, with all possible earn- 
estness, to hold out the six days of the examination. 
Strong medicines were given him to enable him to sup- 
port it, and he was pronounced the first man of his year. 
But life was the price which he was to pay for such hon- 
ors as this ; and Henry is not the first young man to whom 
such honors have proved fatal. He said to his most inti- 
mate friend, almost the last time he saw him, that were 
he to paint a picture of Fame crowning a distinguished 
under- graduate after the Senate-house examination, he 
would represent her as concealing a death's head under 
b mask of beauty."— Remains ofH.K. While, vol. i., p. 46 



est gratitude for your kindness, I have the honor 
to be, 

" My dear sir, affectionately yours, 

"Herbert Kxowles." 

Alas ! as in the case of Kirke White and young 
Dusauto} T , the fair promise which high principle, 
talent, and good sense combined, seemed to hold 
forth, was blighted in the bud, and not two 
months from the date of this letter, Herbert 
Knowles was laid in his early grave. Too truly 
had he prognosticated that his feeble body and 
ardent mind could not have borne the require- 
ments of hard study, for the mere excitement of 
his improved and now hopeful prospects seems 
to have hastened the close of a life which, we 
might suppose, under no circumstances, could 
have been a long one. 

His kind friend, Mr. Tate, communicated the 
event to my father ; and after speaking of him 
with the greatest affection, and saying that all 
that the kind attention of friends and medical skill 
could do, had been done, he adds, "But with 
ardor and genius, encouraged by the most flat- 
tering patronage, the stamina of his constitution 
could not support the anxious energies of such a 
mind ; and before we were well aware of the 
danger that impended, the lamp was consumed 
by the fire which burned in it. . * * * 
Poor Herbert had in prospect commenced his 
academical career. He died grateful to all his 
friends, and had longed for recovery the more 
earnestly, that he might redeem his unwilling 
silence by the expression of his gratitude." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Keswick, Dec. 7, 1816. 
" My dear Wynn, 

Is there not something monstrous in taking such 
a subject as the Plague in a Great City?* 
Surely it is out-Germanizing the Germans. It 
is like bringing racks, wheels, and pincers upon 
the stage to excite pathos. No doubt but a very 
pathetic tragedy might be written upon "the 
Chamber of the Amputation," cutting for the 
stone, or the Caesarean operation ; but actual 
and tangible horrors do not belong to poetry. 
We do not exhibit George Barnw r ell upon the 
ladder to affect the gallery now, as was original- 
ly done ; and the best picture of Apollo flaying 
Marsyas, or of the Martyrdom of St. Bartholo- 
mew", would be regarded as more disgusting than 
one of a slaughter-house or of a dissecting-room. 

" What new T s to-morrow may bring of Mon- 
day's riots, God knows — the loss of some lives, 
I expect ; and this I am sure of, that if govern- 
ment refrain much longer from exerting those 
means which are intrusted to it for the preserva- 
tion of public security, the alternative will be, ere 
long, between revolution and a military system. 

"Dec. 8, 1816. 

"I am more sorry than surprised to see so 
many sailors in the mob. It has always been 

* This allusion is to Wilson's ' City of the Plague." 



At at. 13. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



345 



the custom to disband as many men as possible 
at the conclusion of a war, but there has been often 
a great cruelty in this, and in the present instance 
a great and glaring impolicy. The immediate 
cause of that distress which was felt in the be- 
ginning of the year, was an enormous diminution 
of the national expenditure ; the war, a customer 
of fifty millions, being taken out of the market, 
and consequently, a great number of hands put 
out of employ. Now surely to spend less, and 
turn off more hands, is only an Irish way of 
remedying this. 

" You, who know how much my thoughts have 
been led toward the subject, will not be surprised 
to hear that I am writing Observations upon the 
Moral and Political State of England. What I 
have at different times written in the Quarterly 
has sometimes been mutilated, and was always 
written under a certain degree of restraint to 
prevent mutilation. But I have heard of these 
things from many quarters, and seen that where 
the author was not suspected they have produced 
an impression. And I am disposed to think it 
not unlikely that I may do some present good, 
and almost certain that if the hope be disappoint- 
ed for the present, it must sooner or later take 
effect. There is plenty of zeal in the country, 
and abundance of good intentions, which, if they 
were well directed, might be of infinite service. 
There are great and sore evils which may cer- 
tainly be alleviated, if not removed; and there 
are dangers which we ought to look fairly in the 
face. I have nothing to hope or fear for myself, 
and the sole personal consideration that can in- 
fluence me is the desire of acquitting myself at 
least of the sin of omission. Better that a candle 
should be blown out than that it should be placed 
under a bushel. Whether I am ripe in judgment 
must be for others to determine ; this I know, 
that I am grown old at heart. I bore up under 
the freshness of my loss with surprising strength, 
and still carry a serene front ; but it has changed 
me more than years of bodily disease could have 
done ; and time enough has now elapsed to show 
how very little it will ever effect in restoring 
my former nature. It is a relief and a comfort to 
employ myself usefully, or at least in endeavoring 
to be useful. God bless you, my dear Wynn ! 
" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 1, 1817. 
" My dear Friend, 
" Your last letter gave me great and most un- 
expected concern, I had indeed believed that 
you were sailing on a quiet sea, in no danger of 
shoals or tempests. By what principle, or what 
strange want of principle, is it that mercantile 
men so often, for the sake of the shortest reprieve 
from bankruptcy, involve their nearest friends and 
connections with them ? I write to you in a 
frame of mind which you will easily conceive, 
looking back upon the year which has just closed, 
and reflecting on the trials with which we have 
both been visited during its course. Your loss, 
I would fain hope, may not prove altogether so 



great as you apprehend ; and I would hope also 
that some prize in the lottery of life, full of change 
as it is, may one day or other replace it. Even at 
the worst it leaves you heart-whole. It will be 
long before I shall find myself so ; and if life had 
no duties, I should be very far from desiring its 
continuance for the sake of any enjoyments which 
it can possibly have in store. I have the same 
sort of feeling that a man who is fondly attached 
to his family has when absent from them — as if 
I were on a journey. I yearn, perhaps more than 
I ought to do, to be at home and at rest. Yet 
what abundant cause have I for thankfulness, 
possessing as I do so many blessings, that I 
should think no man could possibly be happier, 
if I had not been so much happier myself. Do 
not think that I give way to such feelings — far 
less that I encourage them, or am weak enough 
to repine. What is lost in possession is given 
me in hope. I am now in my forty-third year : 
both my parents died in their fiftieth. Should my 
lease be continued to that term, there is a fair 
prospect of leaving my family well provided for ; 
and let it fall when it may, a decent provision is 
secured. Before this object was attained, great 
natural cheerfulness saved me from any anxiety 
on this score, and there happily exists no cause 
for anxiety when I have no longer the same pre- 
servative. My house is in order, and whenever 
the summons may come I am ready to depart. 
Dearly as I love these children, my presence is 
by no means so necessary as it was to him who 
is gone. He drew in his intellectual life from 
me, and a large portion of mine is departed with 
him. It is best as it is, for he is gone in the 
perfection of his nature, and mine will not be the 
worse for the chastening which it has undergone. 
Hitherto the lapse of time only makes me feel 
the depth of the wound. It will not be always 
thus. A few years (if they are in store for me) 
will alter the nature of my regret. I shall then 
be sensible how different a being Herbert, were 
he living, would be from the Herbert whom I 
have lost, and the voices and circumstances which 
now so forcibly recall him will have lost their 
power. Too much of this. But holidays are 
mournful days to persons in our situation, and the 
strong forefeeling which I have always experi- 
enced of such poss ; bilitiee, has always made me 
dislike the observance of particular days. Your 
god-daughter is the only child whose birth-day I 
have not contrived to forget, and hers has been 
remembered from the accident of its being May- 
day. # # # =fc 
" God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Yours most affectionately, 

''Robert Southey." 

To Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Jan. 4, 1817. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" The Courier of to-night tells me I am elected 
member of the Royal Institute of Amsterdam. 
Now I put it to your feelings, Mr. Bedford, 
whether it be fitting that a man upon whom 
honor is thus thrust, should be without -a decent 



346 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



,Etat. 43. 



pair of pantaloons; to receive it in. Such, how- 
ever, is my condition : and unless you can pre- 
vail upon the Grand Hyde to send me some new 
clothes without delay, I shall very shortly be- 
come a sans culottes, however unwilling Minerva 
may be. Moreover, I have promised to pay a 
visit at Netherhall* toward the end of this month, 
and I must therefore supplicate for the said 
clothes in forma pauperis. 

" The packet wherein this will be inclosed 
carries up the conclusion of a rousing paper for 
GifFord, which, with some omissions and some in- 
sertions, wall be shaped into the two first chap- 
ters of my book. It will not surprise me if in 
some parts it should startle GifFord. Are the 
government besotted in security ? or are they 
rendered absolutely helpless by fear, like a fas- 
cinated bird, that they suffer things to go on. 
Are they so stupid as not to know that their 
throats as well as their places are at stake ? As 
for accelerating my movements for the sake of 
holding a conversation which would end in noth- 
ing, though I have little prudence to ballast my 
sails, I have enough to prevent me from that. 
All that I possibly can do I am doing, under a 
secret apprehension that it is more likely to bring 
personal danger upon myself than to rouse them 
to exertion ; but for that, no matter : it is proper 
that the attempt should be made ; the country will 
stand by them if they will stand by the country. 

" Were I to see one of these personages, and 
he were to propose any thing specific, it would 
probably be some scheme of conducting a journal 
a la mode the Anti-Jacobin. This is no work for 
me. They may find men who will like it, and 
are fitter for it. 

" I think of being in town in April, si possum. 
My book, peradventure, may be ready by that 
time ; but there is a large field before me, and 
many weighty subjects. Meantime, though I 
want nothing for myself, and certainly would not 
at this time accept of any thing, I should never- 
theless be very glad if they would remember 
that I have a brother in the navy. God bless 
vou! R. S." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

SURREPTITIOUS PUBLICATION OF WAT TYLER 

CONSEQUENT PROCEEDINGS IS ATTACKED IN 

THE HOUSE OR COMMONS BY WILLIAM SMITH 
OFFER OF A LUCRATIVE APPOINT3IENT CON- 
NECTED WITH THE TIMES NEWSPAPER TOUR 

IN SWITZERLAND LETTERS FROM THENCE 

ACCOUNT OF PESTALOZZI OF FELLENBERG 

IMPRESSIONS OF THE ENGLISH LAKES ON HIS 

RETURN HIGH OPINION OF NEVILLE WHITE 

NORFOLK SCENERY SPECULATIONS ON AN- 
OTHER LIFE LIFE OF WESLEY IN PROGRESS 

CURIOUS NEWS FROM THE NORTH POLE 

LINES ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHAR- 
LOTTE CURE FOR THE BITE OF SNAKES. 

1817. 

My father's acceptance of the office of poet 



* The seat of his friend Humphrey Senhouse, Esq. 



laureate, together with his writings in the Quar- 
terly Review, had drawn down upon him no small 
measure of hostility from that party whose opin- 
ions assimilated to those he had formerly held. 
Acknowledged by friends and foes to be a power- 
ful writer, and by his own admission apt to ex- 
press himself bitterly upon subjects of moral and 
political importance, they could not endure that 
he who in early youth had advocated Republican 
principles, should have outgrown and outlived 
them, and now, in the maturity of his judgment, 
bring his active mind and busy pen to the strenu- 
ous support of existing institutions. 

It seems, indeed, that high as party ipirit often 
runs now, it boiled up in those days with a far 
fiercer current. The preceding quarter of a cen- 
tury had been one of continued excitement — 
commenced by the French Revolution, kept up 
by the long war, and more recently renewed by 
its glorious termination. A large party in the 
country seemed imbued with what, to speak ten- 
derly, must be called an un-English spirit : they 
would have been glad if their prognostications 
of Bonaparte's invincibility had been realized. 
"The wish was father to the thought;" and it 
can hardly be supposed they would have grieved 
if the imperial eagle had been planted a second 
time upon the shores of Britain. 

Such was Hazlitt, whom even Mr. Justice Tal- 
fourd's kindly pen describes as " staggering un- 
der the blow of Waterloo;"* and as "hardly 
able to forgive the valor of the conquerors." 
Such my father's friend, William Taylor of Nor- 
wich, who calls it "a victory justly admired, but 
not in its tendency and consequences satisfactory 
to a cosmopolite philosophy;" and says that 
" Liberty, toleration, and art have rather reason 
to bewail than to rejoice" at the presence " of 
trophies oppressive to the interests of mankind."! 

Neither is it difficult to imagine with what 
views such persons must have regarded all those 
questions upon which my father's pen was most 
frequently employed ; and to many of them his 
writings were peculiarly obnoxious, both as re- 
minding them unpleasantly that " they had spoken 
a lying divination," and also as boldly enuncia- 
ting those principles which the)- were endeavor- 
ing with heart and soul to undermine and destroy. 

Moved, doubtless, by some feelings of the kind. 
an attempt was now made by certain persons 
(and eagerly taken up by others) to annoy and 
injure him, which need only to be related to char- 
acterize itself, without requiring the use of strong 
language on my part — an attempt, the chief 
effect of which was to increase his notoriety 
more than any other event in his whole life. 

It appears that in the summer of 1794, when 
in his twenty-first year, he had thrown off, in a 
moment of fiery democracy, a dramatic sketch, 
entitled Wat Tyler, in which, as might be ex- 
pected from the subject, the most leveling senti- 
ments were put into the mouths of the dramatis 
personce. 



* Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, vol. ii., p. 130. 
t Memoirs of William Taylor of Norwich, vol. ii., p 
461. 



iETAT. 43. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



347 



The MS. of this production was taken up to 
town by his brother-in-law, Mr. Lovel, and placed 
in a bookseller's hands, Ridgeway by name ; and 
ray father happening to go up to town shortly 
afterward, called upon this person, then in New- 
gate, and he and a Mr. Symonds agreed to pub- 
lish it anonymously. There was also present in 
Ridgeway's apartment a Dissenting minister, by 
name Winterbottom. 

It seems, however, that this intention was 
quickly laid aside, for no proofs were ever sent 
to my father : and " acquiescing readily in their 
cooler opinion," he made no inquiries concerning 
the poem, and took so little thought about it as 
not even to reclaim the MS. ; indeed, the whole 
circumstance, even at the time, occupied so little 
of his thoughts, that I have not been able to find 
the slightest allusion to it in his early letters,* 
numerous and wholly unreserved in expression 
as have been those which have passed through 
my hands. 

In the. spring of this year (1817), to my fa- 
ther's utter astonishment, was advertised as just 
published, Wat Tyler, by Robert Southey; the 
time having been seized for doing so, when the 
opinions it contained could be most strongly con- 
trasted with those the writer then held and ad- 
vocated, and when the popular feelingf was ex- 
actly in that state in which such opinions were 
likely to be productive of the greatest mischief. 

The first step taken in the matter, with the 
advice of his friends, was to reclaim his property, 
and to apply for an injunction against the pub- 
lisher. The circumstances connected with this, 
and the manner in which the application was de- 
feated, will be found in the following letters. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 15, 1817. 
" My dear G., 
" Do you remember that twenty years ago a 
letter, directed for me at your house, was car- 
ried to a paper-hanger of my name in Bedford 
Street, and the man found me out, and put his 
card into my hand? Upon the strength of this 
acquaintance, I have now a letter from this poor 
namesake, soliciting charity, and describing him- 



* In of the reviews of the first volume of this work, it is 
remarked (naturally enough) as strange that Wat Tyler is 
not mentioned in the account of his Oxford life, when it 
was written. My reason for the omission was, that there 
being no mention of it in the papers or letters relating to 
that period, its history seemed properly to belong to the 
time of its surreptitious publication ; especially as, had it 
not been so published, its very existence would never have 
been known. 

t As a proof how well the movers in this business had 
calculated both the mischief the publication, at such a time, 
was likely to do, and the annoyance it would probably 
give my father. I may quote the following letter, in which 
a play-bill of Wat Tyler was inclosed : 

To Robert Southcj, Esq., Poet Laureate and Pensioner of 
Great Britain. 

" Whittington, July 11, 1317. 
" Sie, 
"Your truly patriotic and enlightened poem of Wat 
Tyler was last night presented to a most respectable and 
crowded audience here, with cordial applause ; nor was 
there a soul in the theater but as cordially lamented the 
sudden deterioration of your principles, intellectual and 
moral, whatever might have been the cause thereof. 

" Yours, Jack Straw." 



self and his family as in the very depths of hu- 
man misery. This is not the only proof T have 
had of a strange opinion that I am overflowing 
with riches. Poor wretched man, what can I 
do for him ! However, I do not like to shut my 
ears and my heart to a tale of this kind. Send 
him, I pray you, a two-pound note in my name, 
to No. 10 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth; your 
servant had better take it, for fear he should 
have been sent to the work-house before thia 
time. When I come to town, I will seek about 
if any thing can be done for him. 

"I wrote to Wynn last night to consult him 
about Wat Tyler, telling him all the circum- 
stances, and desiring him, if it be best to procure 
an injunction, to send the letter to Turnei', and 
desire him to act for me. Three-and-twenty 
years ago the MS. was put into Ridgeway's 
hands, who promised to publish it then (anony- 
mously, unless I am very much mistaken), and 
from that time to this I never heard of it. There 
was no other copy in existence except the orig- 
inal scrawl, which is now lying up stairs in an 
old trunk full of papers. I wish the attorney- 
general would prosecute the publisher for sedi- 
tion; this I really should enjoy. Happy are 
they who have no worse sins of their youth tc 
rise in judgment against them. 

" Government are acting like themselves. 
Could I say any thing more severe ? They 
should have begun with vigor and rigor ; and 
then, when they had the victory, have made their 
sacrifices ex proprio motu, with a good grace. 
But they ought not, on any account, to have 
touched the official salaries — a thing unjust and 
unwise, which, instead of currying favor for them 
with the rabble, will make them despised for their 
pusillanimity. I have neither pity nor patience 
for them. Was ever paper used like this last 
article has been to please them ! They have 
absolutely cut it down to their own exact meas- 
ure ; every thing useful is gone, and every .thing 
original ; whatever had most force in it was sure 
to be struck out. Of all the practical measures 
upon which I touched, one only has escaped, 
and that because it comes in as if by accident — 
the hint about transportation for sedition. If we 
come out of this confusion without an utter over- 
throw, it will be as we escaped the gunpowder 
plot — not by any aid of human wisdom, and God 
knows we have no right to calculate upon mira- 
cles. The prospect is very dismal ; and it is 
provoking to think that nothing is wanting to 
secure us but foresight and courage ; but of what 
use is railing, or advising, or taking thought for 
such things ? I am only a passenger ; the officers 
must look to the ship; if she is lost, the fault 
rests with them. I have nothing to answer for, 
and must take my share in the wreck with pa- 
tience. 

" Murray offers me a thousand guineas for my 
intended poem in blank verse, and begs it may 
not be a line longer than Thomson's Seasons ! ! 
I rather think the poem will be a post-obit, and 
in that case twice that sum, at least, may be de- 
manded for it. What his real feelings toward 



348 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 43 



me may be, I can not tell ; but he is a happy 
fellow, living in the light of his own glory. The 
Review is the greatest of all works, and it is all 
his own creation; he prints 10,000, and fifty 
times ten thousand read its contents, in the East 
and in the West. Joy be with him and his jour- 
nal. 

"It is really amusing to see how the rascals 
attack me about the court, as if I were a regu- 
lar courtier, punctual in attendance, perfect in 
flattery, and enjoying all that favor, for the slight- 
est portion of which these very rascals would 
sell their souls, if they had any. Malice never 
aimed at a less vulnerable mark. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

" Longman has just sent me the Resurrection 
of Sedition. The verses are better than I ex- 
pected to find them, which I think you will allow j 
to be a cool philosophical remark." 

To Messrs. Longman and Co. 

" Keswick, Feb. 15, 1817. 
" Dear Sirs, 

" There is, unluckily, a very sufficient reason 
for not disclaiming Wat Tyler — which is, that 
I wrote it three-and-twenty years ago. 

" It was the work, or rather the sport, of a 
week in the summer of 1794 : poor Lovel took 
it to London, and put it into Ridgeway's hands, 
who was then in Newgate. Some weeks after- 
ward I went to London and saw Ridgeway about 
it ; Symonds was with him, and they agreed to 
publish it (I believe, or rather I am sure, the 
publication was to have been anonymous), and 
what remuneration I was to have was left to 
themselves, as dependent upon the sale. This 
was the substance of our conversation, for noth- 
ing but words passed between us. From that 
time till the present, I never heard of the work : | 
they, of course, upon better judgment, thought it ! 
better left alone ; and I, with the carelessness of 
a man who has never thought of consequences, I 
made no inquiry for the manuscript. How it ! 
has got to the press, or by whose means, I know 
not. 

"The motive for publication is sufficiently 
plain. But the editor, whoever he may be, has 
very much mistaken his man. In those times j 
and at that age, and in the circumstances where- j 
in I was placed, it was just as natural that I 
should be a Republican, and as proper, as that 
now, with the same feelings, the same principles, 
and the same integrity, when three-and-twenty 
years have added so much to the experience of 
mankind, as well as matured my own individual 
intellect, I should think revolution the greatest 
of all calamities, and believe that the best way of 
ameliorating the condition of the people is through 
the established institutions of the country. 

" The booksellers must be disreputable men, 
or they would not have published a work under 
such circumstances. I just feel sufficient anger 
to wish that they may be prosecuted for sedition. 
" I would write to Turner, if my table were 
not at this time covered with letters; perhaps, 
if vou see him, you will ask his opinion upon the 



matter — whether it be better to interfere, or let 
it take its course. 

" Yours very truly, R. Southey." 

To C. H. Townshend, Esq. 

"Keawick, Feb. 16, 1817. 
" My dear Chauncey, 
" If there be any evil connected with poetry, 
it is that it tends to make us too little masters 
of ourselves, and counteracts that stoicism, or 
necessary habit of self-control, of which all of us 
must sometimes stand in need. I do not mean 
as to our actions, for there is no danger that a 
man of good principles should ever feel his in- 
clination and his duty altogether at variance 
But as to our feelings. You talk of mourning 
the loss of 3 r our trees, and not enduring to walk 
where you were wont to see them. I can un- 
derstand this, and I remember when I was little 
more than your age saying that 

" ' He who does not sometimes wake 
And weep at midnight, is an instrument 
Of Nature's common work ;' 

but the less of this the better. We stand in need 
of all that fortitude can do for us in this change- 
ful world, and the tears are running down my 
cheeks when I tell you so. 

" Thomas Clarkson I know well : his book 
upon Quakerism keeps out of sight all the darker 
parts of the picture ; their littleness of mind, their 
incorrigible bigotry, and their more than popish 
interference with the freedom of private actions. 
Have you read his history of the Abolition of the 
Slave Trade ? I have heard it from his own lips, 
and never was a more interesting story than that 
of his personal feelings and exertions. I have 
happened in the course of my life to know three 
men, each wholly possessed with a single object 
of paramount importance — Clarkson, Dr. Be\\ 
and Owen of Lanark, whom I have only lately 
known. Such men are not only eminently use- 
ful, but eminently happy also ; they live in a& 
atmosphere of their own, which must be more 
like that of the third heaven than of this every 
day earth upon which we toil and moil. 

" I am veiy ill pleased with public proceed- 
ings. The present ministry are deficient in every 
thing except good intentions ; and their oppo- 
nents are deficient in that also. These resigna- 
tions ought to have been made during the press- 
ure of war, uncalled for, when they would have 
purchased popularity. They come now like mis- 
erable concessions forced from cowardice, and 
reap nothing but contempt and insult for their 
reward. Nor ought they at any time to have 
resigned part of their official appointments, be- 
cause the appointments of office are in every in- 
stance inadequate to its expenses, in the higher 
departments of state. They should take money 
from the sinking fund, and employ it upon public 
works, or lend it for private ones, stimulating in- 
dividual industry by assisting it with capital, and 
thus finding work for idle hands, and food for 
necessitous families. From the same funds they 
should purchase waste lands, and enable specu- 
lators and industrious poor to colonize them : the 



*Etat. 43. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



349 



property of the lands remaining in the nation, 
as a source of certain revenue, improving in pro- 
portion to the prosperity of the country. 
" God bless you ! 

" Your affectionate friend, R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Feb. 19, 1817. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" This poor wretched paper-hanger* has sent 
me another letter, because I did not reply to his 
first. Men are too prone to take offense at im- 
portunity, finding anger a less uncomfortable 
emotion than pity ; this indeed it is ; and for that 
reason I scold my wife and my children when 
they hurt themselves. As to this unhappy man, 
I hope you have sent him the two pounds ; it 
will do him very little good, but it is really as 
much as I can afford to give him for the sake of 
the name, and a great deal more than I ever got 
by it. 

" The tide seems to be turning, and if govern- 
ment will but check the press they would soon 
right themselves. In this part of the country I 
near that travelers (the bagmen) collect their 
money more easily than on their last rounds, and 
receive more orders. A fellow was selling Cob- 
bett's twopenny Register and other such things 
at Rydal the other day ; he was, or appeared to 
be, a sailor, and his story w^.s that he was going 
to Whitehaven, and a gentleman had given him 
these to support himself on the road by selling 
them. 

"In grief and in uneasiness I have often 
caught myself examining my own sensations, as 
if the intellectual part could separate itself from 
that in which the affections predominate, and 
stand aloof and contemplate it as a surgeon does 
the sufferings of a patient during an operation. 
This I have observed in the severest sorrows 
that have ever befallen me, but it in no degree 
lessens the suffering ; and whenever I may have 
any serious malady, this habit, do what I may to 
subdue it, will tend materially to impede or pre- 
vent recovery. But in petty vexations it has its 
use. I was more vexed than I ought to have 
been about this publication of Wat Tyler ; for, 
though I shook off the first thoughts, or, rather, 
immediately began to consider it in the right 
point of view as a thing utterly unimportant, still 
there was an uneasiness working like yeast in 
my abdomen, and my sleep was disturbed by it 
for two nights ; by that time it had spent itself, 
and I should now think nothing more about it if 
it were not necessary to determine how to act. 
Wynn will find the thing more full of fire and 
brimstone, perhaps, than he imagines ; and yet, 
perhaps, the wiser way will be not to notice it, 
but let it pass as a squib. Indeed, I could laugh 
about it with any person who was disposed to 
laugh with me. I shall hear from him again to- 
morrow, and probably shall receive a letter from 
Turner by the same post. Turner has a cool, 
olear head; I have very little doubt that they 

See ante, p. 347. 



will coincide in their opinion, and, be it what it 
may, I shall act accordingly. God bless you ! 

"R. S." 

To Sharon Turner, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 24,1817. 
" My dear Turner, 

" My brother has written to dissuade me 
strongly from proceeding in this business. My 
own opinion is, that if I do not act now, the men 
who have published the work will compel me to 
do so at last, by inserting my name in such a 
manner as to render the measure unavoidable. 
Indeed it was inserted as a paragraph in the 
Chronicle, which I suppose they paid for as an 
advertisement. Therefore I think it best to take 
the short and open course, believing that in most 
cases such courses are the best. However, I 
have sent Harry's letter to Wynn, and, if his ar- 
guments convince him, have desired him to let 
you know. This was done yesterday, and if you 
have not heard from him before this reaches you, 
it may be concluded that he thinks it best to pro- 
ceed. I suppose there can be no doubt of ob- 
taining the injunction. The statement is per- 
fectly accurate ; I know not whether it be of any 
use to let you know that at the time the trans- 
action took place I was under age. I was just 
twenty when the poem was written, and saw 
these booksellers about four months afterward. 

"I fully assent to what you say concerning 
political discussions, and intermeddle with them 
no further than as they are connected not only 
with the future good, but, as appears to me, with 
the immediate safety of society. It is not for any 
men, or set of men, that I am interested, nor for 
any particular measures. But with regard to 
the fearful aspect of these times, you may per- 
haps have traced the ground of my apprehen- 
sions in Espriella, in the Edinburgh Register, 
and in the Quarterly, more especially in a paper 
upon the Poor about four years ago. It is now 
come to this question, Can we educate the peo- 
ple in moral and religious habits, and better the 
condition of the poor, so as to secure ourselves 
from a mob-revolution ; or has this duty been 
neglected so long, that the punishment will over- ■ 
take us before this only remediable means can 
take effect? The papers which I shall write 
upon the real evils of society will,- 1 hope, work 
for posterity, and not be wholly forgotten by it ; 
they proceed from a sense of duty, and, that 
duty discharged, I shall gladly retire into other 
ages, and give all my studies to the past and all 
my hopes to the future. 

" My spirits, rather than my disposition, have 
undergone a great change. They used to be 
exuberant beyond those of almost every other 
person ; my heart seemed to possess a perpetual 
fountain of hilarity ; no circumstances of study, 
or atmosphere, or solitude affected it ; and the 
ordinary vexations and cares of life, even when 
they showered upon me, fell off like hail from a 
pent-house. That spring is dried up ; I can not 
now preserve an appearance of serenity at all 
times without an effort, and no prospect in this 



350 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 43. 



woi'ld delights me except that of the next. My 
heart and ray hopes are there. 

"I have a scheme to throw out somewhere 
for taking the Methodists into the Church, or 
borrowing from Methodism so much of it as is 
good, and thereby regenerating the Establish- 
ment. There is little hope in such schemes, ex- 
cept that in process of time they may produce 
some effect. But were it effected now, and 
would the Church accept the volunteer services 
of lay coadjutors, I should feel strongly inclined 
to volunteer mine. This is a dream, and I fear 
the whole fabric will fall to pieces even in our 
days. 

" Believe me, 

" Yours with affection and esteem, 

" Robert Sotjthey." 

To the Rev. Herbert Hill. 

" Keswick, Feb. 28, 1817. 
" My dear Uncle, 

" Your copies of Brazil are, I hope, by this 
time delivered at the doctor's, and in a day or 
two I shall send the third volume to the press ; for 
if I should only get through a single chapter be- 
fore my journey, it will be so much gained. 
My movements will be upon a wide scale. I 
purpose to start for London the second week in 
April, and, if you are then in Hampshire, to run 
down to you for a week, as soon as I have rest- 
ed myself, and shaken hands with Bedford and 
Packman ; and on May-day, or as soon after as 
my companions can be ready, I start with Sen- 
house to Netherhall, and my former comjmgnon 
de voyage, Nash, for the Continent. From six 
weeks to two months is to be the length of our 
furlough, during which we mean to get as far as 
Lago Maggiore and Milan, back over the Alps 
a second time, and, seeing as much as we can of 
Switzerland, to return by way of the Rhine, and 
reach home as early as possible in July. 

' : I learn from to-day's Courier that Brougham 
attacked me in the House of Commons. I hope 
this affair will give no friend of mine any more 
vexation than it does me. Immediately upon 
seeing the book advertised, I wrote to Wynn and 
to Turner, giving them the whole facts, and pro- 
posing to obtain an injunction in Chancery. How 
they will determine I do not know. Perhaps, 
as Brougham has thus given full publicity to the 
thing, they may not think it advisable to pro- 
ceed, but let it rest, considering it, as it really is, 
of no importance. Men of this stamp, who live 
in the perpetual fever of faction, are as little ca- 
pable of disturbing my tranquillity as they are of 
understanding it. 

"I have just finished the notes and preface to 
the Morte d' Arthur, a thing well paid for. For 
the next Quarterly, I have to review Mariner's 
Tonga Islands (including a good word for our 
friend the captain*), and to write upon the Re- 
port of the Secret Committees ; but I shall fly 
from the text, and, saying as little as may be 
upon the present, examine what are the causes 



* Captain, afterward Admiral, Burnev, who published 
a collection of voyages in the S^uti. Seas 



which make men discontented in this country. 
and what the means which may tend to heal this 
foul gangrene in the body politic. Never was 
any paper so emasculated as my last ; and yet 
it was impossible to resent it, for it was done in 
compassion to the weakness, the embarrassment 
and the fears of the ministry. They express 
themselves much indebted to me. In reply tc 
their intimations of a desire to show their sense 
of this, I have pressed a wish that Tom be re- 
membered when there is a promotion in the navy 
For myself, I want nothing, nor would I, indeed, 
accept any thing. They give me credit for a 
reasonable share of foresight, and perhaps wisr 
that my advice had been taken four years ago. 
" God bless you ! R. S." 

It was now decided, upon the advice of his 
legal friends, that application should be made to 
the Court of Chancery* for an injunction to re- 
strain the publication of Wat Tyler. This was 
done, but without success, upon the singular 
ground that as the work was calculated to do an 
injury to society, the author could not reclaim 
his property in it. This, which would seem a 
just decision in the case of the piracy of an im- 
moral, blasphemous, or seditious work, applies 
very differently in the case of a publication, set 
forth without the consent or knowledge of the 
author, and apparently gives liberty to any scoun- 
drel to plunder a man's writing-desk, and send 
forth to the public any chance squibs he may 
have thrown off in an idle hour for the amuse- 
ment of his friends. 

These fellows must have reaped a rich harvest 
by their roguery, 60,000 copies being said to 
have been sold at the time. 

To the Editor of the Courier. 

" In Courier, March 17, 1817. 
" Sir, 
" Allow me a place in your columns for my 
1 last words ' concerning Wat Tyler. 

" In the year 1794, this manuscript was placed 
by a friend of mine (long since deceased) in Mr. 
Ridgeway's hands. Being shortly afterward in 
London myself for a few days, I called on Mr. 

* The following was Lord Eldon's judgment upon this 
case : " I have looked into all the affidavits and have read 
the book itself. The bill goes the length of stating that 
the work was composed by Mr. Southey in the year 1794 ; 
that it is his own production, and that it has been pub- 
lished by the defendants without his sanction or author- 
ity ; and, therefore, seeking an account of the profits which 
have arisen from, and an injunction to restrain, the pub- 
lication. I have examined the cases that I have been able 
to meet with containing precedents for injunctions of this 
nature, and I find that they all proceed upon the ground 
of a title to the property in the plaintiff. On this head a 
distinction has been taken to which a considerable weight 
of authority attaches, supported as it is by the opinion of 
Lord Chief-justice Eyre, who has expressly laid it down, 
that a person- can not recover in damages for a work 
which is in its nature calculated to do an injury to the pub- 
lic. Upon the same principle, this court refused an in- 
junction in the case of Walcot (Peter Pinder) v. Walker, 
inasmuch as he could not have recovered damages in an 
action. After the fullest consideration, I remain of the 
same opinion as that which I entertained in deciding the 
cases referred to. Taking all the circumstances into my 
consideration, it appears to me that I can not grant this 
injunction until after Mr. Southey shall have established 
his right to the property by action." Injunction refused. 



JEtat. 43. 



ROBERT SOUTHE Y. 



351 



Ridgeway, in Newgate, and he and Mr. Symonds 
agreed to publish it. I understood that they had 
changed their intention, because no proof-sheet 
was sent to me, and, acquiescing readily in their 
cooler opinion, made no inquiry concerning it. 
More than two years elapsed before I revisited 
London ; and then, if I had thought of the manu- 
script, it would have appeared a thing of too 
little consequence to take the trouble of claiming 
it for the mere purpose of throwing it behind the 
fire. That it might be published surreptitiously 
at any future time, was a wickedness of which 
I never dreamed. 

" To these facts I have made oath. Mr. Win- 
terbottom, a Dissenting minister, has sworn, on 
the contrary, that Messrs. Ridgeway and Sy- 
monds having declined the publication, it was 
undertaken by himself and Daniel Isaac Eaton ; 
that I gave them the copy as their own property, 
and gave them, moreover, a fraternal embrace, 
in gratitude for their gracious acceptance of it ; 
and that he, the said Winterbottom, verily be- 
lieved he had a right now, after an interval of 
three-and-twenty years, to publish it as his own. 

" My recollection is perfectly distinct, notwith- 
standing the lapse of time ; and it was likely to 
be so, as I was never, on any other occasion, 
within the walls of Newgate. The work had 
been delivered to Mr. Ridgeway ; it was for him 
that I inquired, and into his apartments I was 
shown. There I saw Mr. Symonds, and there 
I saw Mr. Winterbottom also, whom I knew to 
be a Dissenting minister. / never sato Daniel 
Isaa% Eaton in my life ; and as for the story of 
the embrace, every person who knows my dis- 
position and manners will at once perceive it to 
be an impudent falsehood. Two other persons 
came into the room while I was there ; the name 
of the one was Lloyd — I believe he had been an 
officer in the army; that of the other was Bar- 
row. I remembered him a bishop's boy at West- 
minster. I left the room with an assurance that 
Messrs. Ridgeway and Symonds were to be the 
publishers ; in what way Winterbottom might be 
connected with them, I neither knew nor cared, 
and Eaton I never saw. There is no earthly 
balance in which oaths can be weighed against 
each other; but character is something in the 
scale ; and it is perfectly in character that the 
man who has published Wat Tyler under the 
present circumstances, should swear — as Mr. 
Winterbottom has sworn. 

" Thus much concerning the facts. As to the 
work itself, I am desirous that my feelings should 
neither be misrepresented nor misunderstood. It 
contains the statement of opinions which I have 
long outgrown, and which are stated more broad- 
ly because of this dramatic form. Were there 
a sentiment or an expression which bordered 
upon irreligion or impurity, I should look upon it 
with shame and contrition ; but I can feel neither 
for opinions of universal equality, taken up as 
they were conscientiously in early youth, acted 
upon in disregard of all worldly considerations, and 
left behind me in the same straightforward course 
as I advanced in years. The piece was written 



when such opinions, or rather such hopes and 
fears, were confined to a very small number of 
the educated classes ; when those who were 
deemed Republicans were exposed to personal 
danger from the populace ; and when a spirit of 
anti-Jacobinism prevailed, which I can not char- 
acterize better Can by saying that it was as 
blind and as intolerant as the Jacobinism of the 
present day. The times have changed. Had 
it been published surreptitiously under any other 
political circumstances, I should have suffered 
it to take its course, in full confidence that it 
would do no harm, and would be speedily for- 
gotten as it deserved. The present state of 
things, which is such as to make it doubtful 
whether the publisher be not as much actuated 
by public mischief as by private malignity, render- 
ed it my duty to appeal for justice, and stop the 
circulation of what no man had a right to publish. 
And this I did, not as one ashamed and penitent 
for having expressed crude opinions and warm 
feelings in his youth (feelings right in themselves, 
and wrong only in their direction), but as a man 
whose life has been such that it may set slander 
at defiance, and who is unremittingly endeavor- 
ing to deserve well of his country and of man- 
kind. Robert Southey." 

A letter addressed by Mr. Foster to Mr. Cot- 
tle, and published by him in. his Reminiscences 
of Colei-idge and Southey,* rather involves the 
matter in more difficulty than explains it. 

"I wonder if Mr. Southey ever did get at the 
secret history of that affair. The story, as I 
heard it, was, that Southey visited Winterbottom 
in prison, and, just as a token of kindness, gave 
him the MS. of Wat Tyler. It was no fault of 
Winterbottom that it was published. On a visit 
to some friends at Worcester, he had the piece 
with him, meaning, I suppose, to afford them a 
little amusement at Southey's expense, he being 
held in great reproach and even contempt as a 
turn-coat. At the house wdiere Winterbottom 
was visiting, two persons, keeping the piece in 
their reach at bedtime, sat up all night tran- 
scribing it, of course giving him no hint of the 
maneuver. This information I had from one of 
the two operators." 

My father distinctly states he did not give the 
MS. to any body, and that he did not put it into 
Winterbottom's hands at all. But even if it had 
been so, how came Winterbottom to appear in 
court, and justify the publication upon oath, if 
the circumstances were a,s Mr. Foster relates ? 

It might have been supposed, that, with the 
proceedings before the lord chancellor, the mat- 
ter would have ended ; that the surreptitious pub- 
lication of the crude and hasty production of a 
youth of twenty, long since forgotten by the 
writer, w T ould hardly have been deemed worthy 
the attention of the public, especially as he had 
never concealed or suppressed his former opin- 
ions, which stood plainly on record in his earlv 
published works. 



P. 235. 



352 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 43. 



But the opportunity was too tempting to be 
lost, and the subject was twice brought forward 
in Parliament — once by Mr. Brougham, the sec- 
ond time by William Smith, the member for Nor- 
wich, who, arming himself for the occasion with 
Wat Tyler in one pocket and the Quarterly Re- 
view in the other, stood forth in the House of 
Commons to contrast their contents. 

In reply to this attack,* which was answered 
at the time by Mr. Wynn, my father published a 
letter to William Smith, defending himself against 
the charges brought against him, and stating his 
past and present opinions, and his views as to the 
condition of the country and the measures most 
likely to promote the welfare of the community. 
This letter, with the remarks that called it forth, 
will be found at the end of this volume, where I 
think it right to place it, as, from my father's re- 
printing it in his Essays, it appears plainly that 
he intended it should be preserved, and as the his- 
tory of Wat Tyler is incomplete without it. 

To Humphrey Senhouse, Esq. 

"Keswick, March 22, 1817. 
" My dear Senhouse. 
" You see I am flourishing in the newspapers 
as much as Joanna Southcote did before her ex- 
pected accouchement ; and I have not flourished 
in Chancery,! because a Presbyterian parson has 
made oath that I gave the MSS. to him and to 
another person whom I never saw in my life. 
There is no standing against perjury, and there- 
fore it is useless to pursue the affair into a court 
of law. I have addressed two brief letters to 
William Smith in the Courier, and there the mat- 
ter will end on my part, unless he replies to 
them. In the second of those letters you will see 
the history of Wat Tyler, as far as it was needful 
to state it. There was no occasion for stating 
that about a year after it Ifras written I thought 
of making a serious historical drama upon the 
same subject, which would have been on the side 
of the mob in its main feelings, but in a very dif- 
ferent way ; and, indeed, under the same circum- 
stances, I should have brained a tax-gatherer just 
as he did. The refaccimento proceeded only some 
fifty or threescore lines, of which I only remem- 
ber this short passage, part of it having been 
transplanted into Madoc. Some one has been 
saying, a plague on time ! in reference to Tyler's 
gloomy state of mind, to which he replies, 

" ' Gently on man doth gentle Nature lay 

The weight of years ; and even when over-laden 
He little likes to lay the burden down. 
A plague on care, I say, that makes the heart 
Grow old before its time.' 

" Had it been continued, it might have stood 
beside Joan of Arc, and perhaps I should have 
become a dramatic writer. But Joan of Arc left 
me no time for it then, and it was dismissed, as I 



* Mr. Wilberforce wrote to my father at this time, say- 
ing he could not feel satisfied until he had informed him 
that he was not in the House of Commons when William 
Smith brought the subject forward, or his voice would 
also have been beard in his defense. 

t My father seems to have mistaken the grounds of the 
chancellor's decision. Probably he had only been in- 
formed of the result, and had noi seen the judgment. 



supposed, forever from my thoughts. I hear that I 

j in consequence of this affair, and of the effect : \ 

j which that paper in the Quarterly produced, | 

I Murray has printed two thousand additional cop- 1 

ies of the number ; and yet the paper has been | 

dismally mutilated of its best passages and of 

some essential parts. I shall have a second part I 

in the next number to follow up the blow. 

" My fear is that when commerce recovers, as 
it presently will, government should suppose that j 
the danger is over, and think that the disease is 
removed because the fit is past. There are some j 
excellent remarks in Coleridge's second lay ser- ] 
mon upon the overbalance of the commercial 
spirit, that greediness of gain among all ranks to 
which I have more than once alluded in the 
Quarterly. If Coleridge could but learn how to 
deliver his opinions in a way to make them read, 
and to separate that which would be profitable 
for all from that which scarcely half a dozen men 
in England can understand (I certainly am not 
one of the number), he would be the most useful 
man of the age, as I verily believe him in ac- 
quirements and in powers of mind to be very far 
the greatest. 
, "Yours very truly, Robert Southey." 

In the minds of many men who were not dis- 
posed to slander my father, nor to entertain hos- 
tile feelings toward him, there ) T et remained an 
impression that he attacked with intemperate 
language the same class of opinions which he 
himself had once held. The next letter shows 
us how he defended himself against this imputa- 
tion, when represented to him by Mr. Wynn. 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Keswick, April 13, 1817. 
" My dear Wynn, 
" Do you not see that the charge of my speak- 
ing acrimoniously against persons for thinking as 
I once thought is ridiculously false ? Against 
whom are the strong expressions used, to which 
you refer in the Quarterly Review and the Regis- 
ters ? Against the rank Bonapartists, with whom 
I had never any more resemblance than I have 
with the worshipers of the devil in Africa ; and 
against those who, without actually favoring him 
as Whitbread did, nevertheless thought it hope- 
less to make our stand against him on the ground 
where we had every possible advantage. And 
as for the Jacobin writers of the day — in what 
have I ever resembled them ? Did I ever ad- 
dress myself to the base and malignant feelings 
of the rabble, and season falsehood and sedition 
with slander and impiety ? It is perfectly true 
that I thought the party who uniformly predicted 
our failure in Spain to be ignorant,* and pusillani- 
mous, and presumptuous — surely, surely, their 
own words, which are given in the Register, 
prove them to have been so. Can you have for- 
gotten in 1809-10, how those persons who 
thought with me that there was reasonable 



* " The paper in the Quarterly Review is directed against 
the Edinburgh Reviewer, whose words are quoted to jus- 
tify the epithets."— .R. S. 



Mr at. 43. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



353 



ground for hope and perseverance were insulted 
as idiots, and laughed to scorn? For my own 
part, I never doubted of success ; and proud I 
am that the reasons upon which my confidence 
was founded were recorded at the time. Had 
you been in power, you would have thought 
otherwise than as you did, because you would 
have known more of the state of Europe. Arms 
were sent from this country to Prussia as early 
as the autumn of 1811. Believe me, the terms 
in which I have spoken of the peace party are 
milk and water compared to what I have seen 
among the papers with which I have been in- 
trusted. But enough of this. 

" If you saw me now, you would not think 
otherwise of my temper under affliction than you 
did in the summer. I have never in the slight- 
est degree yielded to grief, but my spirits have 
not recovered, nor do I think they ever will re- 
cover, their elasticity. The world is no longer 
the same to me. You can not conceive the 
change in my occupations and enjoyments: no 
person who had not seen what my ways of life 
were can conceive how they were linked with his 
life. But be assured that I look habitually for 
comfort where it is to be found.. 

" God bless you ! I shall be in town on the 
24th, at my brother's, and leave it on the 1st of 
May. 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 

An incident that occurred in the midst of the 
Wat Tyler controversy must now be noticed, as 
one which, had my father thought fit to take ad- 
vantage of it, would have changed the whole 
current of his life, and which offered him the 
most favorable prospects of pecuniary advantage 
of any which presented themselves either in ear- 
lier or later life. 

This was a proposal made privately, through 
the medium of his friend, Mr. Henry Crabbe 
Robinson ; and, in the first instance, the simple 
question was asked whether, " if an offer were 
made him to superintend a lucrative literary 
establishment, in which he would have — if he 
desired it — a property, of which the emolument 
would be very considerable, and which would 
give him extensive influence over the whole 
kingdom, he were in a condition to accept it;" 
or, rather, whether he was willing to listen to 
the details of such a proposal. "But," it was 
added, "if he was so attached to his delightful 
residence, and to that kind of literary employ- 
ment which alone gives fame, and must, in its 
exercise, be the most delightful, an immediate 
answer to that effect was requested." 

My father had no doubt from whom the pro- 
posal came and to what it referred, being aware 
of his friend's intimacy with Mr. Walter, the pro- 
prietor of the Times ; but so completely was he 
wedded to his present mode of life, so foreign to 
his habits would this sort of occupation have 
been, combined with a residence in London, and 
so much more strongly was his mind set upon 
future and lasting fame than upon present profit, 
that he did not even request to be informed of 
Z 



the particulars of the offer, but at once declined 
j it, upon the plea that no emolument, however 
I great, would induce him to give up a country 
; life, and those pursuits in literature to which the 
' studies of so many years had been directed. 
, "Indeed," he adds, "I should consider that por- 
; tion of my time which is given up to temporary- 
politics grievously misspent, if the interests at 
! stake were less important."* 

The situation alluded to was that of writing 
the chief leading article in the Times, together. 
I suppose, with some general authority over the 
whole paper ; and the remuneration which it was 
intended to offer was 662000 a year, with such 
a share in the profits as would have enabled him 
to realize an independence in a comparatively 
short time. 

In a former letter my father speaks of an in- 
tention of making a tour of the Continent in the 
course of the spring. His habits of laborious 
study rendered some perfect relaxation absolute- 
ly necessary, and traveling abroad was the only 
way in which he could obtain it. At home he 
could not be unemployed ; he had no tastes or 
pursuits of any kind to lead him from his books, 
and any journey he might take in his own coun- 
try was only a series of hurried movements from 
one friend to another. Of London, the reader 
need not be told, he had not merely a dislike, 
but absolutely a "horror;" and thus his mind 
was hardly ever completely unbent except on the 
few occasions when he could afford himself a 
foreign excursion. 

From such a change (which at this time was 
particularly needful to him) no one ever derived 
more benefit or more pleasure. With his travel- 
ing garments he put on totally new habits, and 
set out with the determination to make the most 
of all pleasures and the least of all inconven- 
iences, being thus as good-humored and as ac- 
commodating a "compagnon de voyage" as it 
was possible to conceive. His journal on this 
occasion (like all his other journals) is elaborately 
minute, and shows how perseveringly he must 
have labored at it in spite of fatigue. Every cir- 
cumstance is detailed ; in every place he seems 
to find objects of interest which would altogether 
escape the eye of an ordinary traveler. Indeed, 
the industry of his pen, the activity of his mind, 
and the quickness of his perceptive faculties, are 
nowhere so plainly shown as in these records of 
his foreign journeys. 

Every spare moment of his time being thus 
occupied, his letters during this journey contain 
little more than the outlines of his route ; a few 
of them, however, will not be thought out of 
place here. 

To Mrs. Southey. 
" Neufchatel, Wednesday, May 28, 1817. 
" My dear Edith, 
" Yesterday we entered Switzerland, and 
reached this place after a week's journey from 
Paris, without let, hinderance, accident, or incon- 
venience of any kind. 



* R. S. to H. C. R., March 13, 1817. 



354 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



tEtat. 43. i 



" It is with the greatest difficulty that 1 find 
time to keep a journal. We rise at five, and 
have traveled from ten to twelve hours every 
day, going about twenty miles before breakfast. 
Hunger would hardly permit us to do any thing 
in the way of writing before dinner, if there were 
not always something to see while dinner is pre- 
paring ; and after dinner it requires an effort of 
heroic virtue to resist the pleasures of wine and 
conversation, and it becomes almost impossible, 
upon taking the pen in hand, to resist sleep. 
This morning we lay in bed till seven, that we 
might have the full enjoyment of a whole holiday. 
I remember at Westminster the chief gratifica- 
tion which a whole holiday on a Sunday afforded 
was that of lying abed till breakfast was ready 
at nine o'clock. 

" Our windows are within a stone's throw of 
the lake, and we see the Alps across it. The 
lake is like a sea in its color, its waves, and its 
voice, of which we are, of course, within hearing. 
The Alps, of which we have the whole extent in 
view, can not be less than fifty miles distant in 
the nearest point, directly across the lake, and 
Mont Blanc, which is at the extremity on the 
right, about fourscore. If our horizon at Kes- 
wick were wide enough, I could sometimes 
show you the Alps in the clouds. They have 
precisely the appearance of white cumulated 
clouds, at the verge of the sky, resting upon 
the earth, and silvered with sunshine ; and from 
such clouds they are only to be distinguished by 
their definite outline and permanent forms. It 
is idle to compare this country with our own ; 
or, rather, it would be worse than idle to form 
any comparison for the purpose of depreciating 
either. Part of our yesterday's journey* was so 
like Cumberland, that I could fancy myself within 
an hour's walk of home ; and this forced upon 
me such a sense of time and distance, and separa- 
tion, that the tears were more than once ready 
to break loose. The mountains through which 
we passed from Pontarlier to this place rise be- 
hind the town, and in that direction the view as 
to its natural objects might be English. A huge 
harbor, or, still better, an arm of the sea, with 
such a sky as I have described, will give you a 
full idea of the rest. 

"We hear dismal stories of famine and dis- 
tress ; but the scene continually recedes as we 
approach it, nor have we seen any indication of 
it whatever. From all that I can collect, the 
bad harvest of last year has acted here as it does 
in England, and must every where ; it presses 
severely upon that class of persons who stood in 
need of economy before, and who, with economy, 
had a little to spare for others. There are plenty 
of beggars throughout France, and much squalid 
misery ; but the children of the peasantry are as 
hale, and apparently as well fed, as far as all ap- 
pearances of flesh and blood may be trusted, as 
those in our own country. What I have seen of 
France, about five hundred miles, from Calais to 
Pontarlier, is, on the whole, less interesting than 



* Across the Jura. 



an equal distance in Great Britain would appear ■ 
to a foreign traveler ; I mean that he would meet 1 
with a country more generally beautiful, finer I 
parts, and better towns. But there have been I 
very fine parts upon this journey, with a charac- I 
ter and beauty of their own. In Switzerland I 
every step must be interesting, and, go in what I 
direction you will, it is impossible to go wrong. I 

" Nothing surprised me more in France than | 
that there should be no middle-aged women 
among the peasantry ; they appear to pass at 
once from youth to hagged old age, and it is no 
exaggeration to say that they look like so many 
living and moving mummies. Fond as they are 
of finery in youth (for they are then tricked out 
in all the colors of the rainbow), in old age their 
dress is as wretched and squalid as their appear- 
ance. I see nothing among them of the gayety 
of which we have heard so much in former times. 
Not a single party have we seen dancing through- 
out the whole journey. The weather, indeed, 
has been unusually cold, but certainly not such 
as would check the propensities of a light-heeled 
generation, if they ever were as fond of a dance 
as their light-hearted progenitors. I must say, 
to their credit, that we have uniformly met with 
civility ; not the slightest insult or incivility of 
any kind has been offered to us ; and if some ex- 
tortion has been practiced generally at the hotels, 
it is no more than what is done every where, and 
perhaps more in England than any where else. 

" God bless you ! Give my love to all. 
" Your affectionate husband, R. S." 

To Mrs. Southey. 
" Turin, Wednesday, June 11, 1817. 
" My dear Edith, 
" I wrote to you on this day fortnight from 
Neufchatel, since which time all has gone well 
with us, and we have traveled over very interest- 
ing ground. Half a day brought us to Yverdun, 
where the other half was passed for the sake of 
seeing Pestalozzi.* The next day to Lausanne, 



* " The castle is a huge, plain, square building, with few 
windows, and a round tower at each corner with an ex- 
tinguisher top. This has been assigned to Pestalozzi ; and 
having taken up our quarters at the Maison Rouge, forth 
we sallied to pay our respects to this celebrated person- 
age. 

" We ascended the steps and got into the court ; the 
first person whom we accosted was a boy, who proved to 
be a young Philistine, and replied with a petition for petite 
charite ; just then we got sight of one of the scholars, and 
at his summons Pestalozzi himself came out to us. I have 
seen many strange figures in my time, but never a stranger 
than was now presented to ourView. a man whose face and 
stray tusk-like teeth would mark him for fourscore, if his 
hair, more black than gray, did not belie the wrinkles of 
his countenance ; this hair a perfect glib in full undress, no 
hat or covering for the head, no neckcloth, the shirt collar 
open and a pair of coarse dark trowsers, and a coat, if coat 
it may be called, of the same material, which Hyde would 
as little allow to be cloth as he would the habiliment to be 
' a coat at all.' He speaks French nearly as ill as I do, 
and much less intelligibly, because his speech is rapid 
and impassioned, and, moreover, much affected by the 
loss of his teeth. I introduced myself as a friend of Dr. 
Bell, who had read M. Julien's book, and the American 
work upon his system, but was desirous of obtaining a 
clearer insight into it. In his gesticulations to welcome 
us he slipped into a deep hole, and might very easily have 
met with a serious hurt. He led me into a small school- 
room, hung round with vile portraits of some favorite 
pupils, apparently works of the school ; his own bust was 



Atat. 43. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



355 



where, for the mere beauty of the place, we 
stayed a day. Tuesday to Geneva, seeing Fer- 
nay on the way. Wednesday we halted to see 
this famous, most ugly, most odd, and most strik- 
ing city, compared to which Lisbon is a city of 
sweet savors. Friday to Aix — that Aix where 
the adventure of King Charlemagne and the arch- 
bishop happened : Pasquier (in whom I found the 
story) mistakes it for Aix-la-Chapelle. There 
is a lake here, and a magnificent one it is. N. 
and S. both made sketches of it before break- 
fast on Friday. We reached Les Echelles that 
night, and Saturday visited the Chartreuse : this 
was a horse expedition, and a whole day's work ; 
but we were most amply rewarded for the heat 
and fatigue which we endured. I am fully dis- 
posed to believe, with Wordsworth, that there is 
nothing finer in Switzerland than this. The place 
took us two stages out of our way, which we 
had to retrace on Sunday; they happened to be 
remarkably interesting ones, having the mount- 



there, strikingly like him, but large enough for Goliath, 
he himself being rather below the middle size. There 
happened to be a display of fencing, where the beau 
monde of Yverdun were at this time assembled, and the 
military band giving them tunes between the acts. Here 
his tutors were gone, and many of his boys, but in the 
evening, he said, he hoped to show us practically the sys- 
tem which he now explained : the sum of his explana- 
tion was, that true education consists in properly develop- 
ing the talents and faculties of the individual. It was not 
likely that so metaphysical a head should think more of 
Dr. Bell, than Dr. Bell, in his practical wisdom, thinks of 
such metaphysics. I mentioned Owen of Lanark, and the 
Essay upon the Formation of Character, and presently 
perceived that I had touched the right string. We parted 
till the evening. A large party were dining at the hotel, 
as if it were a club or public meeting, which, however, the 
waiter said was not the case ; but there was unusual busi- 
ness in the house ; perhaps many persons had come from 
the country round to see the fencing. We walked about 
the town, and saw the view which it commands. 

"We met Pestalozzi in a walk without the town. He 
had dressed himself, and was in a black coat, but still 
without a hat, and he was arm-in-arm with a figure more 
extraordinary than his own : a man some twenty-five or 
thirty years of age, dressed in a short and neat slate-color- 
ed jacket and trowsers trimmed with black, his bonnet of 
the same materials and color, and his countenance so full, 
so fixed, so strongly and dismally charactered, that a 
painter might select him for one of the first disciples of 
St. Francis or of Loyola. In the course of our walk we 
went behind the castle into a large open garden, and there 
we saw some of the pupils employed in developing their 
bodily powers : a pole, about eighteen feet high, was se- 
curely fixed in an inclined position against a ladder; the 
boys ascended the ladder and slid down the pole ; others 
were swinging in such attitudes as they liked from a gal- 
lows. About six, P. called upon us to show us the prac- 
tice of his system ; it was exhibited by two very intelli- 
gent teachers as applied to drawing and arithmetic. In 
drawing, they were made to draw the simplest forms, 
and were not instructed in the laws of perspective till the 
eye and hand had acquired correctness ; just as we learn 
to speak by habit before we know the rules of grammar. 
In arithmetic, it appeared to me that the questions served 
only to quicken the intellect, but were of no utility in 
themselves, and acted upon boys just as the disputes of 
the schoolmen formerly acted upon men. A son of Aker- 
man's, in the Strand, was one of the boys, and said he was 
much happier than at an English school. His cousin of 
the same name, a German by birth, is one of the teach- 
ers ; he had been in England, where he knew Words- 
worth, and he studied under Mr. Johnson at the Central 
School, and he had traveled in Switzerland with Dr. Bell. 
He also was very curious concerning Owen ; with him I 
had much conversation, and was much pleased with him. 
M. Julien also was introduced to us ; author of those 
books which I bought at Aix-la-Chapelle. We wrote our 
names at parting, and although Mr. P. knew no more of 
mine than he did of Tom Long the carrier's, he was evi- 
dently gratified by our visit, and we parted good friends, 
with "all good wishes." — From his Journal. 



ain pass of the Echelles in one, with a tunnel 
through the mountain, and by the road in the 
other the most glorious waterfall I ever beheld. 
That evening we entered the Savoy Alps at 
Aiguebelle, and slept at La Grande Maison, a 
sort of large Estalagem in the midst of Borrow- 
dale scenery upon a large scale. Nash made a 
view from the window. I do not stop to describe 
things, because my journal will do all this. Mon- 
day we continued our way up the valley, follow- 
ing the course, or, rather, ascending the River 
Arco : such a river ! the color of my coat pre- 
cisely, which, though Mr. Hyde admits it to be 
a very genteel mixture as well calculated to 
hide the dust, is a very bad color for a river ; 
but for force and fury it exceeds any thing that 
I had ever before seen or imagined : we follow- 
ed it as far as Lans le Bourg, a little town at the 
foot of Mount Cenis, and itself as high above the 
sea as the top of Skiddaw. Yesterday (Tuesday) 
we crossed Mount Cenis, descended into the plain 
of Piedmont, and, after the longest of all our days' 
journeys in point of time, reached Turin just as 
it grew dark. 

" From BesancDn to this place it has been one 
succession of fine scenery, yet with such variety 
that every day has surprised us. Fine weather 
began on the 1st of June, and here in Italy we 
have found a great difference of climate. On the 
other side the Alps, the cherries are not larger 
than green pease; here they are ripe. Cur- 
rants, oranges, and Alpine strawberries are in 
the markets, and apricots, which are perfectly 
worthless. 

" Our journey has been in all respects pleas- 
ant, and I shall find the full advantage of it in 
the knowledge which it has given me, and the 
new images with which it has stored my memo- 
ry. Of the Alps, I will only say here that they 
make me love Skiddaw better than ever, and 
that Skiddaw will outlast them ; at least, will 
outlast all that we have yet seen, for they are 
falling to pieces. The wreck and ruin which 
they display in many places are hardly to be 
described. 

" We are burned like gipsies, especially Sen- 
house. ' All friends round Skiddaw' has been 
our daily toast ; and we drank it in all kinds and 
qualities of wine. As for news, we know not 
how the world goes on, and have ceased to think 
about it. The only thing for which we are anx- 
ious is to get letters from home, and this we shall 
do when we get to Mr. Awdry's. If I could but 
know that all was well ! 

" God bless you ! Good night, my own dear 
Edith. R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Brussels, Aug. 1, 1817. 
" My dear Friend, 
" I wrote you a long letter* from Geneva on 
our way to Italy, and since that time I have 



* This seems to have been a letter of elaborate descrip- 
tion. It never reached its destination, having been de- 
stroyed by the person to whom it was given to put into 
the post, for the sake of appropriating the postage money I 



356 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



IEtat. 43 



written twice to London, so that I conclude you 
would hear by roundabout means that I had 
reached Milan, and afterward that we had safely 
returned into Switzerland. From Geneva we 
made for Mont Cenis, and turned aside from 
Chambery to visit the Grande Chartreuse, which, 
after all that we have since seen, remains im- 
pressed upon our minds as one of the finest im- 
aginable scenes. * * * * At 
Milan I purchased some books. Thence to Co- 
mo. where I found Landor, and we remained 
three days. Bellaggio, twenty miles from Como, 
upon the fork of the lake, is the finest single 
spot I have ever seen, commanding three distant 
lake views, each of the grandest character. Lu- 
gano was our next stage ; and somewhere here 
it is, that, if climate and scenery alone were to 
be consulted, I should like to pitch my tent ; 
perhaps at Laveno, upon the Lago Maggiore. 
The Isola Bella, upon that lake, is of all extrav- 
agant follies the most absurd. Having crossed 
the lake, we entered upon the Simplon road, 
which, on the whole, I do not think so fine as 
the passage of Mont Cenis ; but it is foolish to 
compare things which are in so many respects 
essentially different. In the Maurienne, and, 
indeed, when you begin to descend into Pied- 
mont, the world seems tumbling to pieces about 
your ears, of such perishable materials are the 
mountains made. In the Simplon you have 
generally rocks of granite. A glorious Alpine 
descent brought us into the Valais, which, even 
more than the Maurienne, is the land of goitres 
and cretins, both more numerous and more shock- 
ing to behold than I could have believed possi- 
ble. At Martigny we halted and crossed to 
Chamouny by the Tete Noir. In the album at 
the Montanvert I found John Coleridge's adven- 
tures in going to the Garden, as it is called : 
unluckily, the ink with which he wrote has made 
them in part illegible. 

"We returned by the Tete Noir as we came, 
the Col de Balme being still covered in great 
part with snow ; and proceeding by Vevay and 
Lausanne, returned to Mr. Awdry's, at Echi- 
chens, where we rested three days. Just four 
weeks had elapsed since we left that place, and 
it was a high enjoyment to find ourselves again 
among friends. # # # * # 

Proceeding to Berne,* we sent our carriage to 



* The following account of Fellenberg's Institution at 
Hofwyl, near Berne, may interest the reader: "Immedi- 
ately after breakfast we drove to the noted spot. Fellen- 
berg was not within when I delivered Sir T. Acland's let- 
ter and the book with which he had intrusted me ; a mes- 
senger was dispatched to seek him, and a young man 
meanwhile carried us over the institution, and to a ware- 
house full of agricultural machines and instruments made 
upon the new principles, many of them so exceedingly 
complicated that it seemed as if the object had been how 
to attain the end desired by the most complex means ; to 
the smiths, the blacksmiths, &c, &c. ; we also visited the 
dairy, which was really a fine one, being so contrived that 
in hot weather half the floor is covered with cold water, 
and in time of severe frost with hot ; the granaries, &c, 
and the place of gymnastics, where the boys are taught to 
climb ropes, and walk upon round poles. About an hour 
had been passed in this manner when F. returned. His 
countenance is highly intelligent ; his light eyes uncom- 
monly clear and keen ; his manners those of a man of the 
world, not of an enthusiast. He entered into a long de- 
tail, rather of his own history than of his system. He 



Zurich, and struck into the Oberland, where we 
traveled ten days by land and water, on horse- 
back or on foot, sometimes in cars and some- 
times in carts. The snow rendered it impossi- 
ble to cross the Grimsel without more risk than 
it would have been justifiable to incur. We 
slept on the Righi. At Zurich a day's halt was 
necessary for the love of the washerwoman. We 
then set off homeward in good earnest, through 
the Black Forest. * * * We then 
made for Frankfort and Mentz, and down the 
left bank of the Rhine to Cologne, where we saw 
the three kings, and a very considerable number 
of the eleven thousand virgins — certainly some 
thousands of them — a sight more curious than 



had been the only member of the Council, he said, who, 
at the first invasion, proposed vigorous resistance, so as 
to make all Switzerland a la Vendee : they talked of 
shooting him, &c. Afterward, some of the Swiss direc- 
tory who knew him, and whom he knew to be desirous 
of doing the best they could for their country under such 
calamitous circumstances, induced him, as he was at Paris 
on private business, to remain there as secretary to the em- 
bassy, and serve Switzerland as well as he could against 
her own embassador and the French government. This, 
I think, was intended as an apology for his political life. 
His object, he said, was, in the first place, to fulfill his duty 
as father of a family and as a citizen. He wished to re- 
store the moral character of Switzerland ; to raise her 
again to her former respectable state ; and to make her 
the means of rendering services to Europe which other 
powers might receive from her without jealousy. This 
part of his plan turned out to be a wild scheme of insti- 
tuting a seminary for those who were destined by birth 
to hold offices — princes, peers, and statesmen : they were 
to be educated so as to know and love each other : the 
purest Christianity was to be practically taught; and his 
institution was then to co-operate with the Christian Alli- 
ance, which was the favorite scheme of the Emperor 
Alexander and the Emperor of Austria. This part of his 
institution, though very high prices were paid by the in- 
dividuals, did not support itself, the expense of masters 
being so great. The agronomic part afforded funds, from 
the farm (which appeared in beautiful order) and the 
manufacture of agricultural implements upon his im- 
provements, the demand for them being great. All that 
we had seen were about to be sent off to those who had 
bespoken them. About 200 workmen are employed ; a 
third part assisted in the education of poor destitute chil- 
dren — there were only about thirty ; these amply support- 
ed themselves by the employments in which they were 
trained. The aristocracy of Berne discouraged him ; treat- 
ed him as a visionary, and even forbade the circulation 
of those books which expounded his views; I should 
not be able to get them any where in Switzerland, only 
at Geneva : so he gave me the collection. As for the 
seminary for statesmen, I can not but suspect there is 
more of humbug than of enthusiasm in it. F. neither 
looks nor talks like a man who can suppose himself des- 
tined to found a school like the philosophers of old. If 
he has any enthusiasm, it is respecting agriculture, which 
he spoke of as the means of developing moral virtues ; 
and he was proud of his inventions, and evidently hurt 
that the Board of Agriculture had not acknowledged the 
receipt of some which he had presented to them, and not 
published the result of experiments made with them. He 
had also made experiments of great importance upon the 
nature of different soils, as to their property of retaining 
heat and moisture. Of Dr. Bell he was disposed to speak 
slightingly, saying he was an enthusiast and an excellent 
schoolmaster, but unfit for a director. Upon this point I 
told him of Madras ; he thought that the doctor pushed 
the principle of emulation too far, and used means for en- 
couraging a spirit which is in itself but too prevalent. On 
this point he spoke in a manner which in some measure 
accorded with my own judgment. 

" Kosciuzko's name was in the book of visitors. He 
requested me, at my leisure, to give him some account 
of the best works which had been published in England 
during the French Revolution, that he might send for 
them for his library ; for, though he did not speak our 
language, he understood it, and was desirous that our 
literature should be cultivated on the Continent. He had 
about 250 acres in cultivation, and inspected his laborers 
from a tower with a telescope; because, as one of his 
people said, he can not be in all places at the same time.' 



JEtat. 44. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



357 



any of its kind in Portugal or Spain. Here we 
arrived last night. * * * * * 
I have made large purchases, which, with the 
Acta Sanctorum, now at last completed, will fill 
three chests. Verbiest has promised to dispatch 
them immediately- You may well imagine how 
anxious I am to hear from home, and how desir- 
ous to get there. As for news, we have lived 
so long without it that the appetite seems almost 
extinguished. By mere chance, I got at Zurich 
a German account of Massena's campaign in 
Portugal, written by a physician of his army. 
My knowledge of the subject assisted me greatly 
in making out the meaning, and I have found in 
it some curious matter. As far as I can learn, 
this is the only original document concerning 
the war which has yet been published in Ger- 
many. 

" I have been perfectly well during the jour- 
ney, and the knowledge it has given me amply 
repays the expense both of money and of time. 
It has been with great difficulty that I could keep 
up my Journal, so fully has every day and every 
hour been occupied, from five and frequently four 
in the morning. I have, however, kept it. My 
spirits have been equal to any demand which out- 
ward circumstances might make upon them ; but 
to live always out of one's self is not possible, 
and in those circumstances which frequently oc- 
cur amid the excitement and exhilaration of such 
a journey, my lonely feelings have perhaps been 
more poignant than they would have been amid 
the even tenor of domestic life ; but I have learned 
to give them their proper direction, and when I 
am once more at home, I shall feel the benefit of 
having traveled. 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! And be- 
lieve me most truly and affectionately yours, 

" RoBER-T SoUTHEY." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Keswick, Aug. 23, 1817. 
" My dear Wynn, 

They tell me, both here and in town, that trav- 
eling has fattened me. Certainly it agreed with 
my bodily health most admirably, whether it be 
attributable to early rising, continual change of 
air, or copious libations of good wine, or to all 
these. The early rising is unluckily the only 
practice which it would be possible to continue 
here. As for the wine,* when I think of the red 
wines of Savoy (the Montmelian in particular), 
and the white wines of the Rhine and the Mo- 
selle, I feel something as the children of Israel 
did when they remembered the flesh-pots of 
Egypt. Were I to settle any where on the Con- 
tinent, Switzerland should be the country, and 
probably Lausanne the place. There are love- 

* Let not the reader suppose from this and other com- 
mendations of the juice of the grape, that my father was 
inclined to overindulgence therein, for no man was ever 
more strictly temperate. Indeed, his constitution required 
more generous living than he ordinarily gave it ; and part 
of the benefit he always derived from continental travel- 
ing was, as he here intimates, from his partaking more 
freely of wine when abroad than in the regularity of his 
domestic lifo. 



lier places in the Oberland of Berne, and the ad- 
jacent small cantons ; but Lausanne has all those 
comforts which are desirable, and there is as 
good society in the canton of Vaud as need be de- 
sired. We could not gain admittance into Gib- 
bon's garden, though his house belongs to a bank- 
er on whom we had bills. The assigned reason 
for refusing was, that the way lay through a 
chamber which was occupied by an invalid. I 
confess that I doubted this, and could not believe 
that the only way into the garden should be 
through a bed-chamber. This was a mortifying 
disappointment. As some compensation, how- 
ever, our own apartments were not more than 
one hundred yards off, and opened upon a terrace 
which commanded exactly the same view of the 
lake and mountains, with no other difference of 
foreground than a hundred yards will make in 
looking over gardens and groves of fruit-trees. * 

" Does this country, you will ask, appear flat 
and unprofitable after Alpine scenery? Cer- 
tainly not. It has lost very little by the com- 
parison, and that little will soon be regained. 
Skiddaw is by much the most imposing mountain, 
for its height, that I have yet seen. Many mount- 
ains, which are actually as high again from their 
base, do not appear to more advantage. I find 
here, as Wordsworth and Sir G. Beaumont had 
told me I should, the charm of proportion, and 
would not exchange Derwentwater for the Lake 
of Geneva, though I would gladly enrich it with the 
fruit-trees and the luxuriant beauties of a Swiss 
summer. Their waterfalls, indeed, reduce ours 
to insignificance. On the other hand, all theii 
streams and rivers are hideously discolored, so 
that that which should be one of the greatest 
charms of the landscape is in reality a disgusting 
part of it. The best color which you see is that 
of clean soap-suds ; the more common one that 
of the same mixture when dirty. But the rivers 
have a power, might, and majesty which it is 
scarcely possible to describe. 

" God bless you, my dear Wynn ! 

"Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, Oct. 13, 1817 
"My dear Friend, 
" The notion of writing again that letter which 
the rascal Louis destroyed at Geneva has, I verily 
believe, prevented me from beginning one in the 
natural order of things. I can place myself at 
Thebes or at Athens on every occasion, dive into 
Padalon, or scale Mount Calasay;* but to re- 
member what I then wrote, further than the jour- 
nal you have seen might remind me of the facts, 
is beyond my power. Let us see, however, what 
can be done, with as little repetition as possible, 
of what you have taken the trouble to decipher. 
In speaking of Paris, I probably might have re- 
marked what an out-of-door life is led by the in- 
habitants, and how prodigiously busy those peo- 
ple are who have nothing to do. There is more 
stir and bustle than in London, and of a very dif- 



* See the Curse of Kehama. 



358 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



.ZEtat. 44. 



ferent character. In London they bear the stamp 
of business. You see that the crowds who pass 
by you in Cheapside have something to do, and 
something to think of; and in Paris you see as 
clearly that restlessness and dissipation bring peo- 
ple into the street because they have nothing to 
do at home. I should think France decidedly in- 
terior to England in beauty of country ; yet I did 
not find the scenery altogether so uninteresting 
as I had been taught to expect. Picardy has 
much historical interest to an Englishman, and 
perhaps the recollection of great events makes me 
enjoy scenes which might else have been insipid ; 
for I thought of the struggle between Burgundy 
and France ; and in tracts where there was little 
more than earth and sky to be seen, I remem- 
bered that that same earth had been trodden by 
our countrymen before the battles of Cressy and 
Agincourt, and that that same sky had seen their 
victory. The towns, also, have many interesting 
antiquities, where an antiquarian or artist would 
find enough to employ him. The rivers have a 
magnitude and majesty to be found in few En- 
glish streams. On the other hand, there is a 
want of wood or of variety of wood. Poplars 
give a sameness to the scene, and a sort of sickly 
coloring, very different from the deep foliage of 
our oaks and elms. The very general custom of 
housing the cattle is unfavorable to the appear- 
ance of the country ; there is a want of life, and 
motion, and sound. I believe, also, that there 
are fewer birds than in England. I scarcely re- 
member to have seen a crow or a bird of prey. 
The most beautiful part of France which we saw 
(except the Jura country, which has a Swiss 
character) was French Flanders, which is, indeed, 
exceedingly beautiful. The country from Lisle 
to St. Omer's may vie with the richest parts of 
England. John Awdry was much disappointed 
with the South of France : perhaps this was be- 
cause he entered it from Switzerland and Savoy ; 
but the features, as he described them, were nat- 
urally unfavorable. The country upon the Loire 
has been much extolled. Landor told me it had 
the same fault which I had observed in other 
parts — a pale and monotonous coloring from the 
poplars, which was not relieved by vineyards, and 
in summer by sands which the river then left 
bare. We came upon a fine country as we ap- 
proached BesanQon. The air of the Jura Mount- 
ains seemed congenial to me; and if I did not 
look upon the people with some partiality be- 
cause they were mountaineers, they were a bet- 
ter race in many respects than the natives of 
Burgundy and Champagne. Were I to visit 
Switzerland again, I should wish to see more of 
the Jura. I do not think that a traveler can en- 
ter Switzerland in any better direction than by 
way of Pontarlier and Neufchatel. If the wine 
of this latter territory could reach England, I 
should think it would have a great sale, for it has 
the flavor of Burgundy and the body of Port. If 
the duties are lowered (as I understand they are 
likely to be) , it will find its way by the Rhine. * 
" If the general use of tea could be introduced, 
it might prove a general benefit. A French 



breakfast has neither the comfort nor the domes- 
tic character of an English one ; it is had better 
at a restaurateur's or an hotel than at home. But 
domestic habits are what are wanting in France ; 
and if it were the fashion to drink tea, they would 
be very much promoted by it. In Morocco, tea 
is gradually superseding the use of coffee. I do 
not know why it is so little liked upon the Con- 
tinent of Europe, when among us it has become 
one of the first necessaries of life. We tried it 1 
sometimes, but scarcely ever with success ; and 
it is curious enough that we never on any occa- 
sion met with cream, except at Chalets in Switz- 
erland, which is famous for it. Neither in France, 
Switzerland, Italy, Germany, nor the Nether- 
lands, rich in dairies as all these countries are, 
do the inhabitants ever appear to use it. Perhaps 
I described the lakes of Neufchatel and Geneva 
in my last letter, and the abominable odor of the 
great city of Calvinism. 

" Since my return we have had much com- 
pany, and, in consequence, I have been led into 
much idleness.* Winter is now setting in: al- 
though the weather continues fine, the days are 
shortening fast ; long evenings will confine me 
to my desk, and the retirement which this place 
affords during the dark season is such that I am 
in no danger of being disturbed. At present, I 
am finishing a paper upon Lope de Vega for the 
next Quarterly, and preparing the first chapter 
of the Peninsular War for the press. 

" Believe me, yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Southey.'' 

To Chaunccy Hare Townshend, Esq. 

"Oct 31, 1817. 
" My dear Chauncey, 

" During this fine autumn (the finest which 
we can remember in this country) I have fre- 
quently regretted that you were not with us upon 
our mountain excursions, and thought sometimes 
how busily your hammer would have been at 
work among the stones, over which I was tread- 
ing as ignorantly as the cart-horse in our com- 
pany. 

" You have not estimated Neville White more 
favorably than he deserves. There does not 
breathe a better or a nobler heart. Men are 
sometimes strangely out of their place in this 
world : there, for instance, is a man living in 
Milk Street, and busied about Nottingham goods, 
who, if he were master of a palace and a prince- 
ly fortune, would do honor to the one, and make 
the best possible use of the other. I felt toward 
him just as you have done, at first sight ; and 
recognizing instantly the character, scarcely per- 
ceived that the individual was a stranger. There 
is more in these sympathies than the crockery 
class of mankind can conceive, or than our wise 
men have dreamed of in their philosophy. 

" Your picture of the Norfolk scenery is very 
lively and very just. I have been twice in my 
life at Norwich, and once at Yarmouth, many 

* His friend Mr. Bedford had been passing some weeks 
at Keswick, to their mutual enjoyment ; and Mr. Rickman 
had also been there for a short time. 



MiJit. 44. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



359 



|J years ago, long enough to have drawn from that 
open and level country some images, which were 
introduced in Thalaba. I remember writing an 
epistle in blank verse from thence in 1798,* 
which had some descriptive lines that might be 
worth transcribing, if they were at hand. It was 
the unbroken horizon which impressed me, ap- 
pearing so much wider than at sea ; and the sky- 
scapes which it afforded. I had the same im- 
pression in passing through Picardy ; and if I 
lived in such a country, should perhaps find as 
many beauties in the sky as I do here upon the 
earth. Any where I could find food for the heart 
and the imagination, at those times when we 
are open to outward influences, except in great 
cities. If I were confined in them, I should 
wither away like a flower in a parlor window. 
Did you notice the cry of the bittern in that coun- 
try '? I heard it between Yarmouth and Nor- 
wich. Its spiral flight, when it takes wing, is 
as remarkable and as peculiar as its cry. This 
bird has been extirpated here ; only one has been 
seen since I have resided at Keswick, and that 
was shot by a young Cantab, who ate it for his 
dinner, and had no more brains in his head than 
the bittern. 

" Having nothing to hope in this world, and 
nothing to desire in it for myself, except as quiet 
a passage through it as it may please God to 
grant, my mind, when it takes its course, recurs 
to the world which is to come, and lays as natu- 
rally now the scenes of its day-dreams in Heaven 
as it used to do upon earth. I think of the many 
uitimacies I have made among the dead, and with 
what delight I shall see and converse with those 
persons whose lives and writings have interested 
me, to whom I have endeavored to render justice, 
or from whom I have derived so much pleasure 
and benefit of the highest kind. Something, per- 
haps, we shall have to communicate, and oh ! 
how much to learn ! The Roman Catholics, 
when they write concerning Heaven, arrange 
the different classes there with as much pre- 
cision as a master of the ceremonies could do. 
Their martyrs, their doctors, their confessors, 
their monks, and their virgins, have each their 
separate society. As for us poets, they have 
not condescended to think of us ; but we shall 
find one another out, and a great many questions 
I shall have to ask of Spenser and of Chaucer. 
Indeed, I half hope to get the whole story of 
Cambuscan bold ; and to hear the lost books of 
the Faery Queen. Lope de Vega and I shall 
not meet with equal interest, and yet it will be 
a pleasant meeting. 

" What are you now about ? If I had seen 
you here, where we could have conversed at 
leisure and without reserve, I would have told 
you of my own projects, formed in youth and now 
never to be resumed, talked over your own, and 
have endeavored to show you where you might 
gather the freshest laurels. 
" God bless you 1 

"R. S." 



ante, p. 103. 



To the Reverend John Jebb.* 

"Keswick, Dec. 6, 1817. 

" Sir, — A volume like yours needs no other in- 
troduction than its own merits. I received it last 
night, and rejoice to see such topics treated in 
a manner so judicious, so forcible, and so im- 
pressive. You are treading in the steps of the 
great and admirable men by whom our Church 
has been reformed and supported ; and those who 
are to come after us will tread in yours. Unless 
I deceive myself, the state of religion in these 
kingdoms is better at this time than it has been 
at any other since the first fervor of the Reforma- 
tion. Knowledge is reviving as well as zeal, 
and zeal is taking the best direction. We stand 
in need of both when evil principles are so active- 
ly at work. 

''I am writing the Life of Wesley in such a 
manner as to comprise our religious history for 
the last hundred years. It is a subject which I 
have long meditated, and may God bless the la- 
bor. Perhaps you can give me some light into 
the reasons why Methodism should have made 
so little progress in Ireland, where the seed seems 
to have fallen upon a most ungenial soil, though 
it was scattered with abundant care. In Scot- 
land its failure may be explained by the general 
respectability of the Scotch clergy, the effect of 
education, the scattered population, and the cold 
and cautious character of the people. Is the 
jealousy with which the Romish priests watch 
over their deluded flocks sufficient to account for 
its failure in Ireland ? If so, why was not Quak- 
erism equally unsuccessful ? 

"I will not apologize for asking your opinion 
upon this subject. Even if we were not both 
fortunate enough to possess the same valuable 
friends, we are now known sufficiently to each 
other; and men of letters, who hold the same 
faith, and labor, though in different ways, for the 
same cause, are bound together by no common 
ties. 

" Believe me, sir, with sincere respect, 
"Your obedient servant, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 17, 1817. 
" Perhaps the Lugano Gazette may not have 
given you the great news from the North, which 
excites much more interest in me than any thing 
which is going on at present in the political 
world. The Greenlandmen, last season, got as 
far as 84°, and saw no ice in any direction ; they 
were of opinion, that if they could have ventured 
to make the experiment, they might have reached 
the pole without any obstruction of this kind. 
The coast of East Greenland, which had been 
blocked up for four or five centuries, was open. 
It is believed that some great convulsion of na- 
ture has broken up the continent of ice which 
has during those centuries been accumulating ; 
and it is certain that the unnatural cold winds 
which were experienced throughout the whole 



* Afterward Bishop of Limerick. The book referred to 
is bis first publication ; a volume of sermons, with note*. 



360 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEl'AT. 44. 



of May last, from the S. and S.W., were occa- 
sioned by this ice floating into warmer latitudes. 
This effect is more likely to have been produced 
by volcanic eruption than by earthquakes alone, 
because for the last two years the fish have for- 
saken the Kamtschatka coast, so that the bears 
(Ixduotpayot) have been carrying on a civil war 
among themselves, and a war plus quam civile 
with the Russians. Earthquakes would not dis- 
compose the fish much, but they have a great 
objection to marine volcanoes. We are fitting 
out four ships for a voyage to the pole and the 
northwest passage. We shall have some curi- 
ous facts about the needle ; possibly even our 
climate may be improved, and trees will grow 
large enough for walking sticks in Iceland. 

;t The amusements of Como may very probably 
become the amusements of England ere long.* 
This I think a likely consequence, from the death 
of the Princess Charlotte. In the lamentations 
upon this subject there has been a great deal of 
fulsome canting, and not a little faction ; still, 
among the better part and the better classes of 
society, there was a much deeper and a more 
general grief than could have been expected or 
would easily be believed. Two or three persons 
have told me that in most houses which they en- 
tered in London the women were in tears. 

" 'Tis not the public loss which hath impress'd 
This general grief upon the multitude ; 
And made its way at once to every breast, 
The old, the young, the gentle, and the rude. 
'Tis not that in the hour which might have crowned 
The prayers preferred by every honest tongue, 
The very hour which should have sent around 
Tidings wherewith all churches would have rung, 
And all our echoing streets have pealed with gladness, 
And all our cities blazed with festal fire, 
That then we saw the high-raised hope expire, 
And England's expectation quenched in sadness. 
This surely might have forced a sudden tear. 
Yet had we then thought only of the state, 
To-morrow's sun, which would have risen as fair, 
Had seen upon our brow no cloud of care. 
It is tv> think of what thou wert so late ; 
Oh, thou who liest clay-cold upon thy bier, 
So young and so beloved, so richly bless'd 
Beyond the common lot of royalty ; 
The object of thy worthy choice possess'd, 
The many thousand souls that pray'd for thee, 
Hoping in thine a nation's happiness ; 
And in thy youth, and in thy wedded bliss, 
And in the genial bed— the cradle dress' d — 
Hope standing by, and joy a bidden guest. 
'Tis this that from the heart of private life 
Makes unsophisticated sorrows flow : 
We mourn thee as a daughter and a wife, 
And in our human natures feel the blow.f 

" Have you succeeded in getting sight of the 
aspide ? In Cyprus they stand in such dread of 
this serpent, that the reapers have bells fixed to 
their sides and their sickles : Kov<p they call it 
there. One traveler names it the asp, and an- 
other asks veterum aspis ? so I suppose it to be 
your neighbor. I do not know if the venom of 
your serpent produces death (as some others do), 
by paralyzing the heart, but it may be worth 
knowing, that in that case the remedy is to take 
spirit of hartshorn* in large doses, repeating them 



* This refers to the Princess of Wales, then living at 
Como. 

t This has never been published. The Funeral Song 
for the Princess Charlotte is a much more elaborate and 
beautiful composition. 

* Spirit of hartshorn, immediately applied, is the best 



as long as the narcotic effect is perceived. A 
surgeon in India saved himself in this manner, 
by taking much larger doses than he could have 
prescribed to any other person, because he un- 
derstood his own sensations, and proportioned 
the remedy accordingly. He took a tea-spoon- 
ful of the spiritus ammoniae compositus in a Ma- 
deira glassful of water every five minutes for 
half an hour, and seven other such doses at 
longer intervals (according to the symptoms) be- 
fore he considered himself out of danger ; in the 
w 7 hole, a wine-glassful of the medicine. This is 
a very valuable fact, the medicine having lost its 
repute in such cases, because it was always ad- 
ministered in insufficient doses. 



God bless yt 



R. S.' 



CHAPTER XXIII 

RETROSPECT OF LIFE REVIEWING LIFE O* 

WESLEY USES OF AFFLICTION EDINBURGH 

ANNUAL REGISTER WESTMORELAND ELEC- 
TION HUMBOLDT PAPER ON THE POOR LAWS 

COBBETT NUTRITIVE QUALITIES OF COF- 
FEE MILMAN'S POEM OF SAMOR OFFER OF 

LIBRARIANSHIP OF THE ADVOCATES' LIBRARY, 

EDINBURGH SCARCITY OF LITERARY MEN IN 

AMERICA RITCHIE MUNGO PARK RECOL- 
LECTIONS OF HIS TOUR ON THE CONTINENT 

HE IS ATTACKED FROM THE HUSTINGS AT A 

WESTMORELAND ELECTION WISHES TO PRINT 

HIS POEMS IN A CHEAPER FORM MOB MEET- 
INGS CONGRATULATIONS TO MR. JUSTICE 

COLERIDGE ON HIS MARRIAGE LITERARY AD- 
VICE HABITS OF ASCETICISM NOT UNFAVOR- 
ABLE TO LONG LIFE MR. WILBERFORCE VIS- 
ITS KESWICK SCHOOL REBELLION REMARK- 
ABLE SEASON COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF 

CHILDHOOD AND RIPER YEARS CHANGES IN 

THE CRIMINAL LAW WANTED. 1818. 

Affairs in the political world had now some 
what settled down, and the immediate fear of an 
insurrectionary movement had passed away. 

The original intention of the government in 
wishing my father to come up to town for the 
purpose of conferring with him was, as he had 
supposed, to endeavor to induce him to conduct 
a political journal which should aim at counter- 
acting the influence of the seditious and anarch- 
ical portion of the daily and weekly press. This, 
however, was a scheme which no inducement 
they could have offered would have persuaded 
him to enter into ; and, indeed, w T e have seen 
that he had declined an offer of the same nature, 
which would have combined far greater inde- 
pendence of action with large pecuniary advant- 
ages. It appears, however, that they were by 
no means so anxious that he should write " ex 
proprio motuj' 1 as under their own especial in- 
fluence ; and he was urged to employ the Quar- 
terly Review as a vehicle for his opinions and 



remedy for the sting of a wasp : there may be some 
affinity in the two cases, only the application is inward in 
the one, and, outward in the other.— Ed. 



/Etat. 44. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



361 



arguments, in preference to a separate and inde- 
pendent publication. 

This, in the first instance, he consented to do ; 
and the result was that article " On the Rise and 
Progress of popular Disaffection"* which excited 
the " ponderous displeasure" of Mr. William 
Smith ; but for some time he still adhered to his 
intention of embodying his views of the dangers 
and evils of the existing state of society in En- 
gland, and the remedies, in a small volume fitted 
in size and price for general circulation. 

Other avocations, however, intervened, and, 
together with the improved aspect of public af- 
fairs, caused him to lay aside this idea for the 
present. " As to politics," he writes, at the 
close of the year, "I have nothing to do with 
them now. The battle has been won ; but that, 
indeed, was a cause in which I would have spent 
something more precious than ink." * * 

"When I touch upon politics," he continues, "it 
will be with a wider range and a larger view 
than belongs to any temporary topics." It seems 
probable, indeed, that the Colloquies on the Prog- 
ress and Prospects of Society took their rise from 
the ideas thus aroused. 

The first letter with which the new year opens 
shows pleasingly how abiding were his feelings 
of gratitude to his early friend Mr. Wynn, and 
also speaks of his present literary employments. 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Keswick, Jan. 1, 1818. 
"My dear Wynn, 

" Many happy returns of the new year to you 
and yours. It is now thirty years since you and 
I first met in Dean's Yard, and in the course of 
these years half the human race who were then 
living have gone under ground. How long ei- 
ther of us may keep above it, God knows ; but 
while we do, there is little likelihood that any 
circumstances can break or loosen an attach- 
ment which has continued so long. Your path 
has been just what might have been predicted — 
straight, honorable, and in full view, only that 
one might have expected to have found you on 
the other side the house and in office ; and one 
day or other (the sooner the better) I trust to see 
you there. What mine might have been with- 
out your helping hand, when I was among the 
bogs and briers, I know not. With that help it 
has been a very pleasant uphill road, with so 
many incidents by the way that the history of 
them would make no bad Pilgrim's Progress, es- 
pecially as I am now at rest among the Delect- 
able Mountains, and have little more to do than 
to cross the river whenever my turn comes. 

" We are enjoying a beautiful winter here. 
No snow has yet fallen in the valley, and it lies 
on the fells not raggedly, but in an even line, so 
that Skiddaw and Grisdale bear no distant re- 
semblance to the Swiss mountains, and imbibe 
tints at morning and evening which may vie with 
any thing that ever was seen upon Mont Blanc 
or Jungffrau. 



This article was reprinted in his Essays. 



" I am writing for the Quarterly Review upon 
the Poor Laws, or, rather, upon the means of 
improving the lower classes — a practical paper, 
containing, I think, some hints which any clergy- 
man or other influential person in a parish may 
usefully improve. It is not unlikely that I may 
gradually withdraw from the Review — that is to 
say, as soon as I can live without it. It takes 
up far too great a portion of my time ; for, al- 
though no man can take to task-work with less 
reluctance, still, from the very circumstance of 
its being task-work — something which must be 
done, and not what I desire at the time to do — 
it costs me twice or thrice the time of any other 
composition, as much in the course of the year 
as it took to write Thalaba or Kehama. This 
last poem is going to press for a fourth edition ; 
they sell slowly and steadily. 

" The life of Wesley is my favorite employ- 
ment just now, and a very curious book it will 
be, looking at Methodism abroad as well as at 
home, and comprehending our religious history 
for the last hundred years. I am sure I shall 
treat this subject with moderation. I hope I 
come to it with a sober judgment, a mature mind, 
and perfect freedom from all unjust preposses- 
sions of any kind. There is no party which I am 
desirous of pleasing, none which I am fearful of 
offending ; nor am I aware of any possible cir- 
cumstance which might tend to bias me one way 
or other from the straight line of impartial truth. 
For the bigot I shall be far too philosophical; 
for the libertine, far too pious. The Ultra- 
churchman will think me little better than a 
Methodist, and the Methodists will wonder what 
I am. "Ayia dyiotc will be my motto. 

" My books from Milan have reached London 
— something more than 100 volumes. Ramusio 
is among them, and the Gesta Dei. I have not 
yet heard of my Acta Sanctorum, the arrival of 
which will form a grand day in my life. Little 
leisure as I find for poetry, and seldom, indeed, 
as I think of it, there is yet a sort of reluctance in 
me wholly to give up any scheme of a poem on 
which I have ever thought with any degree of 
fondness ; and because I had meditated a Jewish 
poem many years ago, I bought at Milan the 
great Bibliotheca Rabinica of Barlotacci as a re- 
pository of materials. Could I have afforded to 
have written verses during those years when no- 
body bought them, I verily believe I should have 
written more than any of my predecessors. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 10, 1818. 
" My dear Scott, 
"I am glad that the first tidings which in- 
formed me of your illness told of your recovery 
also. There is an enjoyment of our absent friends, 
even of those from whom we are far distant, in 
talking and thinking of them, which makes a 
large part of the happiness of life. It is a great 
thing to be in tne same place with a friend, it is 
something to be in the same planet: and when- 
ever you are removed to a better, there are few 



362 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



-3Etat. 44. 



men whose loss will be more widely felt in this, 
for I know no one who has administered so much 
delight to so extensive a part of the public. I 
hope your illness has left no weakness behind it. 
We stand in need, sometimes, of visitations which 
may lead us to look toward eternity, and in such 
cases the stroke is merciful when it falls on the 
body. There is a joyousness, too, in the sense 
of returning health — a freshness of sensation, 
such as one might expect from a draught of the ! 
fountain of youth. 

" About four months ago, John Ballantyne 
wrote to ask me if he should dispose of my prop- 
erty in the Ed. An. Register to Constable, upon 
the same terms as those of the other persons 
who had the same share in it. As I had given 
it up for a lost concern, I was very glad to hear 
that I was to have about the same sum which 
the shares had cost, in a bill from Constable at 
twelve months' date ; four months, however, have 
elapsed, and I have heard nothing further. Per- 
haps, if you have an opportunity, you will do me 
the kindness to ask how the matter stands. 

' : The neighboring county is in an uproar al- 
ready with the expected election. has suc- 
ceeded in producing as much turbulence there 
as he could desire ; and if we may judge of what 
the play will be by what the rehearsal has been, 
it may prove a very serious tragedy before it is 
over. I am out of the sphere of this mischief. 
We shall have mobs, I think, upon the Poor-Law 
question, which is as perilous in its nature as a 
corn bill, and yet must be taken in hand. I know 
not whether the next Quarterly Review will look 
the danger in the face, and say honestly that we 
must be prepared to meet it. Preventive meas- 
ures are very easy, and would be found effect- 
, ual. How grievously do we want some man of 
commanding spirit in the House of Commons to 
do constantly what Canning only rouses himself 
to do now and then. There is, however, good 
promise in the solicitor general ; to him, I think, 
we may look with hope, and to Peel. 

"I saw Humboldt at Paris; never did any 
man portray himself more perfectly in his writ- 
ings than he has done. His excessive volubility, 
his fullness of information, and the rapidity with 
which he fled from every fact into some wide 
generalization, made you more acquainted with 
his intellectual character in half an hour than 
you would be with any other person in half a 
year. Withal, he appeared exceedingly good- 
natured and obliging. It was at Mackenzie's 
that I met him. 

" Remember us to Mrs. Scott and your daugh- 
ter, who is now, I suppose, the flower of the 
Tweed. 

" Believe me, my dear Scott, 
" Ever affectionately yours, 

"Robert Southey." 

In a preceding letter my father refers to an 
article on the Poor Laws which he was then 
preparing for the Quartely Review. This was 
a subject he would hardly have taken up of him- 
self, being well aware of his inability to handle 



topics requiring a clear head for statistical cal- 
culation and political economy. He had, how- 
ever, been urged to it by Mr. Rickman, who 
furnished him with information and argument on 
all those points he felt himself unequal to — "as 
a history of the poor rates, a catalogue raisonne 
of the abominable effects of the Poor Laws, an 
expose of the injudicious quackeries which from 
generation to generation had made bad worse." 
It appears that although "the Poor-Law ques- 
tion and its remedies, if to be remedied," would 
have seemed, of all subjects, one of the least ob- 
jectionable for discussion, Gifford at first had 
some fears lest it might be rather above the 
temperature of the Review, and to his hesitation 
about inserting it (before he had seen it) the fol- 
lowing letter refers, while the next shows that a 
perusal of the paper removed his objections. 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"April 5, 1818. 
" My dear R., 

"I apprehend, as you know, some such de- 
murrer on the part of the feeble. They are, I 
believe, the only persons who, when engaged in 
mortal combat, were ever afraid of provoking 
their enemies, or striking them too hard. * 

" Murray wrote me a brief note the other day, 
wherein, without any mention of this paper, he 
said he never desired to see another article upon 
either politics or religion in the Review, because 
they are ' certain of offending a great mass of 
people.' I replied to this at some length in a 
way which for a little while would impress the 
magnus homo ; but because Mackintosh and 
a few other Ops. praise a number which does 
them no harm, he fancies because they are pleas- 
ed the rest of his readers must be pleased too. 
This is the mere impression for the moment ; 
but that the Review will ever proceed in a bold, 
upright, and straightforward course is not to be 
expected. 

" I have a chance letter from Stuart : he says 
Cobbett has fallen one third in sale, and all such 
publications are declining, but the anarchists are 
as active as ever, and new opportunities will oc- 
cur for bringing their venom into life. ' These 
wretches,' he continues, 'are effecting their pur- 
poses by libeling ; they are driving off the ground 
every man that can oppose them ; they are con- 
quering by scandal, and ministers wish as much 
as others to keep out of the way. Unless this 
spirit of scandal is put down, unless the licen- 
tiousness of the press be restrained, certainly it 
will effect a revolution — restrained, I mean, by 
new laws and new regulations. It is altogeth- 
er, as at present practiced, a new thing, not older 
than the French Revolution. I can perceive every 
one shrinking from it — you, me, Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, &c. Every one about the press 
dreads Cobbett's scandal ; and thus, when a man 
throws off all consideration of character, he has 
all others in his power. Even the ministry, too, 
and their friends, I think, shrink from those who 
fight their battles, when covered with filth in 
the fray.' 



/Etat. 44. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



363 



" Stuart is wrong in two points. This sort of 
scandal is certainly as old as Junius and Wilkes, 
perhaps much older ; and he mistakes my feel- 
ings upon the subject and Wordsworth's. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"April 11, 1818. 
" My dear R., 
"I am not a little pleased that the paper has 
passed through the hands of Gifford with so little 
mutilation. * * My letter to Murray- 
magne in reply to his intended act of exclusion 
has had its proper effect; but behold, the said 
Murraymagne does not regard the Poor-Law 
paper as political : ' Such papers as these,' he 
says, ' are exceedingly desirable for the Review, 
because they are of essential service to the coun- 
try, and they must obtain for us the esteem of all 
well-thinking men.' He only meant that we 
should avoid all party politics. I wish he did 
mean this. However, for the present, we have 
got a most important paper — most important in 
two points — for strengthening authority, as much 
as for its remedy for the evil of the Poor Laws. 
# # # # 

" The second Police Report is not of the char- 
acter which you supposed. There is much valu- 
able matter in it ; and, indeed, both Reports fur- 
nish stronger positions for me than for the enemy 
to occupy. The Bow Street men appear to 
great advantage in both. It really appears as 
if the coffee shops would almost supersede dram- 
drinking, so comfortable do the working classes 
find warmth and distention (your philosophy) . Do 
you know that of all known substances coffee 
produces the most of that excitement which is 
required in fatigue ? The hunters in the Isle of 
France and Bourbon take no other provision into 
the woods ; and Bruce tells us that the viaticum 
of the Galla, in their expeditions, consists of balls 
of ground coffee and butter, one per diem (I be- 
lieve), the size of a walnut, sufficing to prevent 
the sense of hunger. I have just made a curi- 
ous note upon the same subject for the History 
of Brazil : a people in the very heart of South 
America, living beside a lake of unwholesome 
water, instead of making maize beer, like all their 
neighbors, carbonized their maize — as good a 
substitute for coffee as any which was used un- 
der Bonaparte's commercial system ; and this 
was their sole beverage, and it was found very 
conducive to health. 

" Edith May has found a brazen or copper 
spear-head upon Swinside, in a craggy part of 
the mountain, where it may have lain unseen for 
centuries. It is perfectly green, but not corrod- 
ed ; exceedingly brittle, quite plain, but of very 
neat workmanship, as if it had been cast — one of 
my spans in length. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Chauncey Hare Townshend, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 12, 1818. 
" My dear Chauncey, 
' I have just finished Henry Milman's poem, a 



work of great power. But the story is ill con- 
structed, and the style has a vice analogous to 
that which prevailed in prose about one hundred 
and seventy years ago, when every composition 
was overlaid with strained thoughts and far- 
fetched allusions. The faults here are a per- 
petual stretch and strain of feeling ; and the too 
frequent presence of the narrator, bringing his 
own fancies and meditations in the foreground, 
and thereby — as in French landscape engraving 
— calling off attention from the main subject, and 
destroying the effect. With less poetry Samor 
would have been a better poem. Milman has 
been endeavoring to adapt the moody and thought- 
ful character of Wordsworth's philosophical po- 
etry to heroic narration : they are altogether in- 
compatible ; and Wordsworth himself, when he 
comes to nan-ate in his higher strains, throws it 
aside like a wrestler's garment, and is as severe 
a writer as Dante, who is the great master in 
this style. If Milman can perceive or be per- 
suaded of his fault, he has powers enough for 
any thing ; but it is a seductive manner, and I 
think that as our poetry in Cowley's days was 
overrun with conceits of thought, it is likely in 
the next generation to be overflown with this 
exuberance of feeling. 

" This is a great error. That poetry (I am 
speaking of heroic narrative) which would reach 
the heart, must go straight to the mark like an 
arrow. Away with all trickery and ornaments 
when pure beauty is to be represented in pic- 
ture or in marble ; away with drapery when you 
would display muscular strength. Call artifices 
of this kind to your aid in those feebler parts 
which must occur in every narrative, and which 
ought to be there to give the other parts their 
proper relief. 

" Henry Milman was here, with an elder broth- 
er, about four years ago, who lodged at Keswick 
for some twelve months. He is a fine young 
man, and his powers are very great. They are, 
however, better fitted for the drama than for nar- 
ration ; the drama admits his favorite strain of 
composition, and is easier in its structure. In- 
deed, it is as much easier to plan a play than a 
poem of such magnitude as Samor, as it is to 
build a gentleman's house than a Cathedral. 

" Do you know any thing of Sir George Dal- 
las ? He has sent me some marvelous verses by 
a son of his not yet thirteen — as great a prodigy 
as I have ever read of. Verse appears as easy 
to him as speech ; Latin verse is at his fingers' 
end like English ; and he has acted a part in a 
play of his own composition like another young 
Roscius. 

"TC tv -Jr TV TV tv TV 

"I am busy with history myself, and have 
written no poetry for many months ; why this 
disuse, there is here hardly room to explain, if it 
were worth explanation. The account of Lope 
de Vega in the last Quarterly is mine, as you 
would probably guess. I have read widely in 
Spanish poetry ; and might in historical and liter- 
ary recollections call myself half a Spaniard, if, 
being half a Portuguese also, this would leave any 



364 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



M'£AT. 44. 



room for the English part of my intellectual be- 
ing. I anticipate much pleasure in showing you 
the treasures with which I am surrounded here 
upon these shelves. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

In the course of the spring of this year, an offer 
was made to my father of an appointment, which 
it might have been imagined would have been 
more suited to his habits and likings than any 
other that had been proposed to his acceptance, 
and which, indeed, had it been made to him in 
earlier life, it is more than probable he would 
have gladly taken advantage of. This was the 
situation of librarian to the Advocates' Library at 
Edinburgh ; the salary <£400 a year, with the 
prospect of an increase, and the labor of making 
a catalogue attached to it. " Few persons," he 
says, speaking of this offer, " would dislike such 
labor less, but I am better employed. I do not 
love great cities. I will not remove further from 
my friends (being already too far from them) ; 
and having, God be thanked, no pecuniary anxie- 
ties, I am contented where I am and as I am, 
wanting nothing and wishing nothing." 

In thus expressing his freedom from pecuniary 
anxiety (of which, in reality, he had so large a 
share), it seems probable that he alluded chiefly 
to the small provision the laureateship had ena- 
bled him to secure for his family by means of a 
life insurance. In other respects, however he 
might feel in moments of high hope and active 
exertion, when he perceived his reputation stead- 
ily rising, and his work becoming more remu- 
nerative, there were many times when the con- 
sciousness came over him that his subsistence 
depended upon his ability to follow day by day 
"his work and his labor until the evening;" and 
when the feeling that sickness might at any time, 
and that old age certainly would " dim the eye, 
and deaden the memory, and palsy the hand," 
came across him like a cloud over the face of 
the sun. 

This the reader will see strikingly exemplified 
in a letter to Mr. Bedford, written at the close 
of the year, which forms a singular contrast to 
the expressions my father uses respecting this 
offer. It would seem, indeed, that he had taken 
root so firmly among the mountains of Cumber- 
land, and was so unwilling to encounter the dif- 
ficulties of a removal, and to take upon him new 
habits of life, that he exercised unconsciously a 
kind of self-deception whenever an offer was 
made to him, and conjured up for the time feel- 
ings of security from anxiety which had no solid 
foundation, but which served for the time to ex- 
cuse him to himself for declining them. 

To John Kenyon, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 13, 1818. 
" My dear Sir, 
" Your letter to Mr. Coleridge, which has this 
day arrived, enables me to thank you for Dobriz- 
hoffer, and for the good old Huguenot Jean de 
Leny. The American by whom the letter was 
gent to my brother's has not yet made his ap- 



pearance at the Lakes. When he comes I will 
provide him with an introduction to Wordsworth, 
if he should not bring one from London ; and if 
he is particularly desirous of seeing live poets, 
he shall have credentials for Walter Scott. I 
suppose an American inquires for them as you 
or I should do in America for a skunk or an opos- 
sum. They are become marvelously abundant 
in England, so that publications which twenty 
years ago would have attracted considerable at 
tention, are now coming from the press in shoals 
unnoticed. This makes it the more remarkable 
that America should be so utterly barren : since 
the Revolution they have not produced a single 
poet who has been heard of on this side of the 
Atlantic. D wight and Barlow both belong to the 
Revolution ; and well was it for the Americans, 
taking them into the account, that we could not 
say of them, tarn Marte, quam Mercurio 

"lam very sorry that your friend Ritchie 
should have gone upon an expedition which has 
proved fatal to every one who has yet under- 
taken it, and which I think the amateur geogra- 
phizing ' gentlemen of England who sit at home 
at ease' are altogether unjustifiable in pursuing 
at such a cost of valuable lives. The object is 
not tantamount, as it is in a voyage of discovery. 
In such voyages men are only exposed to some 
additional risk in the way of their profession, and 
the reward, if they return safe, is certain and 
proportionate ; but here, Mungo Park went upon 
his second expedition literally because he could 
not support his family after the first. If, how- 
ever, Ritchie should live to accomplish his object, 
I am no ways apprehensive that his reputation 
will be eclipsed by his intended rival Ali Bey, 
that solemn professor of humbug having always 
made less use of his opportunities than any other 
traveler. #*#### 

" If you go through Cologne (as I suppose you 
will), do not fail to visit St. Ursula and the Elev- 
en Thousand Virgins, whose relics form the most 
extraordinary sight that the Catholic superstition 
has to display. You will also find the Three 
Kings in the same city well worthy a visit to 
their magnificent shrine. From thence to Mentz 
and Frankfort you will see every where the havoc 
which the Revolution has made; further I can 
not accompany your journey. We came to 
Frankfort from Heidelburg and the Black For- 
est. 

" Your most truly, Robert Southey." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., 31. P. (Boulogne). 
" Keswick, Aug. 4, 1818. 
" My dear Wynn, 
" I envy you your French wines, and in a less 
degree your French cookery also, both indis- 
pensable in the alderman's heaven, where the 
stomach is infinite, the appetite endless, and the 
dinner eternal. I should envy, also, your bath- 
ing upon that noble beach, if Derwentwater were 
not within reach, and, still better, the rook baths 
in Newlands, which are the perfection of bath- 
ing. What you say of the country about Bou- 
logne is just what I should have supposed it to 






^ETAT. 45. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



365 



be from what we saw upon the road, and the 
place itself is a very interesting one. I slept 
there, and did not leave it till noon the next day, 
happening to have an acquaintance there. * 

I had been told that the road to Paris was un- 
interesting, but to me it appeared far otherwise ; 
for even if it had not possessed an historical in- 
terest of the highest kind to an Englishman, the 
scenery itself is in many parts very striking. 

" You will be better pleased to hear that, if the 
carriers do not disappoint me, I may expect to- 
morrow to receive my three cases of books, with 
the Acta Sanctorum, and some fourscore volumes 
besides, the gatherings of my last year's journey 
from Como to Brussels. Far better, and far 
more agreeably, would my time and thoughts be 
employed with the saints of old than with the 
sinners of the present day, with past events and 
in other countries than with the current politics 
of our own. Heaven knows I have no predilec- 
tion for a train of thought which brings with it 
nothing elevating and nothing cheerful. But I 
can not shut my eyes either to the direct tend- 
ency of the principles which are now at work, 
or to their probable success; inevitable indeed, 
and at no very distant time, unless some means 
be taken for checking the progress of the evil. 

" The state of religious feeling appears to dif- 
fer much in different part of France. In most 
places we found that the churches were very ill 
attended, but at Auxerre they were so full that 
we literally could not decently walk in to ex- 
amine them as we wished to have done. In 
Switzerland the Protestant cantons have suffer- 
ed more than the Catholic ones. I had good 
opportunities of inquiring into this in the Pays de 
Vaud, and the state of religion in Geneva is now 
notorious. Upon the banks of the Rhine, all the 
inhabitants who were not actually employed in 
the fields seemed to be busy in performing a pil- 
grimage. It was a most striking sight to see 
them — men, women, and children, toiling along 
bareheaded, under a July sun, singing German 
hymns. I suspect that the progress of irreligion 
has kept pace with the extent of French books 
in the Catholic part of Europe, and that where 
they have not found their way the people remain 
in the same state as before. But if things remain 
quiet for one generation, the Catholic Church 
will recover its ascendency ; its clergy are wise 
as serpents, and, with all their errors, one can 
not, considering all things, but heartily wish 
them success. 

" You should go to St. Omer's, if it were only 
to groan over the ruin of its magnificent Cathe- 
dral. The country between that place and Lisle 
is the perfection of cultivated scenery, and the 
view from Cassel the finest I have ever seen 
over a flat country. 

" God bless you, my dear Wynn ! I half hope 
Parliament may be sitting in December, that I 
may meet you in town ! 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

The commencement of the next letter refers 
to some remarks of Mr. Bedford unon a pam- 



phlet (in the form of that addressed to William 
Smith), which my father had drawn up in reply 
to an attack which was made upon him during 
a contested election in Westmoreland. He had 
been accused from the hustings of having busied 
himself greatly on the Tory side, and he was 
denounced to an excited multitude as one rolling 
in riches unworthily obtained. To the former 
charge he could have given a direct denial, not 
having taken any part whatever in the matter ; 
the latter one need not be further alluded to 
than as proving some little forbearance on his 
part in not carrying out his intention of publish- 
ing a reply. It is right to add that a counter- 
statement was made from the same place, on a 
subsequent occasion, by the same person. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sep. 6, 1818. 
"My Dear Grosvenor, 

"If you had written to me in extenuation, as 
you term it, I should have been as nearly angry 
with you as any thing could make me, for how 
could I possibly attribute any thing you had 
said to any motive but the right one, or where- 
fore should I be more displeased with you for not 
liking my extended epistle more than you were 
with me for' not liking your Dalmatian wine? 
The roughness of the one did not suit my palate, 
nor the asperity of the other your taste. And 
what of that ? I dare say you think quite as 
favorably of your wine as before, and I am not a 
whit the less satisfied with my style objurgatory. 
But let that pass. # # # # # 

" I have just purchased Gifford's Ben Jonson. 
He supposes that the laureate continues to re- 
ceive his tierce of Spanish Canary, and recom- 
mends him yearly to drink to old Ben in the first 
glass. Tell him, if he will get me reinstated in 
my proper rights, I will drink to Ben Jonson not 
once a year, but once a day, and to him also. By 
the manner in which he speaks of Sidney's Ar- 
cadia, I conclude that either he has never read 
the book, or has totally forgotten it. 

" So you are to have a Palace-yard meeting 
to-morrow. How few weeks have elapsed since 
Hunt was beaten and blackguarded in the face 
of the mob till his own miscreants hooted at him, 
and yet, you see, he is in full feather again. The 
fellow ought to be tried for sedition ; he would 
certainly be found guilty, for the jury, as yet, 
would be nothing worse than Burdettites, and, 
therefore, disposed to give him his deserts ; and, 
during his confinement, he should be restricted to 
prison diet, kept from all intercourse with visitors, 
and left to amuse himself with the Bible, the 
Prayer-book, and Drelincourt upon death, or the 
Whole Duty of Man, for his whole library. At the 
end of two years he would come out cured. * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Taylor Coleridge, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 8, 1818. 
" My dear Sir, 
" I am glad to hear that you have taken your 
chance for happiness in that state in which alone 



366 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 45 



there is a chance of finding it. Men in your 
station too frequently let the proper season go 
by, waiting till they can afford to start with a 
showy establishment. Among those who have 
not more than an ordinary share of good prin- 
ciples, this is a very common cause of libertine 
habits ; and they who escape this evil incur an- 
other, which is sometimes not less fatal. They 
look out for a wife when they think themselves 
rich enough, and this is like going to market for 
one : the choice on their part is not made from 
those feelings upon which the foundation of hap- 
piness must be laid ; and, on the other part, they 
are accepted, not for their own sakes, but for the 
sake of the establishment which they offer. Sim- 
ilarity of disposition is not consulted, and there is 
generally in such cases a disparity of years, which 
is not very likely to produce it. You have chosen 
a better course, and may God bless you in it. 

" The most profitable line of composition is 
reviewing. You have good footing in the Quar- 
terly, and I am glad of it, for heretofore there has 
been vile criticism in that journal upon poetry, 
and upon fine literature in general. This con- 
nection need not preclude you from writing for 
the British Review. Translation is of all liter- 
ary labor the worst paid — that is, of all such 
labor as is paid at all ; and yet there are so many 
poor hungry brethren and sisters of the gray 
goose-quill upon the alert, that new books are 
sent out from France and Germany by the sheet 
as they pass through the press, lest the transla- 
tion should be forestalled. 

"Any thing which is not bargained for with 
the booksellers is, of course, matter of specula- 
tion, and success is so much a matter of acci- 
dent (that is to say, temporary success) in litera- 
ture, that the most knowing of them are often as 
grievously deceived as a young author upon his 
first essay. Biography, however, is likely to suc- 
ceed ; and, with the London libraries at hand, 
the research for it would be rather pleasurable 
than toilsome. History, which is the most de- 
lightful of all employments {experto crede), is 
much less likely to be remunerated. I have not 
yet received so much for the History of Brazil 
as for a single article in the Quarterly Review. 
But there are many fine subjects which, if well 
handled, might prove prizes in the lottery. A 
history of Charles I. and the Interregnum, or of 
all the Stuart kings, upon a scale of sufficient 
extent, and written upon such principles as you 
would bring to it, would be a valuable addition 
to the literature of our country — useful to oth- 
ers, as well as honorable to yourself. Venice 
offers a rich story, and one which, unhappily, is 
now complete. Sweden, also, is a country fruit- 
ful in splendid and memorable events. For this, 
indeed, it would be necessary to acquire the 
Norse languages. Sharon Turner acquired them, 
and the Welsh to boot, for a similar purpose, with- 
out neglecting the duties of his practice. It may 
almost be asserted that men will find leisure for 
whatever they seriously desire to do. * * 
" Believe me, yours faithfully, 

" Robert Southey." 



To Sharon Turner, Esq. 

"Keswick, Sept. 21, 1818. 
" My bear Turner, 

" You have taken, I see, Cornano for your phy 
sician. Had I made the same experiment, I 
should have been disposed to prefer a diet of 
roots, fruits, and esculent plants to bread, which 
is so likely to be adulterated. There is as much 
difference in the stomachs of men as in their tem- 
pers and faces ; severe abstinence is necessary 
for some, and others feed high and drink hard, 
and yet attain to a robust old age ; but, unques- 
tionably, the sparing system has most facts in its 
favor, and I have often remarked with wonder 
the great length of life to which some of the 
hardest students and most inveterate self-tor- 
mentors among the monastic orders have attain- 
ed. Truly glad shall I be if you derive from 
your system the permanent benefit which there 
seems such good reason to expect. Both you 
and I must wish to remain as long as we can in 
this ' tough world' for the sake of others. Thank 
Heaven, it is no rack to us, though we have both 
reached that stage in our progress in which the 
highest pleasure that this life can afford is the 
anticipation of that which is to follow it. 

" You have made a wise determination for 
your son William, for I believe that medical stud- 
ies are of all others the most unfavorable to the 
moral sense. Anatomical studies are so revolt- 
ing, that men who carry any feeling to the pur- 
suit are glad to have it seared as soon as possi- 
ble. I do not remember ever in the course of 
my life to have been so shocked as by hearing 
Carlisle relate some bravados of young men in 
this state when he was a student himself. 

" I wonder you should have any qualms at go- 
ing to the press, knowing, as you do, how capri- 
ciously at best, and, in general, with what in 
justice and impudent partiality praise or blame 
is awarded by cotemporary critics, and how ab- 
solutely worthless their decrees are in the court 
of posterity, by which the merits of the case must 
be finally determined. I am so certain ttfat any 
subject which has amused your wakeful hours 
must be worthy to employ the thoughts of other 
men, and to give them a profitable direction, 
that, without knowing what the subject is, I ex- 
hort you to cast away your fears. 

" Remember me most kindly to your house- 
hold. 

" Yours affectionately, R. Southey " 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Keswick, Nov. 4, 1818. 
"My dear Wynn, 
" Since I wrote to you at Boulogne, the greater 
part of my time has been consumed by inter- 
ruptions of which I ought not to complain, see- 
ing they must needs be beneficial to my health, 
however they may be felt in the sum total of the 

year's work. I have had for a guest C . 

There is something remarkable in the history of 
this family. His grandmother was a she-philoso- 
pher, a sort of animal much worse than a she- 
bear. Her housekeeper having broken her leg, 



jEtat. 45. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



367 



she was exceedingly indignant at not being able 
to convince her that there was no such thing as 
pain ; and when the poor woman complained 
that the children disturbed her by playing in a 
room over her head, she insisted upon it that 
that was impossible, because it was the nature 
of sound to ascend ; and, therefore, she could not 
be disturbed unless they played in the room un- 
der her. This good lady bred up her children 
as nearly as she could upon Rousseau's maxims, 
and was especially careful that they should re- 
ceive no religious instruction whatever. Her 
daughter had nearly grown up before she ever 
entered a church, and then she earnestly en- 
treated a friend to take her there from motives 
of curiosity. This daughter has become a truly 
religious woman. The son has not departed 
from the way in which he was trained up ; but 
as he is not a hater of religion, only an unbe- 
liever in it, and has a good living in his gift, he 
chooses that his only son should take orders, this 
living being the most convenient means of pro- 
viding an immediate establishment for him ! 

" C introduced himself to me about three 

years ago by sending me some poems, which for 
a youth of seventeen were almost better than 
should be wished. * * When he first 
proposed to visit me, his father was thrown into 
a paroxysm of anger, notwithstanding the mollia 
tempora fandi had bean chosen for venturing to 
make the request ; but he suffered him to see me 
in London last year. He had formed a notion 
that I was a Methodist, and drank nothing but 
water; and I believe it raised me considerably 

in his estimation when C assured him that 

I seemed to enjoy wine as much as any man. 

TV" tP rfc w tP tt •?? 

" Wilberforce, also, has been here with all his 
household, and such a household ! The prin- 
ciple of the family seems to be that, provided the 
servants have faith, good works are not to be ex- 
pected from them, and the utter disorder which 
prevails in consequence is truly farcical. The 
old coachman would figure upon the stage. 
Upon making some complaint about the horses, 
he told his master and mistress that since they 
had been in this country they had been so lake- 
and-river-and-mountain-and-valley-mad, that they 
had thought of nothing which they ought to think 
of. I have seen nothing in such pell-mell, topsy- 
turvy, and chaotic confusion as Wilberforce's 
apartments since I used to see a certain break- 
fast-table in Skeleton Corner.* His wife sits in 
the midst of it like Patience on a monument, and 
he frisks about as if every vein in his body were 
filled with quicksilver ; but, withal, there is such 
a constant hilarity in every look and motion, such 
a sweetness in all his tones, such a benignity in 
all his thoughts, words, and actions, that all sense 
of his grotesque appearance is presently over- 
come, and you can feel nothing but love and ad- 
miration for a creature of so happy and blessed 
a nature. 

" A few words now concerning myself. It 

* A part of Christ Church, so called, where Mr. Wynn's 
rooms were situated. 



was my intention to have spent the Christmas in 
London ; a very unexpected cause induced me 
to delay my journey. More than six years have 
elapsed since the birth of my youngest child : all 
thoughts of having another had naturally ceased. 
In February or March, however, such an event 
may be looked for. My spirits are more de- 
pressed by this than they ought to be ; but you 
may well imagine what reflections must arise. 
I am now in my forty-fifth year, and if my life 
should be prolonged, it is but too certain that 1 
should never have heart again to undertake the 
duty which I once performed with such diligence 
and such delightful hope. It is well for us that 
we are not permitted to choose for ourselves. 
One happy choice, however, I made when I be- 
took myself to literature as my business in life. 
When I have a heart at ease, there can be no 
greater delight than it affords me ; and when I 
put away sad thoughts and melancholy forebod- 
ings, there is no resource so certain. 

" I begin to be solicitous about making such 
a provision as should leave me at ease in my 
ways and means, if loss of health or any other 
calamity should render me incapable of that con- 
stant labor, from which, while health and ability 
may last, I shall have no desire to shrink. When 
my next poem is finished, I shall be able to do 
what has never before been in my power — to 
demand a sum for it. 

"God bless you, my dear Wynn ! 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 16, 1818. 
" My dear Friend, 

I know something of rebellions, and generally 
suspect that there has been some fault in the 
master as well as in the boys, just as a mutiny 
in a man-of-war affords a strong presumption of 
tyranny against the captain. Without under- 
standing the merits of this case, it is easy to per- 
ceive that the boys believed their privileges were 
invaded, and fancied that the Magna Charta of 
Eton was in danger (the Habeas Corpus in 
schools is in favor of the governors — a writ issu- 
ed against the subject, and affecting him in tail), 

took the patriotic side, acting upon Whig 

principles. They are very good principles in 
their time and place, and youth is a good time 
and school a good place for them. When he 
grows older, he will see the necessity of subor- 
dination, and learn that it is only by means of 
order that liberty can be secured. * * 

I have a fellow-feeling for , because I was 

myself expelled from Westminster, not for a re- 
bellion (though in that, too, I had my share), 
but for an act of authorship. Wynn, and Bed- 
ford, and Strachey (who is now chief secretary 
at Madras), and myself, planned a periodical 
paper in emulation of the Microcosm. It was 
not begun before the two former had left school, 
and Bedford and I were the only persons actual 
ly engaged in it. I well remember my feelings 
when the first number appeared on Saturday, 



368 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 45. 



March 1, 1792. It was Bedford's writing, but 
that circumstance did not prevent me from feel- 
ing that I was that day born into the world as 
an author; and if ever my head touched the 
stars while I walked upon the earth, it was then. 
It seemed as if I had overleaped a barrier, which 
till then had kept me from the fields of immor- 
tality, wherein my career was to be run. In all 
London there was not so vain, so happy, so 
elated a creature as I was that day ; and, in 
truth, it was an important day in my life; far 
more so than I or than any one else could have 
anticipated, for I was expelled for the fifth num- 
ber. The subject of that number was flogging, 
and Heaven knows I thought as little of giving 
offense by it as of causing an eclipse or an earth- 
quake. I treated it in a strange, whimsical, and 
ironical sort of manner, because it had formed 
a part of the religious ceremonies of the hea- 
thens, and the fathers had held that the gods of 
the heathens were our devils, and so I proved it 
to be an invention of the Devil, and therefore 
unfit to be practiced in schools ; and though this 
was done with very little respect for the Devil, 
or the fathers, or the heathen gods, or the school- 
masters, yet I as little expected to offend one as 
the other. I was full of Gibbon at the time, and 
had caught something of Voltaire's manner. And 
for this I was privately expelled from Westmin- 
ster, and for this I was refused admission at 
Chi'ist Church, where Randolph, from the friend- 
ship which he professed for my uncle, could not 
else have decently refused to provide for me by a 
studentship ; and so I went to Baliol instead, in 
a blessed hour, for there I found a man of ster- 
ling virtue (Edmund Seward), who led me right 
when it might have been easy to have led me 
wrong. I used to call him Talus for his unbend- 
ing morals and iron rectitude, and his strength 
of body also justified the name. His death in 
the year 1795 was the first severe affliction that 
I ever experienced ; and sometimes even now I 
dream of him, and wake myself by weeping, be- 
cause even in my dreams I remember that he is 
dead. I loved him with my whole heart, and 
shall remember him with gratitude and affection 
as one who was my moral father, to the last 
moment of my life ; and to meet him again will 
at that moment be one of the joys to which I 
shall look forward in eternity. My dear John 
May, I have got into a strain which I neither in- 
tended nor foresaw. Misfortunes, as the story 
says, are good for something. The stream of 
my life would certainly have taken a different 
direction if I had not been expelled, and I am 
satisfied that it could never have held a better 
course. *##### 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! 

"Believe me, most truly and affectionately 
/ours, Robert Southey.' ! 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 28, 1818. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
"This is a most remarkable season with us. 
On the 20th of November we had French beans 



at dinner, and now (on the 28th) there has not 
been the slightest snown on the mountains, nor 
the slightest appearance of frost in the valley. 
The late flowers continue to blossom still, and 
the early ones are pushing forward as if it were 
spring. The great scarlet poppy has two large 
buds ready to burst, and your favorite blue thistle 
has brought forth a flower. But, what is more 
extraordinary, the annual poppies, whose stalks, 
to all appearance dead and dry, were left in the 
ground merely till Mrs. Lovel should give direc- 
tions for clearing them away, have in many in- 
stances shot out fresh leaves of diminutive size, 
and produced blossoms correspondently small, 
not bigger than a daisy. This is in our own 
garden, which, as you know, has no advantages 
of shelter or situation ; in happier spots the gar- 
dens have more the appearance of September 
than of winter. 

" Gifford will tell you that I have been speak- 
ing a good word in behalf of the historical paint- 
ers. (By-the-by, get Nash to take you to see 
Haydon's great picture, which is prodigiously 
fine.) I am now upon the Copyright question, 
which I shall make as short a possible ; a few 
days will finish it, and a few days more finish a 
paper upon the Catacombs, in which I have 
brought together a great collection of facts from 
out-of-the-way sources, some of them very curi- 
ous. The Copyright must have a place in the 
present number, and no doubt it will, being much 
more for Murray's interest than mine. The 
Catacombs will eke out my ways and means for 
the next quarter, and I shall have done with the 
Quarterly Review for the next six months. 

"I shall not move southward till both the 
Brazil and the Wesley are finished. Three win- 
ter months will do wonders, as I hope to be en- 
tirely free from interruptions. Other circum- 
stances would not allow me to leave home before 
March, nor will I move then unless these works 
are off my hands. I shall then start fairly, with- 
out impediment, and in full force for the Penin- 
sular War ; and thus my life passes, looking to 
the completion of one work for the sake of be- 
ginning another, and having to start afresh for a 
new career as often as I reach the goal ; and so 
I suppose it will be, till I break down and found- 
er upon the course. But if I live a few years 
longer in possession of my faculties, I will do 
great things. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

"Keswick, Nov. 30, 1818- 
" My dear Wynn, 
' : I was truly glad to hear of your daughters 
recovery. I have been in a storm at sea, in a 
Spanish vessel, and the feeling, when the weather 
had so sensibly abated that the danger was over, 
is the only one I can compare with that which is 
felt in a case like yours upon the first assurance 
that the disease is giving way. Those writers 
who speak of childhood or even youth as the hap- 
piest season of life, seem to me to speak with 
little reason. There is, indeed, an exemption 



Mr at. 45. 



ROBERT SOUTHE Y. 



369 



from the cares of the world, and from those 
anxieties which shake us to the very center. 
But, as far as my own experience goes, when we 
are exempt from trials of this nature, our happi- 
ness, as we grow older, is more in quantity, and 
higher in degree as w T ell as in kind. What hopes 
we have are no longer accompanied with uneasi- 
ness or restless desires. The way before us is 
no longer uncertain ; we see to the end of our 
journey ; the acquisition of knowledge becomes 
more and more delightful, and the appetite for it 
may truly be said to grow with what it feeds on ; 
and as we set our thoughts and hearts in order 
for another world, the prospect of that world be- 
comes a source of deeper delight than any thing 
which this could administer to an immortal spirit. 
On the other hand, w-e are vulnerable out of our- 
selves, and you and I are reaching that time of 
life in w T hich the losses which we have to endure 
will be so many amputations. The wound may 
heal, but the mutilation w r ill always be felt. Not 
to speak of more vital affections, the loss of a fa- 
miliar friend casts a shade over the remembrance 
of every thing in which he w T as associated. You 
and I, my dear Wynn, are less to each other than 
we w T ere in old times. Years pass away without 
our meeting ; nor is it at all likely that we shall 
ever again see as much of each other in this 
world as we used to do in the course of one short 
term at Oxford ; and yet he who is to be the sur- 
vivor will one day feel how much we are to each 
other, even now — when all those recollections 
which he now 7 loves to invite and dwell upon will 
come to him like specters. 

" However, I hope that both you and I may 
be permitted to do something more before we are 
removed ; and I can not but hope that you w T ill 
take upon yourself a conspicuous part in that 
reformation of the criminal laws, which can not 
much longer be delayed ; nor do I know any one 
(setting all personal feelings aside) by whom it 
could so fitly be taken up. That speech of 
Frankland's was perfectly conclusive to my mind ; 
but that alterations are necessary is certain, and 
the late trials for forgery show that they must be 
made, even now, with a bad grace, but with a 
worse the longer they are delayed. To me it 
has long appeared a safe proposition that the 
punishment of death is misapplied whenever the 
general feeling that it creates is that of com- 
passion for the criminal. A man and woman 
were executed for coining at the same time with 
Patch. Now what an offense was this to the 
common sense of justice! There is undoubted- 
ly, at this time, a settled purpose among the 
Revolutionists to bring the laws into contempt 
and hatred, and to a very great degree it has 
succeeded. The more reason, therefore, that 
where they are plainly objectionable they should 
be revised. But for the principle of making the 
sentence in all cases proportionate to the crime, 
and the execution certain, nothing in my judg- 
ment can be more impracticable, and I am sure 
nothing could lead to greater injustice than an 
attempt to effect it. The sentence must be suf- 
ficient for the highest degree of the crime, and a 
Aa 



discretionary power allowed for tempering it to 
the level of the lowest. You would take up the 
matter with a due sense of its difficulty, and with 
every possible advantage of character, both in the 
House and in the country ; and, moreover, the dis- 
position of the ministers ought to be, and I really 
should suppose would be, in your favor. * * 

" God bless you, my dear Wynn ! R. S." 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

NERVOUS FEELINGS ANXIETIES FOR THE FU- 
TURE RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY JOURNEYS 

PRUDENCE OF ANTICIPATING POPULAR OPIN- 
ION ODE ON THE QUEEn's DEATH HAYDON 

WORDSWORTH LIFE OF WESLEY HOME 

POLITICS SWITZERLAND CRITICISMS ON A 

VOLUME OF POEMS BY MR. E. ELLIOTT BIRTH 

OF A SON HISTORY OF BRAZIL RISING PO- 
ETS WAVERLEY NOVELS REASONS FOR DE- 
CLINING TO ATTEND THE WESTMINSTER MEET- 
ING COLLEGE RECOLLECTIONS RELIGION 

NECESSARY TO HAPPINESS NOTICES OF THE 

LAKE COUNTRY MR. WORDSWORTH'S " WAG- 
ONE r" ADVISES ALLAN CUNNINGHAM ON LIT- 
ERARY PURSUITS LORD BYRON's HOSTILITY 

PROBABLE RECEPTION OF THE HISTORY OF 

BRAZIL CRABBE'S POEMS PETER ROBERTS 

LITERARY EMPLOYMENTS COLONIZATION 

NECESSARY TOUR IN SCOTLAND DESIRABLE- 
NESS OF MEN OF MATURE YEARS TAKING HOLY 

ORDERS JOHN MORGAN IN DIFFICULTIES 

PROJECTED JOURNEY. 1818-1819. 

The following is the letter before alluded to. 
as showing so strong a contrast to that freedom 
from anxiety and confidence in himself which 
seemed to possess him at the time he refused the 
offer of librarian to the Advocates' Library at 
Edinburgh. It is, indeed, no matter of wonder 
that, sensitively constituted as he w T as by nature, 
and compelled to such incessant mental occupa- 
tion, such feelings should at times come over 
him ; and w T e may see in them the sad forewarn- 
ings of that calamity by which his latest years 
were darkened. 

But if he was not altogether what he so well 

describes the stern American leader to have been, 

"Lord of his own resolves, of his own heart absolute mas- 
ter,"* 

he certainly possessed no common power over 
himself; and he here well describes how needful 
was its exercise. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Dec. 5, 1818. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 
" It is, between ourselves, a matter of sur- 
prise to me that this bodily machine of mine 
should have continued its operations w T ith so few- 
derangements, knowing, as I well do, its excess- 
ive susceptibility to many deranging causes. The 
nitrous oxyd approaches nearer to the notion of 



* Vision of Judgment. 



370 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 45. 



a neurometer than any thing which perhaps could 
be devised ; and I was acted upon by a far smaller 
dose than any person upon whom it had ever 
been tried, when I was in the habit of taking it. 
If I did not vary my pursuits, and carry on many 
works of a totally different kind at once, I should 
soon be incapable of proceeding with any, so 
surely does it disturb my sleep and affect my 
dreams if I dwell upon one with any continuous 
attention. The truth is, that though some per- 
sons, whose knowledge of me is scarcely skin 
deep, suppose I have no nerves, because I have 
great self-control as far as regards the surface ; 
if it were not for great self-management, and 
what may be called a strict intellectual regimen, 
I should very soon be in a deplorable state of 
what is called nervous disease, and this would 
have been the case any time during the last 
twenty years. 

" Thank God, I am well at pi*esent, and well 
employed : Brazil and Wesley both at the press ; 
a paper for the Quarterly Review in hand, and 
Oliver Newman now seriously resumed ; while 
for light reading I am going through South's Ser- 
mons and the whole British and Irish part of the 
Acta Sanctorum. 

" In the MSS. of Wesley, which passed through 
Gifford's hands while you were absent, there was 
a chapter which I wished you to have seen, be- 
cause both in matter and manner it is among the 
best things I have written. It contained a view 
of our religious history down to the accession of 
the present family — not the facts, but the spirit 
of the history. You will be pleased to see how 
I have relieved and diversified this book, which 
will be as elaborate as a Dutchman's work, and 
as entertaining as a Frenchman's. 

" I want now to provide against that inability 
which may any day or any moment overtake me. 
You are not mistaken in thinking that the last 
three years have considerably changed me ; the 
outside remains pretty much the same, but it is 
far otherwise within. If hitherto the day has 
been sufficient for the labor, as well as the labor 
for the day, I now feel that it can not always, and 
possibly may not long be so. Were I dead there 
would be a provision for my family, which, though 
not such as I yet hope to make it, would yet be a 
respectable one. But if I were unable to work, 
half my ways and means would instantly be cut 
off, and the whole of them are needed. Such 
thoughts did not use to visit me. My spirits re- 
tain their strength, but they have lost their buoy- 
ancy, and that forever. I should be the better 
for traveling, but that is not in my power. At 
present the press fetters me, and if it did not, I 
could not afford to be spending money when I 
cught to be earning it. But I shall work the 
harder to enable me so to do. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Chauncey H. Townshend, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 10, 1818. 
" My dear Chauncey, 
" You made the best use of your misfortune 
at Kendal. The most completely comfortless 



hours in a man's life (abstracted from all real ca- 
lamity) are those which he spends alone at an 
inn, waiting for a chance in a stage-coach 
Time thus spent is so thoroughly disagreeable 
that the act of getting into the coach, and resign- 
ing yourself to be jumbled for four-and-twenty 
or eight-and-forty hours, like a mass of inert 
matter, becomes a positive pleasure. I always 
prepare myself for such occasions with some 
closely-printed pocket volume, of pregnant mat- 
ter, for which I should not be likely to afford leis- 
ure at other times. Erasmus's Colloquies stood 
me in good stead for more than one journey, 
Sir Thomas More's Utopia for another. When 
I was a schoolboy I loved traveling, and enjoy- 
ed it, indeed, as long as I could say omnia mea 
mecum ; that is, as long as I could carry with 
me an undivided heart and mind, and had noth- 
ing to make me wish myself in any other place 
than where I was. The journey from London 
to Bristol at the holidays was one of the pleas- 
vires which I looked for at breaking up ; and I 
used generally to travel by day rather than by 
night, that I might lose none of the expected 
enjoyment. I wish I had kept a journal of all 
those journeys ; for some of the company into 
which I have fallen might have furnished matter 
worthy of preservation. Once I traveled with 
the keeper of a crimping-house at Charing Cross, 
who, meeting with an old acquaintance in the 
coach, told him his profession while I was sup- 
posed to be asleep in the corner. Once I form- 
ed an acquaintance with a young deaf and dumb 
man. and learned to converse with him. Once 
I fell in with a man of a race now nearly ex- 
tinct — a village mathematician ; a self-taught, 
iron-headed man, who, if he had been lucky 
enough to have been well educated and entered 
at Trinity Hall, might have been first wrangler, 
and perhaps have gone as near toward doubling 
the cube as any of the votaries of Mathesis. 
(Pray write a sonnet to that said personage.) 
This man was pleased with me, and (perhaps be- 
cause I was flattered by perceiving it) I have a 
distinct recollection of his remarkable counte- 
nance after an interval of nearly thirty years. 
He labored very hard to give me a love of his 
own favorite pursuit ; and it is my own fault 
that I can not now take the altitude of a church 
tower by the help of a cocked hat, as he taught 
me, or would have taught, if 1 could have retain- 
ed such lessons. 

"It is an act, not absolutely of heroic virtue, 
but of something like it, my writing to you this 
evening. Four successive evenings I have been 
prevented from carrying into effect the fixed 
purpose of so doing ; first by the general's drop- 
ping in to pass the last evening with me before 
his departure, then by letters which required re- 
ply without delay ; and this afternoon, just be- 
fore the bell rang for tea, a huge parcel was 
brought up stairs,- containing twenty volumes oi 
the Gospel Magazine, in which dunghill I am 
now about to rake for wheat, or for wild oats, it 
you like the metaphor better. 

" Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 



jEtat. 45. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



371 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Dec. 11,1818. 
" My dear R., 

I sometimes try to persuade myself that mine is 
a Turkish sort of constitution, and that exercise 
and out-of-door air are not needful for its well- 
being ; but the body begins to require better 
management than it did ; it will not take care 
of itself so well as it did twenty years ago, and 
I need not look in the glass for a memento that 
I have begun the down-hill part of my journey. 
So be it. There is so much for my heart, and 
hope, and curiosity at the end of the stage, that 
if I thought only of myself in this world, I should 
wish that I was there. 

"It is a strange folly, a fatality, that men in 
power will not see the prudence of anticipating 
public feeling sometimes, and doing things with 
a grace for the sake of popularity, which must 
be done with ignominy upon compulsion. For 
instance, in Lord Cochrane's affair, it was wrong 
to condemn him to the pillory ; but if that part 
of the sentence had been annulled before popu- 
lar opinion was expressed, the prince would have 
gained credit instead of being supposed to yield 
to the newspapers. There is another case in the 
suicide laws. * * And again in the 
matter of forgery ; the law must be altered, and 
this not from the will of the Legislature, but by 
the will of the London juries ! The juries, how- 
ever, if they go on in their present course, will 
do more than this — they will prove that the very 
institution of juries, on which we have prided 
ourselves so long, is inconsistent not only with 
common sense, but with the safety of society and 
the security of government. I wish, when the 
question of forgery comes before the House (as 
it surely must do), that something may be said 
and done also for restoring that part of the sys- 
tem which makes the jurymen punishable for a 
false verdict. 

"I have written shortly about the Copyright 
question for the Q. R., and put in a word, without 
any hope of a change in my time, upon the ab- 
surd injustice of the existing laws. My own case 
hereafter will plead more strongly against them 
than it is in ray power to do now, as, according 
to all appearances, my copyrights will be much 
more valuable property after my death than they 
have ever yet proved. 

" God bless you ! 

" Always and affectionately yours, R. S." 

To John Richnan, Esq. 

"Jan. 1,1818. 
" My dear R., 
"Many happy new years to you and yours, 
and may you go on well however the world goes. 
Go as it may, it is some satisfaction to think 
that it will not be the worse for any thing that 
you and I have done in it. And it is to be hoped 
that our work is not done yet. I have a strong 
hope that something may be effected in our old 
scheme about the reformed convents, and that 
would be as great a step toward amending the 



condition of educated women as the establish- 
ment of savings' banks has been for bettering the 
state of the lower classes. 

"I am reading Coxe's Memoirs of Marlbor- 
ough, by far the best of his books. Marlbor- 
ough appears to more advantage in all respects 
the more he is known. The reading is not gra- 
tuitous, for I am to review the work. 

" Longman sent me Muller's Universal Histo- 
ry, a surprising work, though I find him deficient 
in knowledge and in views in the points where 
I am competent to be his judge. Have you seen 
Fearon's Sketches of America? It is very amus- 
ing to see a man who hates all the institutions 
of his own country compelled to own that every 
thing is worse in America, and groan while he 
makes the confession ; too honest to conceal the 
truth, and yet bringing it up as if it were got at 
by means of emetic tartar, sorely against his 
stomach. I wish I were not too busy to write 
a careful review of this book. 

" Did I tell you concerning Morris Birbeck, 
that he sunk 668000 by a speculation in soap, 
and was Lord Onslow's tenant, which said Lord 
Onslow indited upon him this epigram : 

41 ' Had you ta'en less delight in 

Political writing. 
Nor to vain speculations given scope, 
You'd have paid me your rent, 

Your time better spent, 
And besides — washed your hands of the soap.' 



" God bless you ! 



R S. 



To Mr. Ebenezer Elliott, Jun. 

"Keswick, Jan. 30, 1819. 
" My dear Sir, 

"I received your little volume yesterday.* 
You may rest assured that you ascribed the con- 
demnation in the Monthly Magazine to the true 
cause. 

" There are abundant evidences of power in 
it ; its merits are of the most striking kind ; and 
its defects are not less striking, both in plan and 
execution. The stories had better each have 
been separate, than linked together without any 
natural or necessary connection. The first con- 
sists of such grossly improbable circumstances, 
that it is altogether as incredible as if it were 
a supernatural tale ; it is also a hateful story, 
presenting nothing but what is painful. In the 
second, the machinery is preposterously dispro- 
portionate to the occasion. And in all the poems 
there is too much ornament, too much effort, too 
much labor. You think you can never embroider 
your drapery too much ; and that the more gold 
and jewels you can fasten on it, the richer the 
effect must be. The consequence is, that there 
is a total want of what painters call breadth and 
keeping, and, therefore, the effect is lost. 

" You will say that this opinion proceeds from 
the erroneous system which I have pursued in 
my own writings, and which has prevented my 
poems from obtaining the same popularity as 
those of Lord Byron and Walter Scott. But look 
at those poets whose rank is established beyond 

* This volume of poems was entitled " Ni^ht" 



372 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ^tat.45. 



all controversy. Look at the Homeric poems — 
at Virgil, Dante, Ariosto, Milton. Do not ask 
yourself what are the causes of the failure or 
success of your cotemporaries ; their failure or 
success is not determined yet — a generation, an 
age, a century will not suffice to determine it. 
But see what it is by which those poets have 
rendered themselves immortal; who, after the 
lapse of centuries, are living and acting upon us 
still. 

"I should not speak to you thus plainly of 
your fault — the sin by which the angels fell — if 
it were not for the great powers which are thus 
injured by misdirection ; and it is for the sake of 
bearing testimony to those powers, and thereby 
endeavoring to lessen the effect which a rascally 
criticism may have produced upon your feelings, 
that I am now writing. That criticism may 
give you pain, because it may effect the minds of 
persons not very capable of forming an opinion for 
themselves, who may either be glad to be encour- 
aged in despising your production, or grieved at 
seeing it condemned. But in any other point of 
view it is unworthy of a moment's thought. 

" You may do great things if you will cease 
to attempt so much — if you will learn to propor- 
tion your figures to your canvas. Cease to over- 
lay your foregrounds with florid ornaments, and 
be persuaded that, in a poem as well as in a 
picture, there must be lights and shades; that 
the general effect can never be good unless the 
subordinate parts are kept down, and that the 
brilliancy of one part is brought out and height- 
ened by the repose of the other. One word 
more. 

" With your powers of thought and language, 
you need not seek to produce effect by monstrous 
incidents or exaggerated characters. These 
drams have been administered so often that they 
are beginning to lose their effect ; and it is to 
truth and nature that we must come at last. 
Trust to them, and they will bear you through. 
You are now squandering wealth with which, if 
it be properly disposed, you may purchase gold- 
en reputation. 

"But you must reverence your elders more, 
and be less eager for immediate applause. 

u You will judge of the sincerity of my praise 
by the frankness of my censure. 

" Farewell ! And believe me, yours faithful- 
ly, R. SOUTHEY." 

To Walter Scott, Esq. 

"March 11, 1819. 
<k My dear Scott, 
" My conscience will not let me direct a let- 
ter to your care without directing one to your- 
self by the same post. 

" A great event has happened to me within 
this fortnight — the birth of a child, after an inter- 
val of nearly seven years, and that child a son. 
This was a chance to which I looked rather with 
dread than with hope, after having seen the flow- 
er of my earthly hopes and happiness cut down. 
But it is well that these things are not in our 
own disposal ; and without building upon so frail 



a tenure as an infant's life, or indulging in any 
vain dreams of what may be, I am thankful for 
him now that he is come. 

" You would have heard from me ere long, 
even if Mr. Ticknor^ had not given a spur to my 
tardy intentions. I should soon have written to 
say that you will shortly receive the concluding 
volume of my History of Brazil, for I am now 
drawing fast toward the close of that long labor. 
This volume has less of the kite and crow war- 
fare than its predecessors, and is rich in informa- 
tion of various kinds, which has never till now 
come before the public in any shape. Indeed, 
when I think of the materials from which it has 
been composed, and how completely, during 
great part of my course, I have been without ei- 
ther chart or pilot to direct me, I look back 
with wonder upon what I have accomplished. 
I go to London in about seven weeks from this 
time, and as soon as I return the Peninsular War 
will be sent to press. 

" Our successors (for you and I are now old 
enough in authorship to use this term) are fall- 
ing into the same faults as the Roman poets after 
the Augustan age, and the Italians after the gold- 
en season of their poetry. They are overlabor- 
ing their productions, and overloading them with 
ornament, so that all parts are equally promi- 
nent, every where glare and glitter, and no keep- 
ing and no repose. Henry Milman has spoiled 
his Samor in this way. It is full of power and 
of beauty, but too full of them. There is anoth- 
er striking example in a little volume called 
Night, where some of the most uncouth stories 
imaginable are told in a strain of continued tip- 
toe effort ; and you are vexed to see such un- 
common talents so oddly applied, and such Her- 
culean strength wasted in preposterous exertions. 
The author's name is Elliott, a self-taught man, 
in business (the iron trade, I believe) at Rother- 
ham. He sends play after play to the Londor. 
theaters, and has always that sort of refusal 
which gives him encouragement to tiy another. 
Sheridan said of one of them that it was " a com- 
ical tragedy, but he did not know any man who 
could have written such a one." I have given 
him good advice, which he takes as it is meant, 
and something may come of him yet. 

" It was reported that you were about to bring 
forth a play, and I was greatly in hopes it might 
be true ; for I am verily persuaded that in this 
course you would run as brilliant a career as 
you have already done in narrative, both in prose 
and rhyme, for as for believing that you have a 
double in the field — not I ! Those same powers 
would be equally certain of success in the drama ; 
and were you to give them a dramatic direc- 
tion, and reign for a third seven years upon the 
stage, you would stand alone in literary history. 
Indeed, already I believe that no man ever af- 
forded so much delight to so great a number of 
his cotemporaries in this or any other country. 

" God bless you, my dear Scott ! Remem- 



* The accomplished author of " The History of Span 
ish Literature." Harper & Brothers, 1850. 



jEtat. Ah. 

ber me to Mrs. S. and your daughter, and be- 
lieve me, 

" Ever yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, April, 9, 1819. 
" My dear G., 

Even if I were in town, I certainly should not 
go to the Westminster meeting. The chance 
of seeing some half dozen men with whom I 
might exchange a few words of recognition and 
shake hands, would not make amends for the 
melancholy recollection of those whom I loved 
better and used to see at the same time. More- 
over, I have an absolute hatred of all public 
meetings, and would rather go without a din- 
ner than eat it in such an assembly. I went to 
the Academy's dinner for the sake of facing 
William Smith ; but I go to no more such. 

" My wish will be to see as much of my friends 
as I can, and as little of my acquaintance ; and, 
therefore, I mean to refuse all such invitations 
as would throw me among strangers or indiffer- 
ent persons, except in cases where I owe some- 
thing for civilities received ; for I do not want to 
see lions, and still less do I desire to be exhibited 
as one, and go where I should be expected to 
open my mouth and roar. 

" There is another reason* why I would not 
attend the Westminster meeting. As I never 
went during Vincent's life, it might seem as if I 
felt myself at liberty to go there now, and had 
not done so before. Whereas, so far was I from 
harboring any resentment toward Vincent, or 
any unpleasant feeling of any kind, that I have 
long and with good reason looked upon my ex- 
pulsion from Westminster as having been in its 
consequences the luckiest event of my life ; and 
for many years I should have been glad to have 
met the old man, in full persuasion that he would 
have not been sorry to have met with me. 

" I had a beautiful letter! yesterday from 
poor Walter Scott, who has been on the very 
brink of the grave, and feels how likely it is that 
any day or hour may send him there. If he is 
sufficiently recovered, I shall meet him in Lon- 
don ; but his health is broken beyond all prospect 
or hope of complete recovery. He entreats me 
to take warning, and beware of overworking my- 
self. I am afraid no person ever took that ad- 
vice who stood in need of it, and still more afraid 
that the surest way of bringing on the anticipated 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



373 



* Of your reasons for declining to be present at the 
Westminster meeting, one class I do not approve, and the 
other I do not admit. How it will look that you go to it 
after Vincent's death, never having gone to it during his 
life, is no question, for it will have no look at all, for no- 
body will look at it. This is just one of the feelings that 
a man has when he knows that he has a hole in his stock- 
ing, and fancies, of course, that the attention of all the 
company is attracted to it. The last time I ever saw the 
old dean, he spoke of you with kindness and approbation, 
and, I thought, with pride. * * If I were to have 
you here on that day, I should tie a string round your leg 
and pull you in an opposite direction to that in which I 
meant to drive you. Swallow that and digest it." — G. C. 
B.to R. S., April 12. 1819. 

t See Life of Sir Walter Scott, 2d edit., vol. vi., p. 41. 



evil would be to apprehend it But I believe 
that I manage myself well by frequent change 
of employment, frequent idling, and keeping my 
mind as free as I can from any strong excitement. 
" God bless you, my dear Grosvenor ! 

"R. S." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

" Keswick, May 29, 1819. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 
" So long a time had elapsed without my hear- 
ing from you, or by any accident of you, that I 
began to fear what might have been the cause 
of this long silence, and was almost afraid to in- 
quire. I am very sorry that Mr. Bush did not 
make use of your name when he was at Kes- 
wick last summer ; he could have brought with 
him no better introduction, and I have always 
time to perform offices of attention and hospital- 
ity to those who are entitled to them. He left" 
a good impression here as an excellent preach- 
er ; indeed, I have seldom or never heard a more 
judicious one. The account which he gave you 
of my way of life is not altogether correct. I 
have no allotted quantum of exercise, but, as at 
Oxford, sometimes go a long while without any, 
and sometimes take walks that would try the 
mettle of a younger man. And a great deal 
more of my time is employed in reading than in 
writing ; if it were not, what I write would be 
of very little value. But that I am a close stu- 
dent is very true, and such I shall continue to be 
as long as my eyes and other faculties last. 

" You must apply in time if you design to 
place your son at Oriel ; it is now no easy mat- 
ter to obtain admission there, nor, indeed, at any 
college which is in good reputation. I almost 
wonder that you do not give the preference to 
old Baliol for the sake of old times, now that the 
college has fairly obtained a new character, and 
is no longer the seat of drunkenness, raffery, and 
indiscipline, as it was in our days. It is even 
doubtful whether if I were an under-graduate 
now I should be permitted to try my skill in 
throwing stones for the pleasure of hearing them 
knock against your door. Seriously, however, 
altered as the college is, there would be an ad- 
vantage in sending your son there, where you 
have left a good name and a good example 
Poor Thomas Howe,* I believe, led but a mel- 
ancholy life after he left college ; without neigh- 
bors, without a family, without a pursuit, he 
must have felt dismally the want of his old rou- 
tine, and sorely have missed his pupils, the chap- 
el bells, and the common room. A monk is 
much happier than an old fellow of a college 
who retires to reside upon a country living. 
And how much happier are you at this day, with 
all the tedium which your daily occupation must 
bring with it, than if you had obtained a fellow- 
ship, and then waited twenty years for prefer- 
ment. 

" Believe me, my dear Lightfoot, yours affec- 
tionately as in old times, R. Southeiv 1 

* His college tutor. See ante, p. 73. 



374 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 45 



The following letter I found copied among nry 
father's papers, but without name or date ; it ev- 
idently, however, belongs to this period, and is, 
I think, worthy of insertion here, as showing his 
aptness to suggest religious thoughts whenever 
an occasion presented itself, and the judicious 
manner in which he does so. 

"Keswick, 1819. 
" I have behaved very ill in having so long de- 
layed replying to a lady's letter, and that letter, 
too, one which deserved a ready and a thankful 
acknowledgment. Forgive me. I am not wont 
to be thus discourteous ; and in the present in- 
stance there is some excuse for it, for your let- 
ter arrived at a time of much anxiety. My wife 
had a three months' illness after the birth of a 
son ; and during that time it was as much as I 
could do to force my attention to business which 
could not be left undone. My heart was not 
enough at ease to be addressing you. 

" The number of unknown correspondents 
whom I have had in my time does not lessen my 
.lesire of seeing you, nor abate that curiosity 
which men feel as strongly as women, except 
that they have not the same leisure for thinking 
rfit. 

# ^f # # # •# ^ 

" You tell me that the whole of your happi- 
less is dependent upon literary pursuits and rec- 
reations. It is well that you have these resour- 
ces ; but, were we near each other, and were I 
»,o like you half as well upon a nearer acquaint- 
ance as it appears to me at this distance that I 
should do, I think that when I had won your con- 
fidence I should venture to tell you that some- 
thing better than literature is necessary for hap- 
piness. 

" To confess the truth, one of the causes which 
have prevented me from writing to you earlier 
has been the wish and half intention of touching 
upon this theme checked by that sort of hesita- 
tion which sometimes (and that too often) pre- 
vents us from doing what we ought for fear of 
singularity. That you are a woman of talents 
I know ; and I think you would not have given 
me the preference over more fashionable poets, 
if there had not been something in the general 
character of my writings which accorded with 
your feelirfgs, and which you did not find in 
theirs. But you have lived in high life ; you 
move in circles of gayety and fashion ; and though 
you sympathize with me when I express myself 
in verse, it is more than probable that the direct 
mention of religion may startle you, as something- 
unwarranted as well as unexpected. 

" I am no Methodist, no sectarian, no bigot, 
no formalist. My natural spirits are buoyant be- 
yond those of any person, man, woman, or child, 
whom I ever saw or heard of. They have had 
enough to try them and to sink them, and it is 
by religion alone that I shall be enabled to pass 
the remainder of my days in cheerfulness and in 
hope. Without hope there can be no happiness, 
and without religion, no hope but such as de- 
ceives us. Your heart seems to want an ob- 



ject, and this would satisfy it ; and if it has been 
wounded, this, and this only, is the cure. 

" Are you displeased with this freedom ? Or 
do you receive it as a proof that I am disposed 
to become something more than a mere literary 
acquaintance, and that you have made me feel 
an interest concerning you which an ordinary 
person could not have excited ? 

^ ^f ^P ^ $$ ^ 

" Scott is very ill. He suffers dreadfully, but 
bears his sufferings with admirable equanimity, 
and looks on to the probable termination of them 
with calmness and a well-founded hope. God 
grant that he may recover ! He is a noble and 
generous-hearted creature, whose like we shall 
not look upon again." 

To Wade Browne, Esq. 

"Keswick, June 15, 1819. 
" My dear Sir, 
" When you hear that my journey to the south 
must be postponed till the fall of the leaf, I fear 
you will think me infirm of purpose, and as little 
to be depended on as the wind and weather in 
this our mutable climate. Its cause, however, 
lies rather in a good, obstinate principle of per- 
severance than in any fickleness of temper. This- 
history, of which the hundredth sheet is now 
upon my desk, will confine me here so far into 
the summer (beyond all previous or possible cal- 
culation), that if I went into the south as soon as 
it is completed, I should be under the necessity 
of shortening my stay there, and leaving part of 
my business undone, in order to return in time 
for a long-standing engagement, which in the 
autumn will take me into the Highlands. All 
things duly considered, it seems best to put off 
my journey to London till November, by which 
time all my running accounts with the press will 
be settled. 

****** 

" Cuthbert, who is now four months old, is be- 
ginning to serve me as well as his sisters for a 
plaything. The country is in its full beauty at 
this time — perhaps in greater than I may ever 
again see it, for it is reported that the woods on 
Castelet are condemned to come down next year : 
this, if it be true, is the greatest loss that Kes- 
wick could possibly sustain, and in no place will 
the loss be more conspicuous than from the room 
wherein I am now writing. But this neighbor- 
hood has suffered much from the ax since you 
were here.* The woods about Lodore are 
gone 5 so are those under Castle-Crag ; so is 
the little knot of fir-trees on the way to church, 
which were so placed as to make one of the feat- 
ures of the vale ; and, worst of all, so is that 
beautiful birch grove on the side of the lake be- 
tween Barrow aud Lodore. Not a single sucker 
is springing up in its place ; and, indeed, it would 
require a full century before another grove could 
be reared which would equal it in beauty. It 
is lucky that they can not level the mountains 
nor drain the lake ; bnt they are doing what they 

* See the beginning of Colloquy X., On the Progress 
and Prospects of Society. 



iETAT. 45. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



375 



can to lower it, and have succeeded so far as to 
render all the old landing-places useless. If the 
effect of this should be to drain the marshy land 
at the head and foot of the lake, without leaving 
as much more swamp uncovered, it will do good 
rather than harm. The islands, however, will 
be deformed for a few years by the naked belt 
which is thus made around them. 

" Two cases so extraordinary as to appear al- 
most incredible occurred in the course of last 
month in this country. A child four years old 
wandered from its mother, who was cutting peat 
among the Ennerdale Mountains, and after four 
days was found alive. A man upon the Eskdale 
Fells was found after eighteen, still living, and 
able to wave his hand as a signal, by which he 
was discovered. He had fallen in a fit, and was 
incapable of moving when he recovered his 
senses ; in both cases there was water close by, 
by which life was preserved. The child is doing 
well. Of the man I have heard nothing since 
the day after he was found, when Wordsworth 
was in Eskdale, and learned the story; at that 
time there seemed to be no apprehension that his 
life was in danger. 

" I think you will be pleased with Words- 
worth's ' Wagoner,' if it were only for the line 
of road* which it describes. The master of the 
wagon was my poor landlord Jackson ; and the 
cause of his exchanging it for the one-horse-cart 
was just as is represented in the poem ; nobody 
but Benjamin could manage it upon these hills, 
and Benjamin could not resist the temptations by 
the wa3r-side. 
*#* # #*## 

" Believe me, my dear sir, yours very truly, 
"Robert Southey." 
t 

The following letter to Allan Cunningham, in 
reply to one which sought for an opinion as to 
the publication of his poem of the Maid of Eloar, 
will be read with interest, as another proof among 
the many my father's letters afford of his frank 
sincerity as an adviser ; and it may also well 
serve as a type of the kind of counsel few young 
authors will do wrong in laying to heart. It is 
interesting to add, that Mr. Cunningham's son 
(Peter Cunningham, Esq.) informs me that this 
letter " confirmed his father in his love for litera- 
ture as an idle trade, and in his situation at 
Chantrey's as a means of livelihood." 

Other letters will show that the acquaintance 
thus commenced continued through life, and that 
it was productive on both sides of a sincere es- 
teem and a very friendly regard. 

To Allan Cunningham, Esq. 

"Keswick, July 10, 1819. 
"It is no easy task, Mr. Cunningham, to an- 
swer a letter like yours. I am unwilling to ex- 
cite hopes which are but too likely to end in se- 
vere disappointment, and equally unwilling to 
say any thing which might depress a noble spirit. 
The frankest course is the best. Patience and 



The road from Keswick to Ambleside. 



prudence are among the characteristic virtues of 
your countrymen : the progress which you have 
made proves that you possess the first in no com- 
mon degree ; and if you possess a good share of 
the latter also, what I have to say will neither 
be discouraging nor useless. 

"Your poem* contains incurable defects, but 
not such as proceed from any want of power. 
You have aimed at too much, and failed in the 
structure of the story, the incidents of which 
are impossible for the time and place in which 
they are laid. This is of little consequence if 
you are of the right mold. Your language has 
an original stamp, and could you succeed in the 
choice of subjects, I dare not say that you would 
obtain the applause of which you are ambitious, 
but I believe you would deserve it. 

"Let me make myself clearly understood. 
In poetry, as in painting, and music, and archi- 
tecture, it is far more difficult to design than to 
execute. A long tale should be every where 
consistent and every where perspicuous. The 
incidents should depend upon each other, and 
the event appear like the necessary result, so 
that no sense of improbability in any part of 
the narration should force itself upon the hearer. 
I advise you to exercise yourself in shorter tales 
■—and these have the advantage of being more 
to the taste of the age. 

" But, whatever you do, be prepared for disap- 
pointment. Crowded as this age is with candi- 
dates for public favor, you will find it infinitely 
difficult to obtain a hearing. The booksellers 
look blank upon poetry, for they know that not 
one volume of poems out of a hundred pays its 
expenses ; and they know, also, how much more 
the immediate success of a book depends upon 
accidental circumstances than upon its intrinsic 
merit. They of course must look to the chance 
of profit as the main object. If this first diffi- 
culty be overcome, the public read only what it 
is the fashion to read ; and for one competent 
critic — one equitable one — there are twenty 
coxcombs who would blast the fortunes of an * 
author for the sake of raising a laugh at his ex- 
pense. 

"Do not, therefore, rely upon your poetical 
powers as a means of bettering your worldly 
condition. This is the first and most momentous 
advice which I would impress upon you. If you 
can be contented to pursue poetry for its own 
reward, for the delight which you find in the 
pursuit, go on and prosper. But never let it 
tempt you to neglect the daily duties of life, 
never trust to it for profit, as you value your in- 
dependence and your peace. To trust to it for 
support is misery and ruin. On the other hand, 
if you have that consciousness of strength that 
you can be satisfied with the expectation of fame, 
though you should never live to enjoy it, I know- 
not how you can be more happily employed than 
in exercising the powers with which you are 
gifted. And if you like my advice well enough 
to wish for it on any future occasion, write to 



The Maid of Eloar, us originally written. 



376 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 45. 



me freely ; I would gladly be of use to you, if 
I could. 

" Farewell, and believe me, 

" Your sincere well-wisher, 

"Robert Southey." 

To C. H. Townshend, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 20, 1819. 
" My dear Chauncey, 

**'•*■>■#•■..-■#..#.-■#.'■.#.# 
1 have not seen more of Don Juan than some 
extracts in a country paper, wherein my own 
name is coupled with a rhyme which I thought 
would never be used by any person but myself 
when kissing one of my own children in infancy, 
and talking nonsense to it, which, whatever you 
may think of it at present as an exercise for the 
intellect, I hope you will one day have occasion 
to practice, and you will then find out its many 
and various excellences. I do not yet know 
whether the printed poem is introduced by a ded- 
ication* to me, in a most hostile strain, which 
came over with it, or whether the person who 
has done Lord Byron the irreparable injury of 
sending into the world what his own publisher 
and his friends endeavored, for his sake, to keep 
out of it, has suppressed it. This is to me a 
matter of perfect unconcern. Lord Byron at- 
tacked me when he ran amuck as a satirist ; he 
found it convenient to express himself sorry for 
that satire, and to have such of the persons told 
so whom he had assailed in it as he was likely 
to fall in with in society — myself among the num- 
ber. I met him three or four times on courteous 
terms, and saw enough of him to feel that he 
was rather to be shunned than sought. Attack 
me as he will, I shall not go out of my course 
to break a spear with him; but if it comes in 
my way to give him a passing touch, it will be 
one that will leave a scar. 

" The third and last volume of my Opus Ma- 
jus will be published in two or three weeks ; 
they are printing the index. What effect will 
it produce ? It may tend to sober the anticipa- 
tions of a young author to hear the faithful antic- 
ipations of an experienced one. None that will 
be heard of. It will move quietly from the pub- 
lishers to a certain number of reading socie- 
ties, and a certain number of private libraries ; 
enough between them to pay the expenses of the 
publication. Some twenty persons in England, 
and some half dozen in Portugal and Brazil, will 



* This dedication, which is sufficiently scurrilous, is pre- 
fixed to the poem in the Collected Edition of Lord Byron's 
Life and Works, with the following note by the Editor : 

" This dedication was suppressed in 1815 with Lord By- 
ron's reluctant consent ; but shortly after his death its ex- 
istence became notorious, in consequence of an article in 
the Westminster Review, generally ascribed to Sir John 
llobhouse ; and for several years the verses have been 
selling in the streets as a broadside. It could, therefore, 
lerve no purpose to exclude them on this occasion." — 
Byron's Life and Works, vol. xv., 101. 

The editor seems by this to have felt some slight com- 
punction at publishing this dedication ; but he publishes 
tor the first time another attack upon my father a hun- 
dred-fold worse than this, contained in some " Observa- 
tions upon an Article in Blackwood's Magazine," without 
any apology. This subject, however, will more properly 
full to be noticed hereafter. 



peruse it with avidity and delight. Some fifty, 
perhaps, will buy the book because of the sub- 
ject, and ask one another if they have had time 
to look into it. A few of those who know me 
will wish that I had emplo} r ed the time which it 
has cost in writing poems ; and some of those 
who do not know me will marvel that in the ripe 
season of my mind, in the summer of reputation, 
I should have bestowed so large a portion of 
life upon a work which could not possibly be- 
I come either popular or profitable. And is this 
| all ? No, Chauncey Townshend, it is not all ; 
and I should deal insincerely with you if I did 
i not add, that ages hence it will be found among 
j those works which are not destined to perish, 
| and secure for me a remembrance in other coun- 
I tries as well as in my own ; that it will be read 

I in the heart of S. America, and communicate to 
: the Brazilians, when they shall have become a 
J powerful nation, much of their own history which 
| would otherwise have perished, and be to them 
j what the work of Herodotus is to Europe. You 
' will agree with me on one point at least — that 

I I am in no danger of feeling disappointment. 

| But you will agree, also, that no man can de- 
serve or obtain the applause of after ages, if he 
is too solicitous about that of his own. 

" God bless you ! R. S " 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

" Keswick, July 22, 1329. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" I give you joy of your escape from late hours 
in the House of Commons and a summer in Lon- 
don. I congratulate you upon exchanging gas- 
lights for the moon and stars, and the pavement 
of Whitehall for your noble terraces, which I 
never can *hink of without pleasure, because 
they are beautiful in themselves, and carry one 
back to old times — any thing which does this 
does one good. "Were I to build a mansion with 
the means of Lord Lonsdale or Lord Grosvenor. 
I would certainly make hanging gardens if the 
ground permitted it. They have a character oi 
grandeur and of permanence, without which 
nothing can be truly grand, and they are fine 
even in decay. 

" I will come to you for a day or two, on my 
way to town, about the beginning of December. 
This will be a flying visit ; but one of these sum- 
mers or autumns, I should like dearly to finish 
the projected circuit with you which Mr. Curry 
cut short in the year 1801, when he sent for the 
most unfit man in the world to be his secretary, 
having nothing whatever for him to do ; and 
I many years must not be suffered to go by. My 
next birth-day will be the forty-fifth, and every 
year will take something from the inclination to 
move, and perhaps, also, from the power of en- 
joyment. 

" I was not disappointed with Crabbe's Tales. 
He is a decided mannerist, but so are all orig- 
inal writers in all ages ; nor is it possible for a 
poet to avoid it, if he writes much in the same key 
and upon the same class of subjects. Crabbe's 
poems will have a great and lasting value, as 



jEtat. 46. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



377 



pictures of domestic life, elucidating the moral 
history of these times — times which must hold 
a most conspicuous place in history. He knows 
his own powers, and never aims above his reach. 
In this age, when the public are greedy for nov- 
elties, and abundantly supplied with them, an 
author may easily commit the error of giving 
them too much of the same kind of thing. But 
this will not be thought a fault hereafter, -when 
the kind is good, or the thing good of its kind. 

" Peter Roberts is a great loss. I begin al- 
most to despair of ever seeing more of the Ma- 
binogion ; and yet, if some competent Welsh- 
man could be found to edit it carefully, with as 
literal a version as possible, I am sure it might 
be made worth his while by a subscription, 
printing a small edition at a high price, perhaps 
200, at <£5 5s. I myself would gladly subscribe 
at that price per volume for such an edition of 
the whole of your genuine remains in prose and 
verse. Till some such collection is made, the 
1 gentlemen of Wales' ought to be prohibited 
from wearing a leek ; ay, and interdicted from 
toasted cheese also. Your bards would have met 
with better usage if they had been Scotchmen. 

" Shall we see some legislatorial attorneys 
sent to Newgate next session ? or will the likely 
conviction of damp the appetite for rebell- 
ion which is at present so sharp set ? I heard 
the other day of a rider explaining at one of the 
inns in this town how well the starving manu- 
facturers at Manchester might be settled by par- 
celing out the Chatsworth estate among them. 
The savings' banks will certainly prove a strong 
bulwark for property in general. And a great 
deal may be expected from a good system of 
colonization ; but it must necessarily be a long 
while before a good system can be formed (hav- 
ing no experience to guide us, for we have no 
knowledge how these things were managed by 
the ancients), and a long while, also, before the 
people can enter into it. But that a regular 
and regulated emigration must become a part 
of our political system, is as certain as that na- 
ture shows us the necessity in every bee-hive. 
God bless you ! R. S." 

A large portion of the autumn of this year 
was occupied in a Scottish tour, to which the 
following letter refers. Of this, as of all his 
journeys, he kept a minute and interesting jour- 
nal, and the time and attention required for this 
purpose prevented him from writing any but 
short and hurried letters. 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Oct. 14, 1819. 
"My dear Neville, 
" You need not be warned to remember that 
all other considerations ought to give way to 
that of health. A man had better break a bone, 
or even lose a limb, than shake his nervous sys- 
tem. I, who never talk about my nerves (and 
am supposed to have none by persons who see 
as far into me as they do into a stone wall), 
know this. Take care of yourself j and if you 



find your spirits fail, put off your ordination and 
shorten your hours of study ; Lord Coke requires 
only eight hours for a student of the law, and 
Sir Matthew Hale thought six hours a day as 
much as any one could well bear ; eight, he said, 
was too much. 

"I was about seven weeks absent from home. 
My route was from Edinburgh, Loch Katrine, 
and thence to Dunkeld and Dundee, up the east 
coast to Aberdeen, then to Banff and Inverness, 
and up the coast as far as Fleet Mound, which 
is within sight of the Ord of Caithness. We 
crossed from Dingwall to the Western Sea, re- 
turned to Inverness, took the line of the Caledo- 
nian Canal, crossed Ballachulish Ferry, and so 
to Inverary, Loch Lomond, Glasgow, and home. 
This took in the greatest and best part of Scot- 
land ; and I saw it under the most favorable cir- 
cumstances of weather and season, in the midst 
of a joyous harvest, and with the best opportuni- 
ties for seeing every thing, and obtaining inform- 
ation. I traveled with my old friend Mr. Rick- 
man, and Mr. Telford, the former secretary, and 
the latter engineer to the two committees for the 
Caledonian Canal and the Highland Roads and 
Bridges. They also are the persons upon whom 
the appropriation of the money from the forfeit- 
ed estates, for improving and creating harbors, 
has devolved. It was truly delightful to see how 
much government has done and is doing for the 
improvement of that part of the kingdom, and 
how much, in consequence of that encourage- 
ment, the people are doing for themselves, which 
they would not have been able to do without it. 

" So long an absence involves me, of course, 
in heavy arrears of business. I have to write 
half a volume of Wesley, and to prepare a long 
paper for the Q. R. (a Life of Marlborough) be- 
fore I can set my face toward London, so I shall 
probably pass the months of February and March 
in and about town. # # =X? A great 
many Cantabs have been summering here, where 
they go by the odd name of Cathedrals.* Sev- 
eral of them brought introductions to me, and 
were good specimens of the rising generation. 
* * God bless you, my dear Neville ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 

To Mr. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Nov. 20, 1819 . 
" My dear Neville, 
"I wish, for your sake, that the next few 
months were over — that you had passed your 
examination, and w r ere quietly engaged in the 
regular course of parochial duty. In labore 
quies, you know, is the motto which I borrowed 
from my old predecessor Garibay. It is only in 
the discharge of duty that that deep and entire 
contentment which alone deserves to be called 
happiness is to be found, and you will go the 
way to find it. Were I a bishop, it would give 
me great satisfaction to lay hands upon a man 
like you, fitted as you are for the service of the 
altar by principle and disposition, almost beyond 



This was a Cumberland corruption of " Colledau ' 



378 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



IEtat. 46. 



any man whom I have ever known. I have long 
regarded it as a great misfortune to the Church 
of England that men so seldom enter it at a ma- 
ture age, when their characters are settled, when 
the glare of youth and hope has passed away ; 
the things of the world are seen in their true col- 
ors, and a calm and sober piety has taken pos- 
session of the heart. The Romanists have a 
great advantage over us in this. 

" You asked me some time ago what I thought 
about the Manchester business. I look upon it 
as an unfortunate business, because it has ena- 
bled factious and foolish men to raise an outcry, 
and divert public attention from the great course 
of events to a mere accidental occurrence. That 
the meeting was unlawful, and in terrorem pop- 
uli, is to me perfectly clear. The magistrates 
committed an error in employing the yeomanry 
instead of the regulars to support the civil pow- 
er ; for the yeomanry, after bearing a great deal, 
lost their temper, which disciplined troops would 
not have done. The cause of this error is obvi- 
ously that the magistrates thought it less obnox- 
ious to employ that species of force than the 
troops — a natural and pardonable mistake. 

" It is no longer a question between Ins and 
Outs, nor between Whigs and Tories. It is be- 
tween those who have something to lose, and 
those who have every thing to gain by a disso- 
lution of society. There may be bloodshed, and 
I am inclined to think there will, before the Rad- 
icals are suppressed, but suppressed they will be 
for the time. What may be in store for us aft- 
erward, who can tell ? According to all human 
appearances, I should expect the worst, were it 
not for an abiding trust in Providence, by whose 
wise will even our follies are overruled. 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! 
" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 3, 1S19. 
My dear Grosvenor, 
" * * * I must trespass on you 

further, and request that you will seal up ten 
pounds, and leave it with Rickman, directed for 
Charles Lamb, Esq., from R. S. It is for poor 
John Morgan, whom you may remember some 
twenty years ago. This poor fellow, whom I 
knew at school, and whose mother has sometimes 
asked me to her table when I should otherwise 
have gone without a dinner, was left with a fair 
fortune, from c£lO,000 to 6615,000, and with- 
out any vice or extravagance of his own he has 
lost the whole of it. A stroke of the palsy has 
utterly disabled him from doing any thing to 
maintain himself ; his wife, a good-natured, kind- 
hearted woman, whom " I knew in her bloom, 
beauty, and prosperity, has accepted a situation 
as mistress of a charity-school, with a miserable 
salary of d£40 a year, and this is all they have. 
In this pitiable case. Lamb and I have promised 
him ten pounds a year each as long as he lives. 
I have got five pounds a year for him from an 
excellent fellow, whom you do not know, and 



who chooses on this occasion to be called A. B., 
and I have written to his Bristol friends, who 
are able to do more for him than we are, and on 
whom he has stronger personal claims, so that I 
hope we shall secure him the decencies of life. 
You will understand that this is an explanation 
to you, not an application. In a case of this 
kind, contributions become a matter of feeling 
and duty among those who know the party, but 
strangers are not to be looked to. 

" God bless you ! R. S " 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 20, 1819 
My dear G. } 

I have been obliged to complain to Gifford of the 
mutilations which he has made in this paper. 
Pray recover the manuscript if you can, or, what 
would be better, the set of proof-sheets. It is 
very provoking to have an historical paper of 
that kind, which, perhaps, no person in England 
but myself could have written, treated like a 
schoolboy's theme. Vexed, however, as I am, 
I have too much liking for Gifford to be angry 
with him, and have written to him in a manner 
which will prove this. # # * # 

" Your godson, thank God ! is going on well, 
and his father has nothing to complain of, except, 
indeed, that he gets more praise than pudding. 
I had a letter last night which would amuse you. 
A certain H. Fisher, 'printer in ordinary to his 
majesty,' of Caxton Printing-office, Liverpool, 
writes to bespeak of me a memoir of his present 
majesty in one or two volumes octavo, pica type, 
long primer notes, terms five guineas per sheet ; 
and ' as the work will be sold principally among 
the middle class of society, mechanics and trades 
people, the language, observations, fa cts, &c.,&c, 
to suit them.' This is a fellow who employs 
hawkers to vend his books about the country. 
You see, Grosvenor, ' some have honor thfust 
upon them.' 

" A Yankee also, who keeps an exhibition at 
Philadelphia, modestly asks me to send him my 
painted portrait, which, he says, is very worthy 
of a place in his collection. I am to have the 
pleasure of sitting for the picture and paying for 
it, and he is to show it in Yankee land, admit- 
tance so much ! 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 22, 1819. 
" My dear G., 
" Shields's note is a curiosity in its kind. It 
is so choicely phrased. But he is very civil, and 
I would willingly task myself rather than decline 
doing what he wishes me to do. If, however, 
by a general chorus he means one which is to 
recur at the end of every stanza, an ode must be 
framed with reference to such a burden, or else it 
would be a burden indeed ; and, indeed, it would 
be impossible to fit one to stanzas of such dif- 
ferent import as these. If, on the other hand, a 
concluding stanza is meant, more adapted for a 



jEtat. 4G. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



379 



'flourish of tiumpets,' &c. t I am afraid I can 
not find one, but I will try.* The poem, as it 
now stands, is not a discreditable one ; so far 
from it, indeed, that if I execute the scheme of 
my visionary dialogue (upon which my mind 
runs), I should introduce it — that upon the prin- 
cess's death, and a few pieces more to be writ- 
ten for the occasion, which would come in like 
the poems in Boethius. 

" I thought I had explained to you my inten- 
tions about my journey. Being sufficiently mas- 
ter of my time, whether I set out a month sooner 
or later may be regulated solely by my own con- 
venience, so that I return with the summer. I 
have to finish Wesley, which will be done in five 
weeks, taking it coolly and quietly. I have to 
finish the review of Marlborough, which will re- 
quire three weeks. One of them is my morn- 
ings', the other my evenings' work. And if I 
am satisfied about the payment for my last pa- 
per, I shall recast the article upon the New 
Churches, and perhaps prepare one other also, 
in order to be beforehand with my ways and 
means for the spring and summer. But if there 
be any unhandsome treatment, I will not submit 
to it, but strike work as bravely as a radical 
weaver. In that case, the time which would 
have been sold to the maximus homo of Albe- 
marle Street will be far more worthily employ- 
ed in finishing the Tale of Paraguay, which has 
proceeded more slowly than tortoise, sloth, or 
snail, but which, as far as it has gone, is good. 
Indeed, I must finish it for publication in the en- 
suing year, or I shall not be able to keep my head 
above water. The sum of all this is, that I in- 
tend to work closely at home till the end of Feb- 
ruary, to pass a few days at Ludlow on my way 
to town, arrive in London about the second week 
of March, pass five or six weeks, partly at 
Streatham, partly in town ; go to Sir H. Bun- 
bury' s for a few days, and perhaps stretch on 
into Norfolk for another week or ten days, and 
find my way back to Keswick by the end of 
May. 

" A merry Christmas to you ! God bless you ! 

"R. S." 



CHAPTER XXV. 

OPINIONS ON POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SUBJECTS 

CURIOUS BEQUEST FROM A LUNATIC LETTER 

TQ HIM DISLIKE OF THE QUAKERS TO POET- 
RY LIFE OF WESLEY COLLOQUIES WITH SIR 

THOMAS MORE SIR HOWARD DOUGLAS THE 

KING'S DEATH PROSPECTS OF SOCIETY REV. 

PETER ELMSLEY NEW FASHION OF POETRY 

OF ITALIAN GROWTH DON JUAN POLITICAL 

FOREBODINGS PARALLEL ROADS IN SCOTLAND 

DEATH OF THE DUKE DE BERRI BEGUIN- 

AGE SCHEME ENGLISH SISTERHOODS — HIS 



* " If I give the composer more trouble than poor Pye 
did, I am sorry for it, but I can no more write like Mr. 
P«e than Mr. Pye could write like me. His pie-crust and 
nrae were not made of the same materials." — R. S. to G. 
C.B. 



BROTHER EDWARD JOHN MORGAN — LAURE- 
ATE ODES THE LIFE OF WESLEY LETTER IN 

RHYME FROM WALES ACCOUNT OF HIS RE- 
CEIVING THE HONORARY DEGREE OF D.C.L. AT 

OXFORD RETURN HOME CONGRATULATIONS 

TO NEVILLE WHITE ON HIS MARRIAGE OPIN- 
IONS ON THE LIFE OF WESLEY EXCUSES FOR 

IDLENESS OCCUPATIONS LETTER FROM 

SHELLEY PROJECTED LIFE OF GEORGE FOX 

MR. WESTALL AND MR. NASH THE VISION 

OF JUDGMENT CLASSICAL STUDIES RODERIC 

TRANSLATED INTO FRENCH BIOGRAPHICAL 

ANECDOTE DEATH OF MISS TYLER BIRTH- 
DAY ODE PORTUGUESE AFFAIRS. 1820, 

1821. 

In the preceding pages the reader has had 
several specimens of the obloquy which my fa- 
ther's political writings had entailed upon him. 
It may yet be allowed me once more to say a 
few words upon this subject before we enter upon 
this last period of his intellectual life, in which 
all his opinions and currents of thought were fixed 
and defined. 

It has been the fashion with many of those 
persons whose opinions were most opposed to 
those my father held in later life, taking up their 
cue from the abuse which was for a long period 
showered upon him in the Liberal journals, to 
assume, as an undoubted truth, that at some par- 
ticular period his views had changed totally and 
suddenly, under the influence of unworthy mo- 
tives ; that he had veered round (like a weather- 
cock upon a gusty day) from the leveling opin- 
ions set forth in Wat Tyler to high Toryism ; that 
he was a "renegade," an "apostate," a "hire- 
ling," and I know not what ; and they attribu- 
ted this change, on the one hand, to the mortifi- 
cation he felt at the squibs of the Anti-Jacobin, 
and at the various satirical attacks which he ex- 
perienced ; and, on the other, to the hope of bask- 
ing in court smiles, and comfortably " feather- 
ing his nest" under ministerial favor. His pen- 
sion (which, the reader need not be reminded, 
left him a poorer man than it found him) was by 
some considered as the pivot upon which he had 
turned round ; and the laureateship, paid by the 
magnificent income of £90, and taken at a time 
when the office was considered as all but ridicu- 
lous, was by such persons regarded as the second 
instalment of a series of payments for this tergiv- 
ersation. Others, again, unable to find that these 
had been the agents in effecting the changes in 
his views, and determined to discover some un- 
worthy causes for the alteration rather than 
frankly attribute it to time, experience, increas- 
ed knowledge, and calm and deliberate convic- 
tion, have declared that it was his connection 
with the Quarterly Review which chiefly influ- 
enced the course of his life and opinions ; not 
choosing to suppose, with greater charity, that 
the Quarterly Review exhibited those opinions, 
but did not make them, or to confess that they 
were the spontaneous growth of his own mind. 

I think it needless now to attempt to rebut 
charges like these, because the candid reader of 



380 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 46. 



the preceding pages, having seen the ardor and 
frankness with which my father expressed the 
same opinions in his unguarded correspondence 
which he advocated in his public writings, will 
hardly be disposed to acquiesce in them, espe- 
cially as his reasons for refusing to join the Ed- 
inburgh Review, at a period antecedent to the 
existence of the Quarterly, are on record. 

But as my father's views upon politics have 
been so often misrepresented and misunderstood, 
a brief sketch of the chief of these can hardly be 
misplaced here ; and I am the more impelled to 
make such a sketch, because I have lately seen 
it asserted that " the only opinions England has 
cause to dread are those held and advocated by 
Robert Southey during middle life." A notable 
sentence, showing how little his political oppo- 
nents either know or consider how many of the 
improvements and changes which he advocated 
have been, or are now being, carried into effect, 
with the approbation of the best and most distin- 
guished men of all parties. 

Now, as in politics there are two great and 
opposite evils to be dreaded — tyrannical govern- 
ment on the one hand, and anarchy on the other 
— my father believed that the time for dreading 
the former was gone by, and that the latter dan- 
ger was imminent ; and on this account, as we 
have seen, he directed his energies to supporting 
the supreme authority, by urging the adoption 
of strong measures toward the seditious writers 
and speakers of the time, by opposing such pro- 
posals as seemed to have a tendency to strength- 
en the democratic element, and by himself pro- 
posing and urging the adoption of measures for 
improving the condition of the poorer classes. 

Under these three heads are comprised, I be- 
lieve, most of my father's political acts. Of the 
two first I need not speak : they are sufficiently 
understood ; but on the third I would wish to 
dilate a little further. Let me, however, first 
guard against being supposed to claim infalli- 
bility for my father in his political opinions. 
Doubtless he sometimes erred in his estimate 
both of the good and the evil likely to result 
from certain measures. Who, indeed, has not 
so erred ? What politician or what party does 
not occasionally anticipate exaggerated effects, 
alike from what they support or what they dep- 
recate ? But I would submit that, with respect 
to the ultimate effects of those great measures 
he most strongly opposed, time has not yet fully 
set his seal upon them ; that we have not yet 
seen the whole results either of Catholic Eman- 
cipation or of the Reform Bill ; and with respect 
to Free Trade, when its effects have already so 
far outrun the calculations of its first movers, 
surely he must be a bold man, however much 
he may wish it to succeed, who will say it is 
not still an experiment. 

But while the correctness or the fallacy of my 
father's opinions, and of those who thought with 
him upon these points, in great measure has yet 
to be decided, I would lay much more stress 
upon his views on social subjects — upon his 
earnest advocacy of those measures he thought 



most calculated to ameliorate the condition of 
the lower orders, and to cement the bonds of 
union between all classes of society, and this as 
proving that both in early and in later life the 
objects he aimed at were the same, although he 
had learned to think that political power was 
not the panacea for all the poor man's evils. 

Among the various measures and changes he 
advocated may be named the following, many 
of which were topics he handled at greater 01 
less length in the Quarterly Review, while his 
opinions upon the others may be found scattered 
throughout his letters : National education to be 
assisted by government grants. The diffusion 
of cheap literature of a wholesome and harmless 
kind. The necessity of an extensive and well- 
organized system of colonization, and especially 
of encouraging female emigration. The im- 
portance of a wholesome training for the im- 
mense number of children in London and other 
large towns, who, without it, are abandoned to 
vice and misery. The establishment of Protest 
ant sisters of charity, and of a better order of 
hospital nurses. The establishment of savings' 
banks in all the small towns throughout the 
country. The abolishment of flogging in the 
army and navy, except in cases flagrantly atro- 
cious. Alterations in the poor laws. Altera- 
tiens in the game laws.* Alterations in the 
criminal laws, as inflicting the punishment of 
death in far too many cases. Alterations in the 
factory system, for the benefit of the operative, 
and especially as related to the employment of 
children. The desirableness of undertaking na- 
tional works, reproductive ones if possible, in 
times of peculiar distress.! The necessity of 
doing away with interments in crowded cities. 
The system of giving allotments of ground to la- 
borers ; the employment of paupers in cultivat- 
ing waste lands. The commutation of tithes ; 
and, lastly, the necessity for more clergymen, 
more colleges, more courts of law. 

A man whose mind was full of projects of this 
kind ought, I think, to be safe from sentences of 
indiscriminate condemnation, and, indeed, when 
we remember how few of them had occupied the 
attention of politicians when he wrote of them, 
it must be allowed that he was one of the chief 
pioneers of most of the great and real improve- 
ments which have taken and are taking place in 
society in our own times ; and though some may 
still think his fears of a revolution were exag- 
gerated, yet who can say how far the tranquillity 
we enjoy has not been owing to the preventive 
and curative measures which he and others who 
thought with him so perseveringly labored to 
bring about ? 

The various literary employments upon which 
he was engaged in 1819-20 have been frequent- 
ly referred to in his letters. The Life of Wes- 
ley was in the press. The Peninsular War he 
was busily employed upon ; he had also in prog- 

* The changes he advocated in the game laws have 
long since taken place, but, alas 1 without the good effects 
anticipated from them. 

t Such as of later years has occurred in Ireland ana 
Scotland. 



JE.TAT. 46. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



381 



ress the Book of the Church, and the Colloquies 
with Sir T. More ; and to the Quarterly Review- 
he was, as we know, a constant contributor, not 
so much from choice as from necessity. 

But, in addition to all his other manifold em- 
ployments, the laureateship was an inconvenient 
tax upon his time, and a considerable one upon 
his ingenuity. The regular task-work was still 
required, and he was, at the same time, too de- 
sirous of rendering the laurel more honorable 
than it had been, to be content with merely those 
common-place compositions, which no one could 
hold more cheaply than he did himself, often des- 
ignating them as " simply good for nothing," and 
declaring " that next to getting rid of the task 
which the laureateship imposed upon him, of 
writing stated verses at stated times, the best 
thing he could do was to avoid publishing them 
except on his own choice and his own time." 

The death of the king, which occurred in Jan- 
uary, 1820, now seemed to call for some more 
particular effort on his part; and as this event 
had been for some time expected, he had been 
turning over in his mind in what way he could 
best pay his official tribute, and at the same time 
produce something of real merit. We have seen 
that from his youth he had been desirous of mak- 
ing the experiment of writing a poem in hex- 
ameter verse, and it has been noticed that in the 
year 1799 he commenced one in that measure. 
He now, therefore, determined upon the plan and 
structure of the Vision of Judgment, which it 
may be supposed was a work of no small time 
and labor, and with this addition to his other 
employments he might well say that his " head 
and his hands were as full as they could hold, 
and that if he had as many heads and as many 
hands as a Hindoo god, there would be employ- 
ment enough for them all." 

One other subject may also be mentioned as 
occupying his thoughts at this time, though prob- 
ably in a less degree than it would have occu- 
pied the thoughts of most persons. He has men- 
tioned in his autobiography that his great uncle, 
John Canon Southey, had left certain estates of 
considerable value in trust for his great nephew, 
John Southey Somerville, afterward Lord Som- 
erville, and his issue, with the intent that if he, 
who was then a child, should die without issue, 
the estates should descend to the Southeys. 
Lord Somerville was lately dead without issue, 
and my father was under the impression that he 
had a legal claim to the property, and was at this 
time taking advice upon the subject. It turned 
out, however, that Canon Southey had not taken 
proper care that his intention should be carried 
into effect, for the opinions upon his claim were 
not sufficiently favorable to encourage him to 
take legal proceedings in the matter. 

This disappointment he bore as quietly as he 
had done others of the same kind, and while by 
no man would a competence have been more 
thankfully welcomed and regarded as a greater 
blessing, and I believe I may add, better em- 
ployed, he was far too wise to disturb himself 
with unavailing regrets, and never allowed these 



untoward circumstances to give him one mo- 
ment's disquiet. In the present instance he 
most philosophically looked on the bright side of 
the matter. " Twice in my life," he says, " has 
the caprice of a testator cut me off from what 
the law would have given me had it taken its 
course, and now the law interferes and cuts me 
off from what would have been given me by a 
testator. It is, however, a clear gain to escape 
a suit in Chancery." 

To C. W. W. Wynn, Esq., M.P. 

"Keswick, Jan. 18, 1820. 
" My dear Wynn, 

" I have two things to tell you, both sufficient- 
ly remarkable. Lord Bathurst, supposing that 
I had a son growing up, called on Croker lately 
to offer me a writership for him. I never saw 
Lord B., nor have I any indirect acquaintance 
with him. The intended kindness, therefore, is 
the greater. 

" A curious charge has been bequeathed me 
— the papers of a man who destroyed himself 
on the first day of this year, wholly, I believe, 
from the misery occasioned by a state of utter 
unbelief. I never saw him but once. Last year 
he wrote me two anonymous letters, soliciting 
me to accept this charge. I supposed him, from 
what he said, to be in the last stage of some 
mortal disease, and wrote to him under that per- 
suasion. And I rather imagined that the relig- 
ious character of my second reply had offended 
him, for I heard nothing more till last week, 
when there came a letter from an acquaintance 
of mine telling me his name, his fate, and that 
the papers were deposited by the suicide himself 
the day before he executed his fatal purpose, to 
await my directions. I have reason to believe 
that, with all proper respect to the dead as well 
as to the living, a most melancholy but instruct- 
ive lesson may be deduced from them. His let- 
ters are beautiful compositions, and he was a man 
of the strictest and most conscientious virtue ! 

" The jury pronounced him insane, which per- 
haps they would not have done had they seen 
the paper which he addressed to them. That 
cruel law should be repealed, and I wish you 
would take the credit of repealing it. It is in 
every point of view barbarous. A particular 
prayer for cases of this kind should be added to 
our Burial Service, to be used in place of those 
parts that express a sure and certain hope for 
the dead. God bless you! R. S.' : 

Upon a careful examination of the papers here 
alluded to, my father found that it would be quite 
impossible to make any use of them, as they con- 
tained the strongest internal evidences of the per- 
fect insanity of the writer. The reader will prob- 
ably be interested by the insertion here of the 
letter* 1 which my father conceived had offended 
the person to whom it was addressed. This, 
however, it had not done ; on the contrary, it had 
affected him considerably, but he reasoned in- 



My father's first letter to has not been preserved. 



382 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 46 



sanely upon it. and it seems not improbabje that 
it had caused him to postpone for a while his 
wretched intention of suicide, which it appears 
he had determined upon for six years. 



To 



" Keswick, March 2, 1819. 

" Your letter, my dear sir, affects me greatly. 
It represents a state of mind into which I also 
should have fallen, had it not been for that sup- 
port which you are not disposed to think neces- 
sary for the soul of man. 

"I, too, identified my own hopes with hopes 
for mankind, and at the price of any self-sacri- 
fice would have promoted the good of my fellow- 
creatures. I, too, have been disappointed in be- 
ing undeceived ; but having learned to temper 
hope with patience, and when I lift up my spirit 
to its Creator and Redeemer, to say. not with 
the lips alone, but with the heart also, ' Thy 
will *be done,' I feel that whatever afflictions I 
have endured have been dispensed to me in mer- 
cy, and am deeply and devoutly thankful for what 
I am, and what I hope to be when I shall burst 
my shell. 

"O, sir, religion is the one thing needful. 
Without it, no one can be truly happy (do you 
not feel this ?) : with it, no one can be entirely 
miserable. Without it, this world would be a 
mystery too dreadful to be borne — our best af- 
fections and our noblest desires a mere juggle 
and a curse, and it were better, indeed, to be 
nothing than the things we are. I am no bigot. 
I believe that men will be judged by their ac- 
tions and intentions, not their creed. I am a 
Christian : and so will Turk, Jew, and Gentile 
be in Heaven, if they have lived well according 
to the light which was vouchsafed them. I do 
not fear that there will be a great gulf between 
you and me in the world which we must both 
enter ; but if I could persuade you to look on to- 
ward that world with the eyes of faith, a change 
would be operated in all your views and feelings, 
and hope, and joy, and love would be with you 
to your latest breath — universal love — love for 
mankind, and for the Universal Father, into 
whose hands you are about to render up your 
spirit. 

" That the natural world, by its perfect order, 
displays evident marks of design, I think you 
would admit, for it is so palpable that it can only 
be disputed from perverseness or affectation. Is 
it not reasonable to suppose that the moral order 
of things should in like manner be coherent and 
harmonious ? It is so if there be a state of ret- 
ribution after death. If that be proved, every 
thing becomes intelligible, just, beautiful, good. 
Would you not, from the sense of fitness and of 
justice, wish that it should be so ? And is there 
not enough of wisdom and power apparent in 
creation to authorize us in inferring that what- 
ever upon the grand scale would be the best, 
therefore must be ? 

" Pursue this feeling, and it will lead you to 
the cross of Christ. 

" T never fear to avow my belief that warn- 



ings from the other world are sometimes commu- 
nicated to us in this; and that, absurd as the 
stories of apparitions generally are, they are not 
always false, but that the spirits of the dead have 
sometimes been permitted to appear. I believe 
this, because I can not refuse my assent to the 
evidence which exists of such things, and to the 
universal consent of all men who have not learn- 
ed to think otherwise. Perhaps you will not de 
spise this as a mere superstition when I say that 
Kant, the profoundest thinker of modern ages, 
came, by the severest reasoning, to the same 
conclusion. 

" But if these things are, then there is a state 
after death ; and if there be a state after death, 
it is reasonable to presume that such things 
should be. 

" You will receive this as it is meant. It ia 
hastily and earnestly written, in perfect sinceri- 
ty, in the fullness of my heart. Would to God 
that it might find its way to yours. In case of 
your recover}', it would reconcile you to life, and 
open to you sources of happiness to which you 
are a stranger. 

" But whether your lot be for life or death, 
dear sir, God bless you ! R. S." 

To Bernard Barton, Esq, 

" Keswick, Jan. 21, 1820. 
" Dear Sir, 

" You propose a question* to me which I can 
no more answer with any grounds for an opin- 
ion, than if you were to ask me whether a lottery 
ticket should be drawn blank or prize, or if a 
ship should make a prosperous voyage to the 
East Indies. If I recollect rightly, poor Scott, 
of Amwell, was disturbed in his last illness by 
some hard-hearted and sour-blooded bigots, who 
wanted him to repent of his poetry as of a sin. 
The Quakers are much altered since that time. 
I know one, a man deservedly respected by all 
who know him (Charles Lloyd the elder, of Bir- 
mingham), who has amused his old age by trans- 
lating Horace and Homer. He is looked up to 
in the society, and would not have printed these 
translations if he had thought it likely to give of- 
fense. 

" Judging, however, from the spirit of the age, 
as affecting your society, like every thing else, I 
should think they would be gratified by the ap- 
pearance of a poet among them who confines 
himself within the limits of their general princi- 
ples. They have been reproached with being 
the most illiterate sect that has ever arisen in 
the Christian world, and they ought to be thank- 
ful to any of their members who should assist in 
vindicating them from that opprobrium. There 
is nothing in their principles which should pre- 
vent them from giving you their sanction; and I 
will even hope that there are not many persons 
who will impute it to you as a sin if you should 
call some of the months bv their heathen names.T 



* The question was, whether the Society of Friends 
were likely to be offended at his publishing a volume ot 
poems. 

t " One in the British Friend did impute this as a eir^ 



/Etat.46. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



383 



I know of no other offense that you are in dan- 
ger of committing. They will not like virtuous 
feelings and religious principles the worse for 
being conveyed in good verse. If poetry in it- 
self were unlawful, the Bible must be a prohib- 
ited book. 

" I shall be glad to receive your volume, and 
you have my best good wishes for its success. 
The means of promoting it are not within my 
power ; for though' I bear a part in the Quarter- 
ly Review (and endure a large portion of the 
grossest abuse and calumny for opinions which 
I do not hold, and articles which I have not 
written), I have long since found it necessary, 
for reasons which you may easily apprehend, to 
form a resolution of reviewing no poems what- 
ever. My principles of criticism, indeed, are al- 
together opposite to those of the age. I would 
treat every thing with indulgence except what is 
mischievous ; and most heartily do I disapprove 
of the prevailing fashion of criticism, the direct 
tendency of which is to call bad passions into full 
play- 

"Heartily hoping that you may succeed to 
your utmost wishes in this meritorious undertak- 
ing, I remain, dear sir, yours faithfully, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Jan. 28, 1820. 
11 My dear R., 

" * * * My knowledge is never 
so ready as yours. The less you trust your 
memory, the worse it serves you ; and for the last 
five-and-twenty years I have hardly trusted mine 
at all; the consequence has been, that I must 
go to my notes for every thing, except the gen- 
eral impressions and conclusions that much read- 
ing leaves behind. 

"Upon the deficiency of our Ecclesiastical 
Establishment and its causes, you will find an 
historical chapter in my Life of Wesley, agree- 
ing entirely with your notes in all the points on 
which we have both touched. Since that chap- 
ter was written, I have got at sundry books on 
the subject — Kennet's Case of Impropriations, 
Henry Wharton's Defense of Pluralities, Stave- 
ley's History of Churches — each very good and 
full of sound knowledge ; Eachard's Contempt 
of the Clergy, and Stackhouse's Miseries of the 
Inferior Clergy — books of a very different char- 
acter, but of great notoriety in their day; and 
two recent publications by a Mr. Yates, which 
contain a great deal of information. I was led 
to them by the mention made of them in Vansit- 
tart's speech upon the New Churches. * * 

" I must borrow from some of the black letter 
men Sir Thomas More's works, which are toler- 
ably numerous ; and when I am in London, I 
must ask you to turn me loose for two or three 
mornings among the statutes at large, for I must 
examine those of Henry the Seventh in particu- 
lar. There is something about the process of 
sheep-farming in those days which I am not sure 

twenty-five years after this was written." — Selections from 
the Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton, p. 111. 



that I understand. The double grievance com- 
plained of is, that it appropriated commons and 
turned arable land into pasture. Now, could 
this latter commutation answer in a country 
where the demand must have been as great for 
meal and malt as for wool and mutton ? What 
I perceive is this, that down to the union of the 
two Roses, men were the best stock that a lord 
could have upon his estates ; but when the age 
of rebellions, disputed succession, and chivalrous 
wars was over, money became of more use than 
men, and the question was not, who could bring 
most vassals into the field, but who could sup- 
port the largest expenditure ; and in Sir Thos. 
More's days the expenditure of the fashionables 
was infinitely beyond any thing that is heard of 

in ours. So I take it they did as is now 

doing : got rid of hereditary tenants who paid 
little or nothing, in favor of speculators and large 
breeders who could afford to pay, and might be 
rack-rented without remorse. I shall put to- 
gether a good deal of historical matter in these 
interlocutions, taking society in two of its crit- 
ical periods — the age of the Reformation, and 
this in which we live. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 11, 1820. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" When you see Gifford (and when you go 
near his door I wish you would make it a reason 
for calling), will you tell him that among the 
many applications to which, like himself, I am 
exposed on account of the Quarterly Review, 

there is one from Sir , concerning 

whose book I wrote to him some three or four 
months ago. I very much wish he would get 
Pasley to review that book. It would hardly re- 
quire more than half a dozen pages ; and I be- 
lieve the book deserves to be brought forward, 
as being of great practical importance. If, as I 
apprehend, it shows that we are so much supe- 
rior to the French in the most important branch 
of war in theory, as we have proved ourselves 
to be in the field, the work which demonstrates 
this ought to be brought prominently into notice, 
more especially as the notoriety which the Quar- 
terly Review may give to Sir 's refutation 

of Carnot's theories may tend to prevent our al- 
lies from committing errors, the consequence of 
which must be severely felt whenever France is 
able to resume her scheme of aggrandizement. 

TT tP * tF 

" Do you know that one of those London pub- 
lishers who are rogues by profession is now pub- 
lishing in sixpenny numbers a life of the king, 
by Robert Southy, Esq., printed for the author. 
' Observe to order Southy's Life of the King, to 
avoid imposition.' J. Jones, Warwick Square, 
is the ostensible rogue, but the anonymous per- 
son who sent me the first number says ' alias 
Oddy.' I have sent a paragraph to the West- 
moreland Gazette, which may save some of my 
neighbors from being taken in by this infamous 
trick, and have written to Longman to ask 



384 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 46. 



whether it be advisable that I should take any- 
further steps. He must be the best judge of 
this, and if he thinks I ought to apply for an in- 
junction, he will hand over my letter to Turner, 
by whose opinion I shall be guided. The scoun- 
drel seems to suppose that he may evade the 
law by misspelling my name. 

" The death of the king will delay my depart- 
ure two or three weeks beyond the time which 
I had intended for it ; for if I do not finish the 
poem, which I must of course write before I 
leave home, my funeral verses would not appear 
before the coronation. In my next letter I shall 
probably horrorize you about these said verses, 
in which I have made some progress. 

" I have about a fortnight's work with Wes- 
ley, not more ; and not so much if this sort of 
holiday's task had not come to interrupt me. I 
versify very slowly, unless very much in the hu- 
mor for it, and when the passion of the part car- 
ries me forward. This can never be the case 
with task verses. However, as I hope not to go 
beyond two or three hundred lines, I imagine 
that, at any rate, a fourth part is done. I shall 
not be very long about it. If I manage the end 
as well as I have done the beginning, I shall be 
very well satisfied with the composition. 

" All well, thank God ; at present. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Feb. 20, 1820. 

" Your poem has not found its way to me. It 
is either delayed or mislaid at Longman's. Oh 
that you would write in English ! I can never 
think of your predilection for Latin verse but as 
a great loss to English literature. 

" The times make less impression upon me 
than upon men who live more in the political 
world. The present, perhaps, appears to you, 
jat a distance, worse than it is. The future will 
be what we may choose to make it. There is 
an infernal spirit abroad, and crushed it must be. 
Crushed it will be, beyond all doubt ; but the 
question is, whether it will be cut short in its 
course, or suffered to spend itself like a fever. 
In the latter case, we shall go on through a 
bloodier revolution than that of France, to an 
iron military government — the only possible 
termination of Jacobinism. It is a misery to see 
in what manner the press is employed to poison 
the minds of the people, and eradicate every 
thing that is virtuous, every thing that is honor- 
able, every thing upon which the order, peace, 
and happiness of society are founded. The re- 
cent laws have stopped the two-penny supply of 
blasphemy and treason, and a few of the lowest 
and vilest offenders are laid hold of. But the 
mischief goes on in all the stages above them. 

" Do you remember Elmsley at Oxford — the 
fattest under-graduate in your time and mine ? 
He is at Naples, superintending the unrolling 
the Herculaneum manuscripts, by Davy's proc- 
ess, at the expense of the prince regent — I 
should say, of George IV. The intention is, that 
Elmsley shall ascertain, as soon as a beginning 



is made of one of the rolls, whether it shall be 
proceeded with or laid aside, in hope of finding 
something better, till the whole have been in- 
spected. 

" A fashion of poetry has been imported which 
has had a great run, and is in a fair way of be- 
ing worn out. It is of Italian growth — an adapt- 
ation of the manner of Pulci, Berni, and Ariosto 
in his sportive mood. Frere began it. What 
he produced was too good in itself and too inof- 
fensive to become popular ; for it attacked noth- 
ing and nobody ; and it had the fault of his Ital- 
ian models, that the transition from what is seri- 
ous to what is burlesque was capricious. Lord 
Byron immediately followed, first with his Bep- 
po, which implied the profligacy of the writer, 
and lastly with his Don Juan, which is a foul 
blot on the literature of his country, an act of 
high treason on English poetry. The manner 
has had a host of imitators. The use of Hudi- 
brastic rhymes (the only thing in which it differs 
from the Italian) makes it very easy. 

" My poems hang on hand. I want no mon- 
itor to tell me it is time to leave off. I shall 
force myself to finish what I have begun, and 
then — good night. Had circumstances favored, 
I might have done more in this way, and better. 
But I have done enough to be remembered among 
poets, though my proper place will be among the 
historians, if I live to complete the works upon 
yonder shelves. 

"God bless you! Robt. Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 22, 1820. 
" My dear Friend, 

You know what a rose-colored politician I was 
during the worst years of the war. My nature 
inclines me to hope and to exertion ; and in spite 
of the evil aspects on every side, and the indica- 
tions which are blackening wherever we look, I 
think that if we do not avert the impending dan- 
gers we shall get through them victoriously, let 
them come thick and threatening as they may. 
But it will not be without a heavy cost. The 
murder of the Due de Berri surprised me more 
than a like tragedy would have done at home, 
where such crimes have perseveringly been rec- 
ommended in those infamous journals, most of 
which have been suppressed by the late whole- 
some acts. The effect of such things (as it is the 
end also of all revolutions) must be to strength- 
en the executive power. As no man can abuse 
his fortune without injuring it, so no people can 
abuse their liberty without being punished by the 
loss of it, in whole or in part. * * 

"Is it within the bounds of a reasonable hope 
that an improved state of public opinion, and an 
extended influence of religion, may prevent the 
degradation which, in the common course of 
things, would ensue, after one or two halcyon 
generations-? How justly did the Romans con 
gratulate themselves upon the security which 
they enjoyed under Augustus ; but how sure was 
the tyranny , and corruption, and ruin which en- 



/Etat. 46. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



385 



sued ? Our chance of escaping the same proc- 
ess of decay depends upon the question wheth- 
er religion or infidelity is gaining ground ; and 
if I am asked this question, I must comfort my- 
self by the wise and good old saying, 'Well, 
masters, God's above.' 

" You have heard, no doubt, of the discovery 
of Cicero de Republica ? This was brought to 
my mind at this moment by a thought whether 
we might not be verging toward a state of things 
in which a general wreck of literature and de- 
struction of libraries would make part of the 
plans of reform. The proposal of a new alpha- 
bet has been made by a German reformer, and 
approved by an English one, because one of its 
effects would be to render all existing books use- 
less I It was said of old that there was nothing 
so foolish but some philosopher had said it. 
Alas ! there is nothing so mischievous or so 
atrocious but that men are found in these days 
mad enough and malignant enough to recom- 
mend and to defend it. 

u Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John Richnan, Esq. 

" March 1, 1820. 

" My DEAR RlCKMAN, 

"Your guess about the Parallel Roads* has 
this in its favor, that if Glen Roy mean the king's 
glen, the word Roy would not have been used 
before there was an intercourse between the 
Scotch and the French ; they were never such 
friends with our Normans as to have taken it 
from them. In point of time, therefore, this 
would suit well. On the other hand, in that age 
chroniclers delighted as much in a good show as 
in a good battle, and Froissart would hardly 
have failed to describe a hunting party upon so 
grand a scale as that for which these roads were 
made. It appears to be impossible that they 
should have been made for any other purpose ; 
and when our friends at Corpach procure a list 
of the names of places, and some Gael is found 
learned enough to translate them, this main fact, 
I have no doubt, will be established. There is 
some possibility that by this means, also, we 
may come near the age ; not by the language 
(for I believe the Gaelic is not like the Welsh, in 
which the date of a composition may be inferred 
with some certainty by its language), but by the 
names of some of the party, and perhaps of some 
of the implements used. 

" You are quite right in thinking funded prop- 
erty better than landed property for charitable 
institutions, as being rather more than less se- 
cure, safe from fraudulent management, and re- 
quiring no trouble. There remains an objection 



* " I read in Froissart (chap, lxi.) that the King of Scot- 
land (Robert II.) was at that time absent from Edinburgh, 
being in the Highlands on a hunting party. The Parallel 
Roads in Glen Roy might be freshly made at that time, 
the Scottish kings having had recent opportunity of en- 
larging their ideas as prisoners or auxiliaries in England 
and France ; and the listed field of a tournament might 
give the hint for a grand apparatus — a hunting spectacle. 
Game taight be preserved in the neighborhood for royal 
Aversion."— J. R. to R. S., Feb. 20, 1820. 

Bb 



from the uncertainty of the value of money ; but 
it appears to me impossible that money should 
ever fall in value as it has done since the Middle 
Ages ; perhaps even such an advance in prices 
as has taken place within our own recollection 
will never again occur — I mean, as affecting ev- 
ery thing. In the view which I take of the im- 
provement of society, stability is one of the good 
things to be expected. 

"I like your Beguinage scheme in all its 
parts. Endowments (analogous to college fel- 
lowships) would grow out of it in due course of 
time; and great part of the business of female 
education would be transferred to these institu- 
tions, to the advantage of all parties. 

" The Due de Berri will do more good by his 
death than he would ever have done by his life. 
I had been saying that such a tragedy in France 
surprised me much more than it would have 
done in England. The will, I knew, was not 
wanting, and intelligence soon came that the 
purpose had been formed. Your Oppositionists 
will call this discovery* a most unfortunate bus- 
iness, and such, I trust, it will prove for them. 
The jury who acquitted Thistlewood and Wat- 
son, the Oppositionists in Parliament and out of 
it who ridiculed the green bag plot, and the sub- 
scribers to Hone & Co., are much more deeply 
implicated in the guilt of this business than they 
would like to be told. They have given every 
encouragement to traitors, and thereby have 
made themselves morally art and part in the 
treason. What a fortunate thing that the Ha- 
beas Corpus was not suspended ! in that case 
these miscreants would most of them have been 
in confinement, and the Whigs lamenting over 
them, and promoting subscriptions for them as 
the victims of oppression. The gallows will 
now have its due. # =fc # # 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

The following was the " Beguinage scheme" 
alluded to in the foregoing letter : 

" A local habitation is all I wish for where 
a secular nunnery is to be established; acres 
enough to preserve the integrity of aspect from 
encroachment and to prevent intrusion. * * 
* * My notion of a female establishment is, 
that any benefactor erecting a set of chambers 
shall thereby acquire a right (alienable by will, 
gift, or sale, like other property) to place in- 
mates there on certain conditions, such as that 
security shall be given that each enjoy a compe- 
tent income, not less than £ , while she re- 
sides there ; that she shall be bound to the nec- 
essary rules of female decorum, on pain of in- 
stant expulsion, and to such other rules as are 
indispensable to the well-being of the communi- 
ty, but that nothing like common meals shall be 
proposed. The ladies to choose their own mu- 
tual society — of which there would be enough — 
and to make all minor arrangements among them- 
selves. I believe, for external appearance, to 



Of the Cato Street conspiracy. 



3S6 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 46. 



prevent expense and vanity, and to restrain the 
number of idle applications, a uniform dress 
would be proper ; and for many purposes, as for 
prayers, bad weather, and peripatetic exercise, 
a large room would be a respectable adjunct to 
the edifice, and for which the fundatores might 
be taxed a per centage upon their several cham- 
bers. Under such easy laws as these, and con- 
sidering how fashionable and how laudable is the 
appetite for virtuous patronage, I do not see how 
it could fail that among the female nobility and 
other opulent females many would be ready so 
to invest part of their money. None of it could 
be spent more for their own reputation and re- 
spectability ; and, considering that the individu- 
als admitted would not of necessity (nor usually) 
be maintained by the foundress of the chamber, 
but recommended to her by those who might 
have interest or gratification in giving security 
for the maintenance of the inmate, I can not but 
think that the foundress, the immediate patron 
of the admitted female — who might thus exon- 
erate himself from care and anxiety, were better 
motive wanting — and the admitted female, whose 
maintenance for life, or, at least, for a specified 
term of years, must be secured before her ad- 
mission, would all find motive enough for falling 
into a plan, simple and unambiguous in its ar- 
rangement, and (if not wofully mismanaged) of 
the highest respectability. 

" I do not know whether you are prepared to 
agree with me as to the necessity of a secured 
income to each female, but I have inquired 
enough in and about such female societies (such 
there are for clergymen's widows at Bromley, 
at Winchester, at Froxfield, at Lichfield, and, I 
dare say, elsewhere) as to be fully convinced 
that respectability can not be otherwise main- 
tained. * * * In short, there 
must be a classification of relief, and I treat of 
the upper classes, observing only that many 
would be exalted into that upper class were the 
means of so exalting them easy, and obvious to 
the wealthy. Few wills would be without be- 
quests of the competent annuity to some humble 
friend ; various societies would be at various 
rates — I should say from £50 to £100 per an- 
num, or some such minimum — and if a wealthy 
foundress resided herself, she would have larger 
facility for beneficence than display. The love 
of the community, so conspicuous among monks 
in former times, would found libraries, planta- 
tions, walks, cloisters, gaudy days, whether obit 
or birth-day, medical attendance, a chaplain, per- 
haps. For government, the foundresses must 
legislate."* 

The reader will remember an interesting ac- 
count of a Beguinage at Ghent, t and the recur- 
rence to the subject at various intervals through- 
out my father's life shows how much interest he 
felt in it. 

How far this plan of Mr. Rickman's, without 
considerable modification, might answer, seems 



* J. R. to R. P., Feb. 20, ip-X 
t See ante, p. 319. 



doubtful, and something more of the nature of 
an asylum for persons of very limited means, or 
for those left altogether desolate, appears greatly 
wanted. 

Institutions of this kind, however, so long as> 
their object is limited to the benefit of their own 
inmates, have not in them a sufficient largeness 
of purpose and general utility to command the 
interest and admiration of mankind to any wide 
extent. 

But when regarded in another light, as an in- 
fluential machinery for the moral and religious 
cultivation of the people, they become highly im- 
portant. My father has unfolded his own ideas 
upon this subject in the latter part of the Collo- 
quies with Sir Thomas More, using frequently 
the same phrases, and making the same sugges- 
tions which occur in these letters, whether his 
own or his friend's ; and he there indicates cer- 
tain principles which seem essential to the well- 
being of such communities. There must be a 
center of union sufficient to overpower, or at least 
to keep in harmonious subjection individual char- 
acters ; this can only be supplied by religion and 
the habit of obedience. " Human beings," he 
remarks, "can not live happily in constrained 
community of habits without the aid of religious 
feeling, and without implicit obedience to a su- 
perior ;" but he did not expect that these re- 
quirements would be easily met with in this age, 
and he attributes the little success of some insti- 
tutions to the want of them. 

It seems also an absolute essential that they 
should have their definite work ; an object which 
may fill their thoughts and occupy their ener- 
gies ; and this my father suggests, arguing that 
they ought to be devoted to purposes of Christian 
charity, and showing how wide a field is open to 
the members of such societies in attendance upon 
the sick, in affording Christian consolation, and 
in the relief and the education of the poor ; and 
with reference to such offices as these, he con- 
cludes with the hopeful prognostic that " thirty 
years hence the reproach may be effaced, and 
England may have its Sisters of Charity." 

We have happily seen that in this respect, as 
in some others, the tide has turned, and some in- 
stitutions have sprung up whose existence is 
based upon these two principles. While, how- 
ever, I sincerely rejoice that such a beginning 
has been made, I may be allowed to express a 
fear that as yet, with the enthusiasm of persons 
following a new and exciting idea, they have 
adopted too much of the minutiae and austerities 
of convent discipline to be widely acceptable to 
the English mind, and consequently to be exten- 
sively beneficial ; for the rigid strictness of the 
rules (in some houses at least) is likely to deter 
any one from entering them who respects and 
values the cheerfulness and rational liberty of 
domestic life, such as it appears in most relig- 
ious families, and the quantity and fatigue of the 
duties required is such as can only be endured 
by persons in robust health ; and thus the very 
class who most need such a residence as an asy- 
lum, and who, under a more moderate --y em, 






/!!, TAT. 46. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



387 



might be both contented and useful, are altogeth- 
er excluded. It would seem, indeed, to be de- 
sirable that the inmates of such sisterhoods should 
aim at making as small a distinction as possible, 
consistently with their great objects and princi- 
ples, between themselves and other sensible, in- 
dustrious, and devout English ladies. Some dif- 
ferences there must be ; but such as, without be- 
ing necessary, are only likely to offend, should 
surely be studiously avoided. 

In the following letter my father alludes to his 
youngest brother Edward, who has not been men- 
tioned in these pages since his boyhood. The 
subject is a painful one, and I may be excused 
from entering into it further than to say that 
every effort had been made, both by his uncle, 
Mr. Hill, and his brothers, to place him in a re- 
spectable line of life, and induce him to continue 
in it. He possessed excellent abilities, and had 
received a good education ; and if he would have 
chosen any profession, they would have prepared 
him for it. He was placed first in the navy, and 
afterward in the army, but in vain ; and he final- 
ly took to the wretched life of an actor in pro- 
vincial theaters. My father here sufficiently in- 
dicates the course ultimately pursued toward him 
by his brothers, who, in fact, did every thing it 
was possible to do for him. He died in 1845. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"March 1, 1820. 
" My dear G., 
" Though I never examined an account in my 
life (holding it a less evil to be cheated than to 
cast up long sums, and fret myself about I. s. d.), 
yet I think there is an error in yours, for you have 
not debited me for the Westminster subscription, 
which must surely have been paid within the last 
three months. 

"I thank you for your solicitude concerning 
my readiness to give. But you do not know 
when I turn a deaf ear. The case of poor Page's 
family is the only one in which I had not a co- 
gent motive ; there, perhaps, there was no bet- 
ter one than a regard to appearances — a tax to 
which I have paid less in the course of my life 
than most other persons. My unhappy brother 
Edward has at least the virtue of being very con- 
siderate in his demands upon me. They come 
seldom, and are always trifling. At present he 
is ill, perhaps seriously so. All that can be done 
for him is to take care that he may not want for 
necessaries while in health, nor for comforts (as 
far as they can be procured) when health fails 
him. 

"In John Morgan's case I acted from the 
double motive of good will toward him and his 
wife, and of setting others an example — which 
has had its effect. There was an old acquaint- 
ance there ; and for the sake of his mother, at 
whose table I have been a frequent guest, I would 
have done more for him than this, had it been in 
my power. 

" People imagine that I am very rich, that I 
have great interest with government, and that 
my patronage in literature is sufficient to make 



an author's fortune, and to introduce a poet at 
once into full celebrity. 

" Turner is about to take an opinion concern- 
ing my claims, both in law and in equity, to the 
Somersetshire estates. Where I to recover them, 
I should have great satisfaction in resigning my 
pension. The laureateship I would keep as a 
feather, and wear it as Fluellen did his leek. 

" Last night I finished the Life of Wesley ; 
but I have outrun the printer as well as the con- 
stable, and it may be four or five weeks before 
he comes up to me. Now I go dens et unguis 
to my Carmen, which, if I do not like when it is 
done, why I will even skip the task, and prepare 
for the coronation. Alas ! the birth-days will 
now be kept ; learn for me on what days, that I 
may be ready in time. I do not know why you 
are so anxious for rhyme. The rhythm of my 
Congratulatory Odes is well suited for lyrical 
composition ; and the last poem which I sent you 
was neither amiss in execution, nor inappropri- 
ate in subject. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"March 26, 1820. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" Before I see you, you will receive the Life 
of Wesley,* whereof only about two sheets re- 
main to be printed. Some persons have express- 
ed their expectations that the book will have a 
huge sale. I am much more inclined to think 
that it will obtain a moderate sale and a durable 
reputation. Its merit will hardly be apprecia- 
ted by any person, unless it be compared with 
what his former biographers have done ; then, 
indeed, it would be seen what they have over- 
looked, how completely the composition is my 
own, and what pains it must have required to 
collect together the pieces for this great tessel- 
ated tablet. The book contains many fine things 
— pearls which I have raked out of the dunghill. 
My only merit is that of finding and setting them. 
It contains, also, many odd ones — some that may 
provoke a smile, and some that will touch the 
feelings. In parts I think some of my own best 
writing will be found. It is written with too 
fair a spirit to satisfy any particular set of men. 



* " There are at this day half a million of persona in the 
world (adult persons) calling themselves Methodists, and 
following the institutions of John Wesley ; they are pret- 
ty equally divided between the British dominions and the 
United States of America ; and they go on increasing year 
after year. They have also their missionaries in all parts 
of the world. The rise and progress of such a communi- 
ty is, therefore, neither an incurious nor an unimportant 
part of the history of the last century. I have brought it 
no further than the death of the founder. You will find 
in it some odd things, some odd characters, some fine 
anecdotes, and many valuable facts, which the psycholo- 
gist will know how to appreciate and apply. My humor 
(as it would have been called in the days of Ben Jonson) 
inclines me to hunt out such subjects ; and whether the 
information be contained in goodly and stately folios of 
old times, like my noble Acta Sanctorum (which I shall 
like to show you whenever you will find your way again 
to your old chamber which looks to Borodale), or in mod- 
ern pamphlets of whity-brown paper, I am neither too in- 
dolent to search for it in the one, nor so fastidious as to 
despise it in the other. In proof of this unabated appe- 
tite, I have just begun an account of our old acquaintance 
the Sinner Saved, in the shape of a paper for the Q. R." — 
To Richard Duppa, Esq., March 25, 1820. 



388 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. Ab 



For the ' religious public' it will be too tolerant 
and too philosophical ; for the Liberals it will be 
too devotional; the Methodists will not endure 
any censure of their founder and their institutions ; 
the High-Churchman will as little be able to al- 
low any praise of them. Some will complain of 
it as being heavy and dull ; others will not think 
it serious enough. I shall be abused on all sides, 
Ind you well know how little I shall care for it. 
But there are persons who will find this work 
Jeeply interesting, for the subjects upon which 
it touches, and the many curious psychological 
cases which it contains, and the new world to 
which it will introduce them. I dare say that 
of the twelve thousand purchasers of Murray le 
Magne's Review, nine hundred and ninety-nine 
persons out of a thousand know as little about 
the Methodists as they do about the Cherokees 
or the Chiriguanas. I expect that Henry will 
like it, and also that he will believe in Jeffrey,* 
as I do. 

M God bless you ! R. S." 

In April, May, and June my father was ab- 
sent from home, during which time he visited his 
friend Mr. Wynn, in Wales, spent some weari- 
some weeks in society in and about London, and 
finally received the honorary degree of D.C.L. 
at the Oxford commemoration. 

The following letters are selected, because 
they give some slight idea of that affectionate 
playfulness which, in a character like his, ought 
not to be wholly passed over in silence. 

To Edith May Southey. 

" Shrewsbury, April 25, 1820. 

" Having nothing else to do for a dismal hour or 
two, I sit down to write to you, in such rhymes 
as may ensue, be they many, be they few, ac- 
cording to the cue which I happen to pursue. 
I was obliged to stay at Llangedwin till to-day ; 
though I wished to come away, "Wynn would 
make me delay my departure yesterday, in order 
that he and I might go to see a place whereof he 
once sent a drawing to me. 

" And now I'll tell you why it was proper that 
I should go thither to espy the place with mine 
own eye. 'Tis a church in a vale, whereby hangs 
a tale, how a hare being pressed by the dogs and 
much distressed, the hunters coming nigh and the 
dogs in full cry, looked about for some one to de- 
fend her, and saw just in time, as it now comes 
pat in rhyme, a saint of the feminine gender. 

" The saint was buried there, and a figure 
carved with care, in the church-yard is shown, as 
being her own ; but 'tis used for a whetstone (like 
the stone at our back door), till the pity is the 
more (I should say the more's the pity, if it suit- 
ed with my ditty), it is whetted half away — lack- 
a-day, kck-a-day ! 

" They show a mammoth's rib (was there ever 
such a fib ?), as belonging to the saint Melangel. 
It was no use to wrangle, and tell the simple 



uciuuu ounugc uuiaea wiuca annoy 

-See Life of Wesley, voL i., p. 445. 



people, that if this had been her bone, she must 
certainly have grown to be three times as tall as 
the steeple. 

"Moreover, there is shown a monumental 
stone, as being the tomb of Yorwerth Drwndwn 
(w, you must know, serves in Welsh for long o) . 
In the portfolio there are drawings of their tombs, 
and of the church also. This Yorwerth was kill- 
ed six hundred years ago. Nevertheless, as per- 
haps you may guess, he happened to be an ac- 
quaintance of mine, and therefore I always have 
had a design to pay him a visit whenever I could, 
and now the intention is at last made good. * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

A very different record of the same scenes is 
preserved in my father's poems. One of the 
guests at Llangedwin during his stay there was 
Bishop Heber, and the meeting was remembered 
on both sides, for in Heber's journal there is an 
allusion to Oliver Newman, which must have 
been read to him at this time; and ten years 
later my father embodied, in his lines On the 
Portrait of Bishop Heber, a graceful memorial 
of his friends, and the spots which he visited in 
their company. 

" Ten years have held their course 

Since last I look'd upon 

That living countenance, 

When on Llangedwin's terraces we paced 

Together, to and fro. 

Partaking there its hospitality, 

We with its honor'd master spent, 

Well-pleased, the social hours ; 

His friend and mine — my earliest friend, whom 1 

Have ever, through all changes, found the same, 

From boyhood to gray hairs, 
In goodness, and in worth, and warmth of heart. 

Together then we traced 

The grass-grown site, where armed feet once trod 

The threshold of Glendower's embattled hall ; 

Together sought Melangel's lonely Church, 

Saw the dark yews, majestic in decay, 

Which in their flourishing strength 

Cyveilioc might have seen ; 

Letter by letter traced the lines 

On Yorwerth's fabled tomb ; 

And curiously observed what vestiges, 

Moldering and mutilate, 

Of Monacella's legend there are left, 

A tale humane, itself 

Well-nigh forgotten now."* 

To Bertha, Kate, and Isabel Southey. 

"June 26, 1820. 

"Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, you have been 
very good girls, and have written me very nice 
letters, with which I was much pleased. This 
is the last letter which I can write in return ; 
and as I happen to have a quiet hour to myself, 
here at Streatham, on Monday noon, I will em- 
ploy that hour in relating to you the whole his- 
tory and manner of my being ell -ell-deed at Ox- 
ford by the vice-chancellor. 

"You must know, then, that because I had 
written a great many good books, and more es- 
pecially the Life of Wesley, it was made known 
to me by the vice-chancellor, through Mr. He- 
ber, that the University of Oxford were desirous 
of showing me the only mark of honor in their 



* Jeffrey was the name given to the invisible cause of * In both the ten volume and one volume edition of my 
certain strange noises which annoyed the Wesley family, father's poems, this poem " On the Portrait of Bishop He- 
ber" bears the wrong date of 1820. It was written in 1830. 



ZEtat. 46. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



389 



power to bestow, which was that of making me 
an LL.D. — that is to say, a doctor of laws. 

" Now you are to know that some persons are 
oll-ell-deed every year at Oxford, at the great 
annual meeting which is called the Commemo- 
ration. There are two reasons for this : first, 
that the University may do itself honor by bring- 
ing persons of distinction to receive the degree 
publicly as a mark of honor ; and, secondly, that 
certain persons in inferior offices may share in 
the fees paid by those upon whom the ceremony 
of ell-ell-deeing is performed. For the first of 
these reasons, the Emperor Alexander was made 
a Doctor of Laws at Oxford, the King of Prus- 
sia, and old Blucher, and Platolf; and for the 
second, the same degree is conferred upon no- 
blemen, and persons of fortune and considera- 
tion who are any ways connected with the Uni- 
versity, or city, or county of Oxford. 

" The ceremony of ell-ell-deeing is performed 
in a large circular building called the theater, of 
which I will show you a print when I return, 
and this theater is filled with people. The un- 
der-graduates (that is, the young men who are 
called Cathedrals at Keswick) entirely fill the 
gallery. Under the gallery there are seats, which 
are filled with ladies in full dress, separated from 
the gentlemen. Between these two divisions of 
the ladies are seats for the heads of houses, and 
the doctors of law, physic, and divinity. In the 
middle of these seats is the vice-chancellor, op- 
posite the entrance, which is under the orches- 
tra. On the right and left are two kind of pul- 
pits, from which the prize essays and poems are 
recited. The area, or middle of the theater, is 
filled with bachelors and masters of arts, and 
with as many strangers as can obtain admission. 
Before the steps which lead up to the seats of the 
doctors, and directly in front of the vice-chan- 
cellor, a wooden bar is let down, covered with 
red cloth, and on each side of this the beadles 
stand in their robes. 

" When the theater is full, the vice-chancel- 
lor, and the heads of houses, and the doctors en- 
ter : those persons who are to be ell-ell-deed re- 
main without in the divinity schools, in their 
robes, till the convocation have signified their as- 
sent to the ell-ell-deeing, and then they are led 
into the theater, one after another, in a line, into 
the middle of the area, the people just making a 
lane for them. The professor of civil law, Dr. 
Phillimore, went before, and made a long speech 
in Latin, telling the vice-chancellor and the dig- 
nissimi doctores what excellent persons we were 
who were now to be ell-ell-deed. Then he took 
us one by one by the hand, and presented each 
in his turn, pronouncing his name aloud, saying 
who and what he was, and calling him many laud- 
atory names ending in issimus. The audience 
then cheered loudly to show their approbation of 
the person ; the vice-chanoellor stood up, and re- 
peating the first words in issime, ell-ell-deed him ; 
the beadles lifted up the bar of separation, and 
the new-made doctor went up the steps and took 
his seat among the dignissimi doctores. 

" Oh Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, if you had seen 



me that day ! I was like other issimis, dressed 
in a great robe of the finest scarlet cloth, with 
sleeves of rose-colored silk, and I had in my 
hand a black velvet cap like a beef-eater, for the 
use of which dress I paid one guinea for that 
day. Dr. Phillimore, who was an old school- 
fellow of mine, and a very good man, took me 
by the hand in my turn, and presented me ; upon 
which there was a great clapping of hands and 
huzzaing at my name. When that was over, the 
vice-chancellor stood up, and said these words, 
whereby I was ell-ell-deed : ' Doctissime et or- 
natissime vir, ego, pro auctoritate mea et totius 
universitatis hujus, admitto te ad gradum doc- 
toris in jure civili, honoris causa..' These were 
the words which ell-ell-deed me ; and then the 
bar was lifted up, and I seated myself among 
the doctors. 

" Little girls, you know it might be proper for 
me, now, to wear a large wig, and to be called 
Doctor Southey, and to become very severe, and 
leave off being a comical papa. And if you 
should find that ell-ell-deeing has made this dif- 
ference in me, you will not be surprised. How- 
ever, I shall not come down in a wig, neither 
shall I wear my robes at home. 

" God bless you all! 

" Your affectionate father, 

" R. Southey." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, July 6, 1820. 
" My dear Neville, 

"There is no better proof that two fellow- 
travelers are upon a proper understanding with 
each other than when they travel together for a 
good length of time in silence, each thinking his 
own thoughts, and neither of them feeling it nec- 
essary to open his lips for the sake of politeness. 
So it is with real friends : I have not written to 
congratulate you on your change of state till 
now, because I could not do it at leisure, I would 
not do it hastily, and / knew that you knew how 
completely every day, hour, and minute of my 
time must be occupied in London. Never, in- 
deed, was I involved in a more incessant suc- 
cession of wearying and worrying engagements 
from morning till night, day after day, without 
intermission ; here, thei-e, and every where, with 
perpetual changes of every kind, except the 
change of tranquillity and rest. During an ab- 
sence of nearly eleven weeks, I seldom slept 
more than three nights successively in the same 
bed. At length, God be thanked, I am once 
more seated by my own fireside — perhaps it is 
the only fire in Keswick at this time ; but, like 
a cat and a cricket, my habits or my nature have 
taught me to love a warm hearth ; so I sit with 
the windows open, and enjoy at the same time 
the breath of the mountains and the heat of a 
sea-coal fire. 

" And now, my dear Neville, I heartily wish 
you all that serious, sacred, and enduring hap- 
piness in marriage which you have proposed to 
yourself, and which, as far as depends upon your- 
self, you have every human probability of find- 



390 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



.32 TAT. 46 



ing, and I make no doubt as far as depends upon 
your consort also. Such drawbacks as are in- 
separable from our present imperfect state, and 
such griefs as this poor flesh is heir to, you must 
sometimes expect, and will know how to bear. 
But the highest temporal blessings as certainly 
attend upon a well-regulated and virtuous course 
of conduct now as they did during the Mosaic 
dispensation ; for what other blessings are com- 
parable to tranquillity of mind, resignation un- 
der the afflictive dispensations of Providence, 
faith, hope, and that peace which passeth all un- 
derstanding? However bitter upon the palate 
the good man's cup may be, this is the savor 
which it leaves ; whatever his future may be, 
his happiness depends upon himself, and must be 
his own work. In this sense, I am sure you will 
be a happy man ; may you be a fortunate one 
also. 

"I had the comfort of finding all my family 
well, the children thoroughly recovered from the 
measles, though some of them somewhat thinner, 
and the mother a good deal so, from the anxiety 
and the fatigue which she had undergone during 
their illness. You hardly yet know how great 
a blessing it is for a family to have got through 
that disease — one of the passes perilous upon the 
pilgrimage of life. Cuthbert had not forgotten 
me ; five minutes seemed to bring me to his rec- 
ollection ; he is just beginning to walk alone — a 
fine, stout, good-humored creature, with curling 
hair, and eyes full of intelligence. How difficult 
it is not to build one's hopes upon a child like this. 
u I am returned to a world of business ; enough 
to intimidate any one of less habitual industry, 
less resolution, or less hopefulness of spirit. My 
time will be sadly interrupted by visitors, who, 
with more or less claims, find their way to me 
during the season from all parts. However, little 
by little, I shall get on with many things, of 
which the first in point of time will be the long- 
intended Book of the Church. I told you, if I 
recollect rightly, what the Bishop of London had 
said to me concerning the Life of Wesley. You 
will be glad to hear that Lord Liverpool ex- 
pressed to me the same opinion when I met him 
at Mr. Canning's, and said that it was a book 
which could not fail of doing a great deal of 
good. Had that book been written by a clergy- 
man, it would have made his fortune beyond all 
doubt. But it will do its work better as having 
come from one who could have had no view to 
preferment, nor any undue bias upon his mind. 
If I live, I shall yet do good service both to the 
Church and State. 

" My visit to Oxford brought with it feelings 
of the most opposite kind. After the exhibition 
m the theater, and the collation in Brazen-nose 
Hall given by the vice-chancellor, I went alone 
into Christ Church walks, where I had not been 
for six-and-twenty years. Of the friends with 
whom I used to walk there, many (and among 
them some of the dearest) were in their graves. 
I was then inexperienced, headstrong, and as 
full of errors as of youth, and hope, and ardor. 
Through the mercy of God, I have retained the 



whole better part of my nature ; and as for the 
lapse of years, that can never be a mournful con- 
sideration to one who hopes to be ready for a 
better world whenever his hour may come. God 
bless you! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 29, 1830. 
"My Dear Gkosvenor, 
" It is very seldom that a whole month elapses 
without some interchange of letters between you 
and me ; and, for my part, in the present in- 
stance, I can not plead any unusual press of 
business, or any remarkable humor of industry. 
But, then, I can plead a great deal of enjoyment. 
I have been staying in the house all day — a great 
happiness after the hard service upon which my 
ten trotters were continually kept in London. I 
have been reading — a great luxury for one who 
during eleven weeks had not half an hour for 
looking through a book. I have been playing 
with Cuthbert, giving him the Cries of London 
to the life, as the accompaniment to a series of 
prints thereof, and enacting lion, tiger, bull, bear, 
horse, ass, elephant, rhinoceros, tfte laughing hy- 
ena, owl, cuckoo, peacock, turkey, rook, raven, 
magpie, cock, duck, and goose, &c, greatly to 
his delight and somewhat to his edification, for 
never was there a more apt or more willing pu- 
pil. Whenever he comes near the study door, 
he sets up a shout, which seldom fails of pro- 
ducing an answer ; in he comes, tottering along, 
with a smile upon his face, and pica pica in his 
mouth ; and if the picture-book is not forthwith 
forthcoming, he knows its place upon the shelf, 
and uses most ambitious and persevering efforts 
to drag out a folio. And if this is not a proper 
excuse for idleness, Grosvenor, what is ? 

" But I have not been absolutely idle, only 
comparatively so. I have made ready about five 
sheets of the Peninsular War for the press (the 
main part, indeed, was transcription), and Will- 
iam Nicol will have it as soon as the chapter is fin- 
ished. I have written an account of Derwent 
Water for Westall's Views of the Lakes. I have 
begun the Book of the Church, written half a 
dialogue between myself and Sir Thomas More, 
composed seventy lines for Oliver Newman, 
opened a Book of Collections for the Moral and 
Literary History of England, and sent to Long 
man for materials for the Life of George Fox 
and the Origin and Progress of Quakerism, a 
work which will be quite as curious as the Wes- 
ley, and about half the length. Make allow- 
ances for letter writing (which consumes far too 
great a portion of my time), and for the inter- 
ruptions of the season, and this account of the 
month will not be so bad as to subject me to any 
very severe censure of my stewardship. 

" The other day there came a curious letter 
from Shelley, written from Pisa. Some of his 
friends persisted in assuring him that I was the 
author of a criticism* concerning him in the 
Quarterly Review. From internal evidence, and 

* My father was not the writer of this article. 






JEtat. 47. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



391 



from what he knew of me, he did not and would 
not believe it ; nevertheless, they persisted ; and 
he writes that I may enable him to confirm his 
opinion. The letter then, still couched in very 
courteous terms, talks of the principles and slan- 
derous practices of the pretended friends of order, 
as contrasted with those which he professes, hints 
at challenging the writer of the Review, if he 
should be a person with whom it would not be 
beneath him to contend, tells me he shall cer- 
tainly hear from me, because he must interpret 
my silence into an acknowledgment of the offense, 
and concludes with Dear-Sir-Ship and civility. 
If I had an amanuensis, I would send you copies 
of this notable epistle, and of my reply to it. 
" God bless you, Grosvenor ' 



" Yours as ever, 



R. S." 



To Bernard Barton, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 24, 1820. 
" My dear Sir, 

" In reply to your questions concerning the 
Life of George Fox, the plan of the work re- 
sembles that of the Life of Wesley as nearly as 
possible. Very little progress has been made in 
the composition, but a good deal in collecting 
materials, and digesting the order of their ar- 
rangement. The first chapter will contain a 
summary history of the religious or irreligious 
dissensions in England, and their consequences, 
from the rise of the Lollards to the time when 
George Fox went forth. This will be such an 
historical sketch as that view of our ecclesiastical 
history in the life of Wesley, which is the most 
elaborate portion of the work. The last chapter 
will probably contain a view of the state of the 
society at this time, and the modification and im- 
provement which it has gradual!}', and almost 
insensibly received. This part, whenever it is 
written, and all those parts wherein I may be in 
danger of forming erroneous inferences from an 
imperfect knowledge of the subject, I shall take 
care to show to some member of the society be- 
fore it is printed. The general spirit and tend- 
ency of the book will, I doubt not, be thought 
favorable by the Quakers as well as to them ; 
and the more so by the judicious, because com- 
mendation comes with tenfold weight from one 
who does not dissemble his own difference of 
opinion upon certain main points. Perhaps in the 
course of the work I may avail myself of your 
friendly offer, ask you some questions as they oc- 
cur, and transmit certain parts for your inspection. 

" Farewell, my dear sir, and believe me, 
" Yours, with much esteem, 

" Robert Southey." 

It would seem that a rumor had got abroad at 
this time that the Society of Friends were some- 
what alarmed at the prospect of my father's be- 
coming the biographer of their founder ; for, a 
few weeks later, Bernard Barton writes to him, 
telling him that he had seen it stated in one of 
the magazines that " Mr. Southey could not pro- 
cure the needful materials, owing to a reluctance 
on the part of the Quakers to intrust them to him." 



And he goes on to say : " But although I have 
stated that I see no objection to intrusting thee 
with any materials which thou mayest consider 
at all essential to thy undertaking, I think I can 
see, and I doubt not thou dost, why some little 
hesitation should exist in certain quarters. Thy 
name is, of course, more likely to be known a.s 
that of a poet ; and though poets as well as po- 
etry are, I should hope, of rather increasing good 
repute among us, yet some distrust of their salu 
tary tendency, which too much of our modern 
I poetry may perhaps justify, still, perhaps, oper- 
ates to their disadvantage. Then, again, many 
of us are very plain matter-of-fact sort of people, 
making little allowance for poetical license, and 
little capable of appreciating the pure charm and 
hidden moral of superstition and legendary lore. 
Now supposing thy Old Woman of Berkeley — 
St. Romuald — the Pope, the Devil, and St. An- 
tidius — or the Love Elegies of Abel Shufflcbot- 
tom, to have fallen in the way of such personages, 
and then for them to be abruptly informed that 
the author of them was about compiling a Life 
of George Fox, &c, thou wilt, I think, at once 
see a natural and obvious cause for hesitation in 
really very respectable and good sort of people, 
but with little of poetry in them." 

In this there is some reason as well as some 
humor ; the report, however, was without founda- 
tion ; and it was not from want of the offer of 
sufficient materials that the Life of George Fox 
was never written. Other labors crowded close- 
ly one upon the other, and this was only one more 
to be added to the heap of unfulfilled intentions 
and half-digested plans which form the melan- 
choly reliquiae of my father's literary life, leaving 
us, however, to wonder, not at what he left un 
done, but at what he did. 

To W. Westall, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 8, 1820. 
" My dear Westall, 

"Your letter arrived yesterday, by which post, 
you know (being Thursday), it could not be an 
swered. By this night's I shall write to Murray, 
saying that you will deliver the drawings to him, 
and informing him of the price. That. they have 
in them that which is common to poetry and 
painting I do not do\ibt, and I only wish it were 
possible for you to engrave them yourself. The 
first edition of the book would then bear a high 
value hereafter. In describing that scene on the 
side of Walla Crag, I have introduced your name 
in a manner gratifying to my own feelings, and 
which I hope will not be otherwise to yours. 

"I am glad to hear you are employed upon 
your views of Winandermere. My topographical 
knowledge in that quarter is but imperfect ; but, 
when you want your letter-press, if you can nol 
persuade Wordsworth to write it (who would be 
in all respects the best person), I will do for you 
the best I can. 

" Allow me to say one thing before I conclude. 
When you were last at Keswick there was an 
uncomfortable feeling in your mind toward Nash . 
I hope it has passed away. There is not a kind- 



392 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF M tat. 47. 



er-hearted creature in the world than he is ; and 
I know that he has the truest regard for you, and 
the highest possible respect for your genius. Any 
offense that he may have given was entirely un- 
intentional. Forget it, I entreat you : call upon 
him again as you were wont to do ; it will re- 
joice him, and you will not feel the worse for 
having overcome the feeling of resentment. I 
need not apologize for saying this ; for, indeed, 
I could not longer forbear saying it, consistent 
with my regard both for him and for you. 

"All here desire their kind remembrances. 
We can not send them to Mrs. Westall, because 
you did not give us an opportunity of becoming 
known to her ; but, I pray you, present our best 
wishes, and believe me, 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

The prints referred to in the commencement 
of the foregoing letter were for the Colloquies 
with Sir Thomas More. The concluding para- 
graph of it had a special interest in Mr. West- 
all's eyes, as, with a rare willingness to receive 
such advice, he had immediately acted upon it, 
and renewed his friendly intercourse with Mr. 
Nash. And he reflected upon it with the more 
satisfaction, as a few weeks only elapsed before 
Nash was suddenly cut off. 

Nash was a mild, unassuming, and most ami- 
able person, bearing meekly and patiently a se- 
vere bodily infirmity, which, in its consequences, 
caused his death. My father first became ac- 
quainted with him in Belgium in 1815 : he spent 
several summers at Greta Hall, a guest dear both 
to young and old ; and to his and to Mr. W. 
Westall's pencil the walls of our home owed 
many of their most beloved ornaments. 

Since the commencement of the publication of 
this volume, Mr. Westall has also " departed to 
his rest ;" and I will take this opportunity of 
noticing the sincere regard my father entertain- 
ed for him as a friend, and the estimation in which 
he held him as an artist, considering him as by 
far the most faithful delineator of the scenery of 
the Lakes. 

His death has taken away one more from the 
small surviving number of those who were famil- 
iar "household guests" at Greta Hall, and to 
whom every minute particular of the friend they 
so truly loved and honored had its own especial 
interest. 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Dec. 14, 1820. 
" My dear Neville, 

I shall have a poem to send you in the course of 
a few weeks, planned upon occasion of the king's 
death (which you may think no very promising 
subject), laid aside eight months ago, when half 
written, as not suited for publication while the 
event was recent, and now taken up again, and 
almost brought to a conclusion. The title is, 
' A Vision of Judgment.' It is likely to attract 
bome notice, because I have made — and, in my 



own opinion, with success — the bold experiment 
of constructing a meter upon the principle of the 
ancient hexameter. It will provoke some abuse 
for what is said of the factious spirit by which 
the country has been disturbed during the last 
fifty years ; and it will have some interest for 
you, not merely because it comes from me, but 
because you will find Henry's name not improp- 
erly introduced in it. My laureateship has not 
been a sinecure : without reckoning the annual 
odes, which have regularly been supplied, though 
I have hitherto succeeded in withholding them 
from publication, I have written, as laureate, 
more upon public occasions (on none of which I 
should otherwise have ever composed a line) than 
has been written by any person w T ho ever held the 
office before, with the single exception of Ben 
Jonson, if his Masques are taken into the ac- 
count. 

The prevailing madness has reached Kes- 
wick,* as well as other places ; and the people 
here, who believe, half of them, that the king con- 
cealed his father's death ten years for the sake of 
receiving his allowance, and that he poisoned the 
Princess Charlotte (of which, they say, there can 
be no doubt ; for did not the doctor kill himself? 
and why should he have done that if it had not 
been for remorse of conscience?), believe, with 
the same monstrous credulity, that the queen is a 
second Susannah. The Queenomania will prob- 
ably die away ere long, but it will be succeeded 
by some new excitement ; and so we shall go on 
as long as our government suffers itself to be in- 
sulted and menaced with impunity, and as long 
as our ministers are either unwilling or afraid to 
exert the laws in defense of the institutions of the 
country. 

" I have a book in progress upon the state of 
the country, its existing evils, and its prospects. 
It is in a series of dialogues, and I hope it will 
not be read without leading some persons both 
to think and to feel as they ought. In more than 
one instance I have had the satisfaction of being 
told that my papers in the Quarterly Review have 
confirmed some who were wavering in their opin- 
ions, and reclaimed others who were wrong. * 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 5, 1821. 
" My dear G., 
" As for altering the movement of the six stan- 
zas,! you may as well ask me for both my ears, 



* Some riots had been expected on the occasion of the 
queen's trial. My father writes at the time, " King Mob, 
contrary to his majesty's custom, has borne his faculties 
meekly in this place, and my windows were not assailed 
on the night of the illumination. I was prepared to suffer 
like a Quaker ; and my wife was much more ' game' than 
I expected. Perhaps we owed our security to the half 
dozen persons in town who also chose to light no candles. 
They had declared their intention of making a tight for it 
if they were attacked, and they happened to be persons 
of consideration and influence. So all went off peaceably. 
The tallow chandler told our servant that it was expected 
there would be great disturbances ; this was a hint to me, 
but I was too much a Trojan to be taken in by the man of 
grease."— To G. C. B., Nov. 17, 1820. 

t Of the Ode for St. George's Day, published with the 
| Vision of Judgment. 



iEi'AT. 47. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



393 



>r advise me to boil the next haunch of venison 
I ma)' have, which, next to poaching a Simorg's* 
egg, would, I conceive, be the most inexpiable 
of offenses. I cast them purposely in that move- 
ment, and with forethought. 

" Why should the rest of the world think mean- 
ly of me for offering a deserved compliment to 
Haydon ?t or for what possible reason consider 
it as a piece of flattery to a man who might fancy 
it his interest to flatter me, but whom I can have 
no imaginable motive for nattering ? That point, 
however, you will press no further when I tell 
you that the very day after the passage was writ- 
ten Haydon himself unexpectedly appeared — that 
I read him the poem as far as it had then proceed- 
ed — and that he, who, from the nature of his pro- 
fession, desires cotemporary praise more than any 
thing in the world except abiding fame, values 
it quite as much as it is worth. You have shown 
me that I was mistaken about Handel, yet I 
think the lines may stand, because the king's 
patronage of his music is an honorable fact. 

" I have to insert Sir P. Sidney among the 
elder worthies, and Hogarth among the later ; 
perhaps Johnson also, if I can so do it as to sat- 
isfy myself with the expression, and not seem to 
give him a higher praise than he deserves. Of- 
fense I know will be taken that the name of Pitt 
does not appear there. The king would find 
him among the eminent men of his reign, but 
not among those whose rank will be confirmed 
by posterity. The Whigs, too, will observe that 
none of their idols are brought forward : neither 
Hampden, nor their Sidney, nor Russell. I think 
of the first as ill as Lord Clarendon did ; and 
concerning Algernon Sidney, it is certain that 
he suffered wrongfully, but that does not make 
him a great man. If I had brought forward any 
man of that breed, it should have been old Oli- 
ver himself; and I had half a mind to do it. 

" I have finished the explanatory part of the 
preface, touching the meter — briefly, fully, clear- 
ly, and fairly. It has led me (which you will 
think odd till you see the connection) to pay off 
a part of my obligations to Lord Byron and 

, by some observations upon the tendency 

of their poems (especially Don Juan), which 
they will appropriate to themselves in what pro- 
portion they please. If knew how much 

his character has suffered by that transaction 
about Don Juan, I think he would hang himself. 
And if Gifford knew what is said and thought 
of the Q. R. for its silence concerning that infa- 
mous poem, I verily believe it would make him 
ill. Upon that subject I say nothing. God bless 
you ! R. S." 

To the Rev. Neville White 

" Keswick, Jan. 12, 1821. 
" My dear Neville, 
" It appears to me that whatever time you 
bestow upon the classics is little better than time 
lost. Classical attainments are not necessary 

* See Thalaba, book xi., verse 10. 
t This refers to an allusion to Haydon in the Vision of 
Judgment. 



for you, and even if you were ten years youn- 
ger than you are, they would not be within your 
reach. This you yourself feel ; you had better, 
thei-efore, make up your mind to be contented 
without them, and desist from a study which it 
is quite impossible for you to pursue with any 
advantage to yourself. 

" My dear Neville, it is a common infirmity 
with us to overvalue what we do not happen to 
possess. In your education you have learned 
much which is not acquired in schools and col- 
leges, but> which is of great practical utility — 
more, probably, than you would now find it if 
you had taken a wrangler's degree or ranked as 
a medallist. You have mingled among men of 
buiness. You know their good and their evil, 
the characters which are formed by trade, and 
the temptations which are incident to it. You 
have acquired a knowledge of the existing con- 
stitution of society, and situated as you will be, 
in or near a great city, and in a trading coun- 
try, this will be of much more use to you pro- 
fessionally than any university accomplishments. 
Knowing the probable failings of your flock, you 
will know what warnings will be most applica- 
ble, and what exhortations will be most likely 
to do them good. 

" The time which classical studies would take 
may be much more profitably employed upon 
history and books of travels. The better you are 
read in both, the more you will prize the pe- 
culiar blessings which this country enjoys in its 
constitution of Church and State, and more es- 
pecially in the former branch. I could write 
largely upon this theme. The greater part of 
the evil in the world — that is, all the evil in it 
which is remediable (and which I take to be at 
least nine tenths of the whole) — arises either 
from the want of institutions, as among savages ; 
from imperfect ones, as among barbarians ; or 
from bad ones, as in point of government among 
the ( iriental nations ; and in point of religion 
amor.g them also, and in the intolerant Catholic 
countries. In your own language you will find 
all you need — scriptural illustrations, and stores 
of knowledge of every kind. 

" What you say concerning my correspond- 
ence, and the latitude which you allow me, is 
both kind and considerate, as is always to be ex- 
pected from Neville White. I do not, however, 
so easily forgive myself when a long interval of 
silence has been suffered to elapse. A letter is 
like a fresh billet of wood upon the fire, which, 
if it be not needed for immediate warmth, is al- 
ways agreeable for its exhilarating effects. I, 
who spend so many hours alone, love to pass a 
portion of them in conversing thus with those 
whom I love. 

" You will be grieved to hear that I have lost 
my poor friend Nash, whom you saw with us in the 
autumn. He left us at the beginning of Novem- 
ber, and is now in his grave ! This has been a 
severe shock to me. I had a most sincere re- 
gard for him, and very many pleasant recollec- 
tions are now so changed by his death, that they 
will never recur without pain. He was so thor- 



394 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 47 



oughly amiable, so sensible of any little kindness 
that was shown him, so kind in all his thoughts, 
words, and deeds, and, withal, bore his cross so 
patiently and meekly, that every body who knew 
him respected him and loved him. Very few 



circumstances could have affected me more 
ly than his loss. 

"Remember me most kindly to your excel- 
lent mother and to your sisters. You are happy 
in having had your parents spared to you so long. 
The moral influences of a good old age upon the 
hearts of youth and manhood can not be appre- 
ciated too highly. "We are all well at present, 
thank God. God bless you, my dear Neville ! 
" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 26, 1821. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

" Yesterday evening I received ' Roderic, Der- 
nier Roi des Goths, Poeme tradui de 1' Anglais 
de Robert Southey, Esq., Poete Laureat, par M. 
le Chevalier * * *.' Printed at Versailles, and 
published at Paris by Galignani. It was ac- 
companied by a modest and handsome letter from 
the translator, M. Chevalier de Sagrie, and by 
another from Madame St. Anne Holmes, the lady 
to whom it is dedicated. This lady has former- 
ly favored me with some letters and with a trag- 
edy of hers, printed at Angers. She is a very 
clever woman, and writes almost as beautiful a 
hand as Miss Ponsonby of Llangollen. She is 
rich, and has lived in high life, and writes a 
great deal about Sheridan, as having been very 
intimate with him in his latter years. Me, Mr. 
Bedford, unworthy as I am, this lady has chosen 
for her po'ete favori, and by her persuasions the 
chevalier has translated Roderic into French. 
This is not all : there is a part of the business 
which is so truly booksellerish in general, and 
French in particular, that it would be a sin to 
withhold it from you, and you shall have it in the 
very words of my correspondent St. Anne. 

" ' There is one part of the business I can not 
pass over in silence : it has shocked me much, 
and calls for an apology ; which is — The Life 
of Robert Southey, Esq., P.L. It never could 
have entered my mind to be guilty of, or even 
to sanction, such an impertinence. But the fact 
is this : the printer and publisher, Mr. Le Bel, 
of the Royal Printing-office Press in Versailles 
(printers, by-the-by, are men of much greater 
importance here than they are in England), in- 
sisted upon having the life. He said the French 
know nothing of M. Southey, and in order to make 
the work sell, it must be managed to interest 
them for the author. To get rid of his importu- 
nities, we said we were not acquainted with the 
life of Mr. Southey. Would you believe it ? this 
was verbatim his answer : " N'iniporte ! ecrivez 
toujours, brodez ! brodez-la un peu, que ce soit 
vrai ou non ce ne fait rien ; qui prendra la peine 
de s'informer ?" Terrified lest this ridiculous 
man should succeed in his point, I at last yield- 
ed, and sent to London, to procure all the lives ; 



and from them, and what I had heard from my 
dear departed friend, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 
we drew up the memoir.' 

"Grosvenor, whoever writes my life when the 
subject has an end as well as a beginning, and 
does not insert this biographical anecdote in it, 
may certainly expect that I will pull his ears in 
a true dream, and call him a jackass. 

" The Notice sur M. Southey, which has been 
thus compounded, has scarcely one single point 
accurately stated, as you may suppose, and not 
a few which are ridiculously false. NHmporte, 
as M. Le Bel says, I have laughed heartily at 
the whole translation, and bear the translation 
with a magnanimity which would excite the as- 
tonishment and envy of Wordsworth, if he were 
here to witness it. I have even gone beyond 
the Quaker principle of bearing injuries meekly : 
I have written to thank the inflicter. Happily 
it is in prose, and the chevalier has intended to 
be faithful, and has, I believe, actually abstained 
from any interpolations. But did }*ou ever hear 
me mention a fact worthy of notice, which I ob- 
served myself — that wherever a breed of pea- 
cocks is spoiled by mixture with a white one. 
birds that escape the degeneracy in every othei 
part of their plumage show it rn the eye of the 
feather ? The fact is very curious ; where the 
perfection of nature's work is required, there it 
fails. This affords an excellent illustration for 
the version now before me ; every where the 
eye of the feather is defective. It would be im- 
possible more fully to exemplify how completely 
a man may understand the general meaning of a 
passage, and totally miss its peculiar force and 
character. The name of M. Bedford appears in 
the Notice, with the error that he was one of my 
College friends, and the fact that Joan of Arc 
was written at his house. The dedication to him 
is omitted. 

" God bless you ! R. S. 

" What a grand bespattering of abuse 1 shall 
have when the Vision appears ! Your walk at 
the Proclamation was but a type of it — only that 
I am booted and coated, and of more convenient 
stature for the service. Pelt away, my boys, 
pelt away ! if you were not busy at that work, 
you would be about something more mischiev- 
ous. Abusing me is like flogging a whipping- 
post. Harry says I have had so much of it that 
he really thinks I begin to like it. This is cer- 
tain, that nothing vexes me except injudicious- 
and exaggerated praise, e. g., when my French 
friends affirm that Roderic is acknowledged to 
be a better poem than the Paradise Lost. 1 1" 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswiok, March 4, 1821. 
" My dear Friend, 
" Yesterday I received a letter from my uncle 
with the news of Miss Tyler's death, an event 
which you will probably have learned before this 
reaches you. My uncle is thus telieved from a 
considerable charge, and from the apprehension 
which he must have felt of her surviving him. 



^Etat. 47. 



ROBEPvT SOUTHEY. 



395 



She was in the eighty-second year of her age. 
She will be interred (to-morrow, I suppose) in 
the burial-place of the Hills, where her mother 
and two of the Tylers are laid, and my father 
with five of my brothers and sisters. 

" Her death was, even for herself, to be desir- 
ed as well as expected. My affection for her 
had been long and justly canceled. I feel no 
grief, therefore ; but such an event of necessity 
presses for a while like a weight upon the mind. 
Had it not been for the whim which took her to 
Lisbon in the year of my birth, you and I should 
never have known each other ; my uncle would 
never have seen Portugal, and in how different 
a course would his life and mine, in consequence, 
have run ! I have known many strange charac- 
ters in my time, but never so extraordinary a 
one as hers, which, of course, I know intimately. 
I shall come to it in due course, and sooner than 
you may expect, from the long intervals between 
my letters. 

" Yesterday's post brought me also an intima- 
tion from my musical colleague, Mr. Shield, that 
1 our most gracious and royal master intends to 
command the performance of an Ode at St. 
James's on the day fixed for the celebration of 
his birth-day.' Of course, therefore, my imme- 
diate business is to get into harness and work in 
the mill. Two or three precious days will be 
spent in producing what will be good for noth- 
ing ; for as for making any thing good of a birth- 
day ode, I might as well attempt to manufacture 
silk purses from sows' ears. Like Warton, I 
shall give the poem an historical character ; but 
I shall not do this as well as Warton, who has 
done it very well. He was a happy, easy-mind- 
ed, idle man, to whom literature in its turn was 
as much an amusement as rat-hunting, and who 
never' aimed at any thing above such odes. 

" March 20. — I now send you the fourth let- 
ter of the promised series, dated at the begin- 
ning nearly four months before it was brought to 
an end. Were I to proceed always at this rate 
with it, I should die of old age before I got ! 
breeched in the narrative ; but with all my un- | 
dertakings, I proceed faster in proportion as I 
advance in them. Just now I am in the humor 
for going on ; and you will hear from me again 
sooner than you expect, for I shall begin the next 
letter as soon as this packet is dispatched. It is 
a long while since I have heard from you, and I 
am somewhat anxious to hear how your affair 
goes on in Brazil. If Grande Marquez could 
have been raised from the dead, he would have 
had courage and capacity to have modeled both 
countries according to the circumstances of the 
age. But I am more anxious about the manner 
in which these events may affect you, than con- 
cerning their general course ; that is in the will 
of Providence ; and with regard to the state of 
the Peninsula and of Italy, I really see so much 
evil on both sides, and so much good intent act- 
ing erroneously on both, that if I could turn the 
scale with a wiSh, I should not dare to do it. 
'* God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 15, 1821. 
"Mr. Bedford — Sir, 

I have received invitations to dine with the Lit- 
erary Fund # # # and with the 
Artists' Benevolent Institution. These compli- 
ments were never before paid me. Cobbett, 
also, has paid me a compliment equally well- 
deserved and of undoubted sincerity. He marks 
me by name as one of those persons who, when 
the Radicals shall have effected a reformation, 
are, as one of the first measures of the new gov- 
ernment, to be executed. As a curious contrast 
to this, the committee of journeymen who pro- 
pose to adopt what is practicable and useful in 
Owen's plan, quote in their Report the eleventh 
stanza of my ode,* written in Dec., 1814. as,de- 
serving ' to be written in diamonds.' This is the 
first indication of a sort of popularity which, in 
process of time, I shall obtain and keep, for the 
constant tendency of whatever I have written 
# # # Wordsworth was with me last 
week. Oddly enough, while I have been em- 
ployed upon the Book of the Church, he has been 
writing a series of historical sonnets upon the 
same subjects, of the very highest species of ex- 
cellence. My book will serve as a running com- 
mentary to his series, and the one will very ma- 
terially help the other ; and thus, without any 
concerted purpose, we shall go down to posterity 
in companv. *.*#■*** 
" God bless you ! R. S." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

the vision of judgment lord byron mr. 

Jeffrey's opinion of his writings — words- 
worth's ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS STATE 

OF SPAIN SCARCITY OF GREAT STATESMEN 

THE ECKUV (3dOl/itK7J HOBBES'S BEHEMOTH 

FAILURE OF AN ATTEMPT TO RECOVER SOME 

FAMILY ESTATES LONELY FEELINGS AT OX- 
FORD THE VISION OF JUDGMENT APPROVED 

BY THE KING AMERICAN VISITORS DISAP- 
PROVAL OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE QUARTER- 
LY REVIEW TOWARD AMERICA AMERICAN 

DIVINITY ACCOUNT OF NETHERHALL BOHE- 
MIAN LOTTERY HAMPDEN A NEW CANDI- 
DATE FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE GAME 
LAWS STATE OF IRELAND SIR EDWARD DE- 



* The following is the stanza here referred to : 

'Train up thy children, England, in the ways 
Of righteousness, and feed them with the bread 
Of wholesome doctrine. Where hast thou thy mines 

But in their industry ? 
Thy bulwarks where, but in their breasts ? 

Thy might, but in their arms 1 
Shall not their numbers, therefore, be thy wealth, 
Thy strength, thy power, thy safety, and thy pride ? 

Oh grief, then, grief and shame, 

If in this flourishing land 
There should be dwellings where the new-born babe 

Doth bring unto its parent's soul no joy ; 

Where squalid poverty 

Receives it at its birth, 

And on her withered knees 
Gives it the scanty food of discontent." 



396 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat.47 



RING DECREE OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT 

SPANISH AMERICA HUMBOLDT'S TRAVELS 

STATE OF ITALY, OF SPAIN, AND OF ENGLAND. 
—1821. 

The Vision of Judgment was now, at last, 
published, and my father had not overrated the 
measure of opposition and abuse with which its 
appearance would be hailed. Nor was this at 
all to be wondered at ; for, besides the unfriend- 
ly criticisms of his avowed enemies and oppo- 
nents, the poem, both in its plan and execution, 
could not fail to give offense to many of those 
persons most disposed to receive favorably the 
productions of his pen. The editor hopes he 
will not be thought chargeable with any want of 
filial respect if he thinks it right here to express 
his own regret that such a subject should have 
been chosen, as, however solemnly treated, it 
can hardly be said to be clear from the charge of 
being an injudicious attempt to fathom mysteries 
too deep for human comprehension ; and it must 
be allowed, that to speculate upon the condition 
of the departed, especially when under the influ- 
ence of strong political feelings, is a bold, if not 
a presumptuous undertaking. 

My father adopted, as we have seen, his lead- 
ing thoughts from Dante's great poem, not re- 
flecting that Dante himself, if it were not for the 
halo thrown around him by his antiquity and the 
established fame of his transcendant genius com- 
bined, would in these days be very offensive to 
many sincerely religious minds. 

But while undoubtedly the Vision of Judgment 
had the effect of shocking the feelings of many 
excellent persons, the storm of abuse which greet- 
ed its author did not come from them, nor did 
it arise from any regret that spiritual matters 
should be thus handled. It was the preface and 
not the poem which called them forth. 

Now, whatever may be the opinion which any 
person may form of my father's writings, one 
thing has always been conceded — that in none 
of them did he appeal to the darker passions of 
human nature, or seek to administer pernicious 
stimulants to a depraved taste ; that in none did 
he paint vice in alluring colors, calling evil good 
and good evil ; and that in all of them there is 
a constant recognition of the duties, the privi- 
leges, and the hopes derived from revealed re- 
ligion. 

There was, therefore, a perfect contrast be- 
tween his writings and those of some of the most 
popular authors of that day ; and in the Quarter- 
ly Review he often used unsparing language con- 
cerning those writers who were in the habit of 
spreading among the people Free-thinking opin- 
ions in religion, and base doctrines in morals. 

These things would naturally create a bitter 
enmity against him in the minds of all who, ei- 
ther by their own acts or by sympathy, were im- 
plicated in such proceedings ; and the more def- 
inite and pointed remarks which he took occa- 
sion to make in his preface to the Vision of Judg- 
ment upon the principles and tendencies of these 
writers, wound up his offenses to a climax in 



their estimation, and set in motion the array of 
opposition and invective to which I have just al- 
luded. Before, however, noticing more particu- 
larly the remarks themselves, and the rejoinder 
and counter-rejoinder they called forth, we will 
look a little at the relative position of the parties 
with respect to their writings. 

Lord Byron, as is well known, in his English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, had satirized my 
father in common with many others, but not in 
any peculiarly objectionable manner ; and when, 
as has been noticed, they met once or twice in 
London society in the year 1813, it was with all 
outward courtesy. From that time Lord Byron 
became year after year more notorious, and his 
writings more objectionable in their tendency. 
But while my father could not but greatly dis- 
approve of many portions of them, he had been 
far too busily emplo3*ed to trouble himself much 
about Lord Byron. He rarely alludes to him in 
his letters ; for every allusion that I have found, 
I have printed. For some years he had made 
it a rule never to review poetry ; and while he 
regarded him as a man of the highest talents, 
using them in a manner greatly to be lamented, 
and notoriously profligate as to his private life, 
he had never said this in print, and rarely seems 
to have spoken of him at all. 

Lord Byron, on the other hand, appears to have 
regarded my father with the most intense dislike, 
which he veiled under an affectation of scorn and 
contempt which it is impossible to believe he 
could really feel. He had pronounced* his tal- 
ents to be "of the first order," his prose to be 
"perfect," his Roderic "the first poem of the 
time," and therefore he could not think meanly 
of liis abilities ; and widely as he differed from 
him on political subjects, that could be no rea- 
son for the bitter personal animosity he displayed 
toward him. This is sufficiently shown in many 
passages of his published letters,. and more par- 
ticularly in his Don Juan ; which, in addition to 
the allusions in the poem itself, came over for 
publication with a Dedication to him prefixed to 
it, couched in coarse and insulting terms. This 
was suppressed at the time (the editor states 
with Lord Byron's reluctant consent) ; but its 
existence was well known, and it is now prefixed 
to the poem in the collected edition of his works. 
But the feelings with which Lord Byron re- 
garded my father were still more plainly shown 
! in some observations upon an article in Black- 
j wood's Magazine, published for the first time in 
his Life and Works, but written, be it observed, 
J before the remarks on the Satanic School in the 
preface to the Vision of Judgment. 

The writer in Blackwood, it appears, had al- 
luded to Lord Byron having "vented his spleen" 
against certain " lofty-minded and virtuous men," 
which he interprets to mean "the notorious tri- 
umvirate known by the name of the Lake Poets ;" 
and he then goes on to make various charges 
j against my father, which it is impossible to char- 
j acterize by any other epithet than false and 

* See Byron's Life and Works, vol. ii., p. 268, and vol. 
vii., p. 239. 



jEtat. 47. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



397 



calumnious. These were based upon the assum- 
ed fact that, on his return from the Continent in 
1817, my father had circulated slanderous re- 
ports respecting Lord Byron's mode of life ;* 
and upon this supposition, which was wholly with- 
out foundation, he proceeds in a strain of abuse 
which I will not sully these pages by quoting ; 
suffice it to say, that when, at a later period, 
Lord Byron, in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, de- 
clares his intention of " working the laureate as 
soon as he could muster Billingsgate enough, "t 
he had a plentiful supply of it in those then un- 
published pages. It is painful to have to recur 
to these deeds of the dead ; but it is necessary, 
because these facts prove that Lord Byron's at- 
tacks upon my father preceded my father's com- 
ments upon him, and were altogether unprovok- 
ed ; and also because his authority is still occa- 
sionally employed by others for the purpose of 
bringing my father's name and character into 
contempt. 

Now I have made these observations solely to 
show upon which of the two (if upon either) the 
blame of a malicious or contentious temper must 
rest, not because I assume these calumnies to 
have been the reason why my father censured 
Lord Byron's writings. J The worst of these in- 
sults he certainly never saw ; the other he was 
acquainted with ; but while the effect of it must 
undoubtedly have been to remove any delicacy 
with regard to hurting Lord Byron's feelings, I 
am perfectly justified in asserting that, if there 
had not existed a great public cause — a question 
of the most vital principles — my father would 
never, upon that provocation, have gone out of 
his way to lift his hand against him.§ He con- 
ceived it to be his duty, as one who had some in- 
fluence over the opinions of others, to condemn, 
as strongly as possible, works, the" perusal of 
which he conscientiously believed was calcula- 
ted to weaken the principles, corrupt the morals, 
and harden the heart. 

With respect to the remarks in the preface to 
the Vision of Judgment, while it must be admit- 
ted they are stern and severe, they are surely 
not more so than the occasion justified. They 
are no personal invective, but simply a moral 
condemnation of a class of publications, and to 
be judged by a consideration of the whole ques- 
tion whether they were deserved or not. The 
question itself as to the spirit and tendency of 



* With reference to this accusation, which was made 
through some other medium during Lord Byron's life, 
my father says, in a letter to the editor of the Courier, 
"I reply to it with a direct and positive denial;" and he 
continues, " If I had been told in that country that Lord 
Byron had turned Turk or monk of La Trappe— that he 
had furnished a harem or endowed a hospital, I might 
have thought the account, whichever it had been, possi- 
ble, and repeated it accordingly, passing it, as it had been 
taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more 
than it was worth. But making no inquiry concerning 
him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I 
heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat." — See Appen- 
dix. I may add that there is no allusion to Lord Byron 
either in my father's letters written during that tour or in 
his journal. 

t See Life and Works of Byron, vol. v., p. 300. 

1 See Appendix. 

§ Had he seen the other attack, he could not have re- 
mained silent under it. 



many of Lord Byron's writings has never, by the 
public, been considered apart from his rank, his 
genius, and his redeeming qualities : admiration 
and adulation operated on the one hand, fear on 
the other ; for while he himself and his advocates 
attributed the condemnation of his writings to 
"cowardice," with far greater truth might that 
be alleged as a reason for the praise of many 
and the silence of more.* 

It was natural, then, that my father should 
meet with a large share both of abuse and blame 
for daring thus to attack the enemy in his strong- 
hold ; and while some marveled at his impru- 
dence, there was one great writer who said more 
than that with strange inconsistency. Mr. Jef- 
frey, in the Edinburgh Review, suppressing the 
remarks themselves, attributed them w T holly to 
envy, and it is not a little curious to observe, 
coupled with this, his own estimate of Lord 
Byron's writings, some portions of which I can 
not resist quoting here. 

After various remarks, leveled apparently at 
my father, concerning " the base and the bigot- 
ed venting their puny malice in silly nicknames," 
he goes on to say, 

" He has no priest-like cant or priest-like re- 
viling to apprehend from us ; we do not charge 
him with being either a disciple or an apostle of 
Satan, nor do we describe his poetry to be a mere 
compound of blasphemy and obscenity. On the 
contrary, we believe he wishes well to the hap- 
piness of mankind." 

After speaking of the immoral passages and 
profligate representations in his writings, which, 
he says, are not worse than Dryden, or Prior, or 
Fielding, justly adding, however, that " it is a 
wretched apology for the indecencies of a man 
of genius that equal indecencies have been for- 
given to his predecessors," he proceeds : 

" It might not have been so easy to get over 
his dogmatic skepticism, his hard-hearted max- 
ims of misanthropy, his cold-blooded and eager 
expositions of the non-existence of virtue and 
honor. Even this, however, might have been 
comparatively harmless, if it had not been ac- 
companied with that which may look at first 
sight like a palliation — the frequent presentment 
of the most touching pictures of tenderness, gen- 
erosity, and faith. 

' ; The charge we bring against Lord Byron, 
in short, is, that his writings have a tendency to 
destroy all belief in the reality of virtue, and to 
make all enthusiasm and constancy of affection 
ridiculous 5 and this is effected, not merely by 
direct maxims and examples of an imposing or 
seducing kind, but by the constant exhibition of 
the most profligate heartlessness in the persons 



* Mr. Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, says, " Lord 
Byron complains bitterly of the detraction by which he 
has been assailed, and intimates that his works have been 
received by the public with far less cordiality and favor 
than he was entitled to expect. We are constrained to 
say that this appears to us a very extraordinary mistake. 
In the whole course of our experience we can not recol- 
lect a single author who has so little reason to complain 
of his reception; to whose genius the public has been so 
early and constantly just; to whose faults they have been 
so long and so signally indulgent." — Edinburgh Review, 
No 72. 



398 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 47. 



of those who have been transiently represented 
as actuated by the purest and most exalted emo- 
tions, and the lessons of that very teacher who 
had been but a moment before so beautifully pa- 
thetic in the expression of the loftiest concep- 
tions. 

" This is the charge which we bring against 
Lord Byron. We say that, under some strange 
misapprehension of the truth and the duty of 
proclaiming it, he has exerted all the powers of 
his powerful mind to convince his readers, di- 
rectly and indirectly, that all ennobling pursuits 
and disinterested virtues are mere deceits and 
illusions, hollow and despicable mockeries for the 
most part, and at best but laborious follies. Love, 
patriotism, valor, devotion, constancy, ambition 
— all are to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and 
despised ! and nothing is really good, as far as 
we can gather, but a succession of dangers to 
stir the blood, and of banquets and intrigues to 
soothe it again. If the doctrine stood alone, 
with its examples, we believe it would revolt 
more than it would seduce ; but the author has 
the unlucky gift of personating all those sweet 
and lofty illusions, and that with such grace, and 
power, and truth to nature, that it is impossible 
not to suppose for the time that he is among the 
most devoted of their votaries, till he casts off 
the character with a jerk ; and the moment after 
he has moved and exalted us to the very height 
of our conceptions, resumes his mockery of all 
things sacred and sublime, and lets us down at 
once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted sar- 
casm, or relentless personality, as if to show 
'Whoe'er was edified, himself was not.'"* 

It is difficult to imagine how any thing more 
severe, and at the same time more just, than 
these remarks could have been penned ; but I 
may fairly ask, with what consistency could the 
writer of them reckon my father as among the 
base and the bigoted for his remarks on the " Sa- 
tanic School ?" He does not, he says, charge 
Lord Byron with being either a disciple or an 
apostle of Satan ; but had he striven to picture 
forth the office of such a character, could he have 
done it better? What method more subtle or 
more certain could the Enemy of Mankind use 
to enlarge the limits of his empire than " to de- 
stroy all belief in the reality of virtue" — to con- 
vince men that all that is good, noble, virtuous, 
or sacred is " to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and 
despised ?" Consciously or unconsciously, the 
reviewer in these passages has embodied the 
very system which those whose philosophy is 
based upon Holy Scripture believe that the Evil 
Spirit is continually pursuing against the souls 
of men. He has said, virtually, only at greater 
length and more persuasively, exactly the same 
thing my father had said in those very passages 
he sneers at and condemns. 

These remarks, including the quotation, have 
extended further than I could have wished ; but 
the clergyman who finds cheap editions of Don 
Juan and Shelley's Queen Mab lying in the cot- 



Edinburgh Review, No. 72. 



tages of his rural flock, who knows that they are 
sold by every hawker of books throughout the 
country, and that they are handed about from 
one to the other by school-boys and artisans to 
supply shafts for the quiver of ribald wit and 
scoffing blasphemy, can hardly be thought out 
of season if, when this subject is forced upon 
him, he allows his own feeling concerning such 
works to appear ; and it is not unimportant, 
while doing so, to have pointed out the strong 
coincidence, upon this question in real opinion, 
which existed between two writers, in general 
so opposed to each other as my father and the 
editor of the Edinburgh Review. 

As may well be imagined, the passage alluded 
to concerning the Satanic School roused Lord 
Byron's anger to the uttermost, and he replied 
to it in a strain which compelled a rejoinder 
from my father, in a letter addressed to the Ed- 
itor of the Courier, the effect of which was to 
make his lordship immediately sit down and in- 
dite a cartel, challenging my father to mortal 
combat, for which purpose both parties were to 
repair to the Continent. This challenge, how- 
ever, never reached its destination, Lord By- 
ron's "friend," Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, wisely 
suppressing it. 

The passage itself, Lord Byron's reply, and 
the rejoinder, together with a letter written in 
1824 on the appearance of Captain Medwin's 
work, the reader will find in the Appendix to 
this volume. 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

" Keswick, April 25, 1821. 
" My dear Neville, 
" I heartily give you joy of your dear wife's 
safe delivejjance, and of the birth of your first 
child — an event which, of all others in the course 
of human life, produces the deepest and most 
permanent impression. 

"Who hath not proved it, ill can estimate 
The feeling of that stirring hour— the weight 
Of that new sense ; the thoughtful, pensive bliss. 
In all the changes of our changeful state, 
Even from the cradle to the grave, I wis 
The heart doth undergo no change so great as this. 

" So I have written in that poem which will 
be the next that I hope to send you ; but I tran- 
scribe the lines here because you will feel their 
truth at. this time. Parental love, however, is 
of slower growth in a father's than in a moth- 
er's heart : the child, at its birth, continues, as 
it were, to be a part of its mother's life ; but 
upon the father's heart it is a graft, and some 
little time elapses before he feels that it has unit- 
ed and is become inseparable. God bless the 
babe and its parents, and spare it and them, 
each for the other's sake, amen ! 

" Tilbrook wrote to tell me his disapprobation 
of my hexameters. His reasons were founded 
upon some musical theory, which I did not un- 
derstand further than to perceive that it was not 
applicable. His opinion is the only unfavorable 
one that has reached me ; that of my friend 
Wynn, from whom I expected the most decided 
displeasure, was, that he ' disliked them less than 






ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



/Etat. 47. 

he expected.' Women, as far as I can learn, 
feel and like the meter universally, without at- 
tempting to understand its construction. My 
brethren of the art approve it, and those whom 
I acknowledge for my peers are decidedly in its 
favor. Many persons have thanked me for that 
part of the preface in which Lord Byron and his 
infamous works are alluded to. * * 

"I am going on steadily with many things, 
the foremost of which is the History of the War. 
The first volume will be printed in the course of 
September next. Whether it will be published 
before the other two, depends upon the book- 
sellers, and is a matter in which I have no con- 
cern. Warn proceeding also with my Dialogues, 
and with the Book of the Church — two works 
by which I shall deserve well of posterity, what- 
ever treatment they may provoke now from the 
bigoted, the irreligious, and the factious. But 
you know how perfectly regardless I am of ob- 
loquy and insult. Your brother Henry gave me 
that kind of praise which is thoroughly gratify- 
ing, because I know that I deserve it, when he 
described me as fearlessly pursuing that course 
which my own sense of propriety points out, 
without reference to the humor of the public. 

" In the last Quarterly Review you would rec- 
ognize me in the account of Huntington. I am 
preparing a life of Oliver Cromwell for the next. 
'# # * # # 

" Believe me, my dear Neville, ■ 
" Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To C. H. Townshend, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 6, 1821. 
" My dear Chauncey, 

"I received your little parcel this afternoon, 
and thank you for the book, for the dedication, 
and for the sonnet. As yet I have only had time 
to recognize several pieces which pleased me 
formerly, and to read a few others which please , 
me now. 

" The stages of your life have passed regular- ' 
ly and happily, so that you have had leisure to i 
mark them with precision, and to feel them, and 
reflect upon them. With me these transitions 
were of a very different character ; they came J 
abruptly, and, when I left the University, it was 
to cast myself upon the world with a heart full ' 
of romance and a head full of enthusiasm. No 
young man could have gone more widely astray, 
according to all human judgment, and yet the 
soundest judgment could not have led me into 
any other way of life in which I should have had 
such full cause to be contented and thankful. 

" The world is now before you ; but you have 
neither difficulties to struggle with, nor dangers 
to apprehend. All that the heart of a wise man 
can desire is within your reach. And you are 
blessed with a disposition which will keep you 
out of public life, in which my advice to those 
whom I loved would be — never to engage. 

H Your Cambridge wit is excellent of its kind. 
I am not acquainted with Coleridge of King's, 
but somewhat intimately so with one of his 



399 



brothers,* now at the bar, and likely to rise very 
high in his profession. I know no man of whoso 
judgment and principles I have a higher opinion. 
They are a remarkably gifted family, and may 
be expected to distinguish themselves in many 
ways. 

" The Wordsworths spoke of you with great 
pleasure upon their return from Cambridge. He 
was with me lately. His thoughts and mine 
have for some time been unconsciously traveling 
in the same direction ; for while I have been 
sketching a brief history of the English Church, 
and the systems which it has subdued or strug- 
gled with, he has been pursuing precisely the 
same subject in a series of sonnets, to which my 
volume will serve for a commentary, as com- 
pletely as if it had been written with that intent. 
I have reason to hope that this work will be per- 
manently useful ; and I have the same hope of 
the series of Dialogues with which I am proceed- 
ing. Two of the scenes in which these are laid 
are noticed in your sonnets — the Tarn of Blen- 
cathra and the Ruined Village. Wm. Westall 
has made a very fine drawing of the former, 
which will be engraved for the volume, together 
with five others, most of which you will recog- 
nize. One of them represents this house, with 
the river and the lake, and Newlands in the dis- 
tance. 

" Are you going abroad ? or do you wait till 
the political atmosphere seems to promise settled 
weather ? God knows when that will be ! For 
myself, I know not what to wish for, when, on 
the one side, the old governments will not at- 
tempt to amend any thing, and, on the other, the 
Revolutionists are for destroying every thing. 
Spain is in a deplorable state, which must lead 
to utter anarchy. If other powers do not inter- 
fere (which I rather hope than think they will 
not), the natural course of such a revolution will 
serve as an example in terrorem to other na- 
tions. True statesmen are wanted there, and 
not there alone, but every where else ; why it is 
that there has not been a single man in Europe 
worthy of the name for the last century, is a 
question which it might be of some use to con- 
sider. Burke would have been one, had he not 
been always led away by passion and party, and 
an Irish imagination. It is something in the 
very constitution of our politics which dwarfs 
the breed, for we have had statesmen in India. 



" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 



R. Southey. 



To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Keswick, May 13, 1821. 
" My dear Rickman, 
" The present Oliver Cromwell, whose book 
serves me for a heading in the Quarterly Re- 
view, has led me into an interesting course of 
reading, and I am surrounded with memoirs of 
that age. Among other books, I have been read- 
ing the Eikuv BaoihiKT], which never fell in my 

* Now Mr. Justice Coleridge. 



400 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 47, 



way before. The evidence concerning its au- 
thenticity is more curiously balanced than in any 
other case, except, perhaps, that of the two Al- 
exander Cunninghams ; but the internal evidence 
is strongly in its favor, and I very much doubt 
whether any man could have written it in a fic- 
titious character — the character is so perfectly 
observed. If it be genuine (which I believe it 
to be as much as a man can believe the authen- 
ticity of any thing which has been boldly im- 
pugned), it is one of the most interesting books 
connected with English history. I have been 
reading, also, Hobbes's Behemoth 5 it is worth 
reading, but has less of his characteristic strength 
and felicity of thought and expression than the 
Leviathan. There is one great point on which 
he dwells with unanswerable wisdom — the ne- 
cessity that public opinion should be directed by 
government, by means of education and public 
instruction. 

" The course of the revolution in Portugal and 
Brazil will be to separate the two countries, and 
then, I fear, to break up Brazil into as many sep- 
arate states as there are great captaincies ; 
these, again, to be subdivided among as many 
chieftains as can raise ruffians enough to be call- 
ed an army. There is, however, some check to 
these in the fear of the negroes, which may rea- 
sonably exist in great part of the country. This 
mischief has been brought about by Portuguese 
journals printed in London since the year 1808, 
and directed always to this end. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

" Keswick, June 2, 1821. 
"My dear Lightfoot, 

" Your letter brings to my mind how it hap- 
pened that the last which I received from you 
remained unanswered. I began a reply imme- 
diately, but having expressed a hope that busi- 
ness might probably soon lead me into the west 
country, and intimated a little too confidently the 
likelihood of my succeeding to some good family 
estates there in consequence of Lord Somerville ; s 
death, the letter was laid aside till I could be 
more certain. Shortly afterward I went to Lon- 
don, and the result of my legal inquiries there 
was, that, owing to the clumsy manner in which 
a will was drawn up, estates to the value of a 
thousand a year in Somersetshire, which, accord- 
ing to the clear intention of the testator, ought 
now to have devolved upon me, had been ad- 
judged to Lord Somerville, to be at his full dis- 
posal, and were by him either sold or bequeath- 
ed to his half-brothers, so that the whole is gone 
to a different family. You know me well enough 
to believe that this never deprived me of an 
hour's sleep nor a moment's peace of mind. 
The only ill effect was, that I fancied your letter 
had been answered, and wondered I did not hear 
from you again, which wonder nothing but nev- 
er-ending business has prevented me from ex- 
pressing to you long ere this. 

" God knows how truly it would have rejoiced 
me to have seen you at Oxford. My heart was 



never heavier than during the only whole day 
which I passed in that city. There was not a 
single cotemporary whom I knew 5 the only per- 
son with whom I spoke, whose face was familiar 
to me, was Dr. Tatham ! except poor Adams and 
his wife, now both old and infirm. I went in the 
morning to look at Baliol, and as I was coming 
out he knew me, and then I recognized him, 
which otherwise I could not have done. I dined 
there in the hall at ten o'clock at night, and the 
poor old woman would sit up till midnight that 
she might speak to me when I went out. After 
the business of the theater was over I walked for 
some hours alone about the walks ancLjrardens, 
where you and I have so often walked TOgether, 
thinking of the days that are gone, the friends 
that are departed (Seward, and C. Collins, and 
Allen, and poor Burnet), time, and change, and 
mortality. Very few things would have gratified 
me so much as to have met you there. I had 
applause enough in the theater to be somewhat 
overpowering, and my feelings would have been 
very different if you had been there, for then 
there would have been one person present who 
kneio me and loved me. 

"My lodging was at Oriel, in the rooms of an 
under-graduate, whose aunt is married to my 
uncle. Coplestone introduced himself to me and 
asked me to dinner the next day, but I was en- 
gaged to return to London and dine with Bed- 
ford. There is no one of our remembrance left 
at Baliol except Powell, and him I did not see. 
The master and the fellows there showed me ev- 
ery possible attention ; I had not been two hours 
in Oxford before their invitation found me out. 

" The king sent me word that he had read the 
Vision of Judgment twice, and was well pleased 
with it ; and he afterward told my brother (Dr. 
S.) at the drawing-room that I had sent him a 
very beautiful poem, which he had read with 
great pleasure. 

" You will be pleased to hear that the Bishop 
of London, the Bishop of Durham, and Lord Liv- 
erpool told me, when I was in town last year, 
that the Life of Wesley was a book which in 
their judgment could not fail of doing a great 
deal of good. 

" Always and affectionately yours, 

"Robert Southey." 

Among the great variety of strangers who 
found their way to Greta Hall with letters of in- 
troduction, there were a considerable proportion 
from America — travelers from thence, as my 
father humorously observes in one of his previous 
letters, inquiring as naturally for a real live poet 
in England as he would do for any of the wild 
animals of their country. Since that time, how- 
ever, America has made rapid strides in litera- 
ture, and native authors are not such rarities 
now as they were then. In this way he had 
made many agreeable and valuable acquaint- 
ances, and with several of them the intercourse 
thus begun was continued across the Atlantic ; 
and he was the more rejoiced at the opportunity 
of showing them any attention in his power, be- 



iETAT. 48. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



401 



cause he had been most unjustly accused of hold- 
ing and expressing opinions very unfavorable to 
America. Several papers had appeared in the 
Quarterly Review manifesting an unfriendly feel- 
ing toward that country, and these were ascribed 
to him,* while he was protesting against them 
privately, and strongly condemning the spirit in 
which they were written. This, however, was 
only one out of many instances in which the of- 
fenses of the Quarterly Review were laid to his 
charge. 

The gentleman (Mr. Ticknor, of Boston) to 
Thorn the two following letters are addressed 
was one of the most literary of his American 
visitors, and a feeling of mutual respect and good 
will quickly sprang up between them, kept up 
by an occasional correspondence. 

In the course of one of the evenings he passed 
at Greta Hall, my father had read to him the 
commencement of his poem of Oliver Newman, 
to which reference has occasionally been made, 
with which Mr. Ticknor had been much pleased ; 
and, in consequence of the scene being laid in 
his native country, the MS. of the poem, when 
finished, was promised to him : to this the com- 
mencement of the following letter refers. Alas 
for the uncertainty of our intentions ! No fur- 
ther progress of any moment was ever made in 
it ; constant occupations of a different kind im- 
peratively called for all his time and thoughts ; 
many cares and more sorrows thickened upon 
him in these later years of his life ; and the ef- 
fort to resume the subject, though often contem- 
plated, was never made. 

To George Ticknor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 19, 1821. 
"My dear Sir, 

" That I -ntended to thank you for the books 
you sent me from London in 1819, the unfin- 
ished letter which I have now fished up from the 
bottom of my desk will show ; and it is better to 
say peccavi than to apologize for the old and be- 
setting sin of procrastination. That I had re- 
ceived them, you would probably infer from the 
mention of Fisher Ames in the Quarterly Review. 
This omission has been attended with frequent 
self-reproaches, for I am sure you will not sup- 
pose that you were forgotten ; but I looked for- 
ward to an honorable amends in sending you the 
manuscript of my New England poem as soon 
as it should be completed. When that will be 
I dare not promise ; but the desire of sending 
you that first fair copy, part of which was put 
into your hands when you were here, is not one 
of the least inducements for taking it up speed- 
ily as a serious and regular occupation. 

" I found your parcel last night, on my return 



* " I returned to the post-office the other day three half 
crowns worth of abuse sent from New Orleans in the 
shape of extracts from Yankee newspapers. Every dis- 
respectful thing said of America in the Q. R. is imputed 
to me in t'nat country, while I heartily disapprove of the 
temper in which America is treated. Such things, how- 
ever, are not worth notice ; and lies of this kind for many 
years past have been far too numerous to be noticed, un- 
less I gave up half my time to the task."— To G. C. B., 
Jan. 5, 1820. 

Cc 



home, after a fortnight's absence. Its contents 
will be of the greatest use to me. I have al 
ready looked through Callender and the Archae- 
ology? an( l find in the former applicable infor- 
mation not in my other authorities, and in the 
latter many curious facts. Our old divine, Dr. 
Hammond, used to say, that whatever his course 
of study might be in the first part of the week, 
something always occurred in it which was con- 
vertible to use in his next sermon. My expe- 
rience is of the same kind, and you will perceive 
that these books will assist me in many ways. 

" My little girls have not forgotten you. The 
infant whom you saw sleeping in a basket here 
in this library, where he was born three weeks 
before, is now, God be thanked, a thriving and 
hopeful child. Kenyon will be here in the course 
of the week, and we shall talk of you, and drink 
to our friends in New England. This is less 
picturesque than the votive sacrifices of ancient 
times, but there is as much feeling connected 
with it. 

" Mr. Everett sent me the two first numbers 
of his quarterly journal, telling me that I should 
not need an apology for the sentiments which it 
expresses toward England. I am sorry that 
those opinions appear to have his sanction, es- 
teeming him highly as I do, and desirous as I 
am that the only two nations in the world who 
really are free, and have grown up in freedom, 
should be united by mutual respect and kindly 
feelings, as well as by kindred, common faith, 
and the indissoluble bond of language. Remem- 
ber me most kindly to him, and to Mr. Cogswell 
also. 

"I am collecting materials for a Life of George 
Fox, and the Rise and Progress of Quakerism 
Perhaps some documents of American growth 
may fall in your way. We are never likely to 
meet again in this world ; let us keep up this 
kind of intercourse till we meet in a better. 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

The following is the letter referred to as in- 
closed in the preceding one. I place it here as 
containing some interesting remarks upon Amer- 
ican literature. 

To George Ticknor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 13, 1819. 
" My dear Sir, 

"I did not receive your friendly letter, and 
the books which you sent to Murray's, till the 
last week in May, at which time I supposed you 
would be on your voyage homeward. Long ere 
this I trust you will have reached your native 
shores, and enjoyed the delight of returning to 
your friends after a long absence. Life has few 
greater pleasures. 

"You have sent me a good specimen of 
American divinity. I very much doubt whether 
we have any cotemporary sermons so good ; for, 
though our pulpits are better filled than they 
were in the last generation, we do not hear from 



402 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 48. 



them such sound reasoning, such clear logic, 
and such manly and vigorous composition as in 
the days of South and Barrow. What is said in 
the memoir of Mr. Buckminster of the unimpas- 
sioned character , of our printed sermons is cer- 
tainly true ; the cause of it is to be found in the 
general character of the congregations for which 
they were composed, always regular church-go- 
ing people, persons of wealth and rank, the really 
good part of the community, and the Formalists 
and the Pharisees, none of whom would like to 
be addressed by their parish priest as miserable 
sinners standing in need of repentance. Sermons 
of country growth seldom find their way to the 
press ; in towns the ruder classes seldom attend 
the Church service, in large towns because there 
is no room for them ; and indeed, in country as 
well as town, the subjects who are in the worst 
state of mind and morals never enter the church 
doors. Wesley and Whitefield got at them by 
preaching in the open air, and they administered 
drastics with prodigious effect. Since their days 
a more impassioned style has been used in the 
pulpit, and with considerable success. But the 
pith and the sound philosophy of the elder divines 
are wanting. Your Buckminster was taking the 
right course. The early death of such a man 
would have been a great loss to any country. 

" You have sent me, also, a good specimen of 
American politics in the works of Fisher Ames. 
I perused them with great pleasure, and have 
seldom met with a more sagacious writer. A 
great proportion of the words in the American 
vocabulary are as common in England as in 
America. But, provided a word be good, it is no 
matter from what mint it comes. Neologisms 
must always be arising in every living language ; 
and the business of criticism should be, not to 
reprobate them because they are new, but to 
censure such as are not formed according to 
analogy, or which are merely superfluous. The 
authority of an English reviewer passes on your 
side of the Atlantic for more than it is worth ; 
with us the Review of the last month or the last 
quarter is as little thought of as the last week's 
newspaper. You must have learned enough of 
ihe constitution of such works to know that upon 
questions of philology they are quite unworthy 
of being noticed. The manner in which they 
are referred to in the vocabulary led me to this, 
and this leads me to the criticisms upon Bristed 
and Fearon's books in the Quarterly Review. I 
know not from whom they came, but they are 
not in a good spirit. R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 26, 1821. 
" My dear Friend, 
" How little are our lots in life to be foreseen ! 
It might reasonably have been thought that, if 
any man could have been secured against ill for- 
tune in his mercantile concerns by prudence, 
punctuality, method, and the virtues and habits 
which the mercantile profession requires, you, 
above all men, would have been uniformly and 
steadily prosperous and yet to what a series of 



anxieties and losses have you been exposed, 
without any fault, or even any thing which can 
justly be called incautious on your part ! This, 
however, is both consolatory and certain, that 
no good man is ever the worse for the trials with 
which Providence may visit him, and the way in 
which you regard these afflictions exemplifies 
this. 

" Since I received your letter I made my pro- 
posed visit to the sea-coast with the two Ediths 
and Cuthbert. We were at Netherhall, the solar 
of my friend and fellow-traveler Senhouse, where 
his ancestors have uninterruptedly resided since 
the days of Edward II. (when part of the present 
building is known to have been standing), and 
how long before that no one knows. Some of 
his deeds are of Edward I.'s reign, some of 
Henry III.'s, and one is as far back as King John. 
We slept in the tower, the walls of which are 
nine feet thiok. In the time of the great Rebell- 
ion the second of the two sons of this house went 
to serve the king, the elder brother (w T hom ill- 
ness had probably detained at home) died, and 
the parents then wished their only surviving 
child to return, lest their ancient line should be 
extinct. A man who held an estate under the 
family was sent to persuade him to this, his un- 
willingness to leave the service in such disastrous 
times being anticipated ; but the result of this 
endeavor w T as, that Senhouse, instead of return- 
ing, persuaded the messenger to remain and fol- 
low the king's fortunes. They were at Marston 
Moor together, and at Naseby. In the last of 
those unhappy fields Senhouse was dreadfully 
wounded, his skull was fractured, and he was 
left for dead. After the battle his faithful friend 
searched for the body, and found him still breath- 
ing. By this providential aid he was saved ; his 
skull w T as pieced with a plate of metal, and he 
lived to continue the race. His preserver was 
rewarded by having his estate enfranchised ; and 
both properties continue at this day in their re- 
spective descendants. This is an interesting 
story, and the more so when related as it was 
to me, on the spot. The sword which did good 
service in those wars is still preserved. It was 
made for a two-fold use, the back being cut so 
as to form a double-toothed saw. 

" Netherhall stands upon the little river Ellen, 
about half a mile from the sea, but completely 
sheltered from the sea wind by a long high hill, 
under cover of which some fine old trees have 
grown up. The Ellen rises on Skiddaw, forms 
the little and unpicturesque lake or rather pool 
which is called Overwater, near the foot of that 
mountain, and, though a very small stream, 
makes a port, where a town containing 4000 
inhabitants has grown up within, the memory 
of man on the Senhouse estate. It was called 
Maryport, after Senhouse's grandmother, a very 
beautiful woman, whose portrait is in his dining- 
room. His father remembered w T hen a single 
summer-house standing in a garden was. the only 
building upon the whole of that ground, which 
is now covered with streets. The first sash 
windows in Cumberland were placed in the tow- 



.-Etat. 48. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



403 



er in which we slept by the founder of this town ; 
and when his son (who died about six years ago, 
at the age of eighty-four or five) first went to 
Cambridge, there was no stage-coach north of 
York. 

" Old as Netherhall is, the stones of which it 
is built were hewn from the quarry more than a 
thousand years before it was begun. They were 
taken from a Roman station on the hill between 
it and the sea, where a great number of Roman 
altars, &c., have been found. Some of them are 
described by Camden, who praises the Mr. Sen- 
house of his time for the hospitality with which 
he received him, and the care with which he pre- 
served these remains of antiquity. * * 
It was a bishop of this family who preached 
Charles I.'s coronation sermon, and the text 
which he took was afterward noted as ominous : 
' I will give him a crown of glory.' The gold 
signet which he wore as a ring is now at Nether- 
hall, God bless you! 

" Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept 9, 1821. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I wish to possess a castle in Bohemia. My 
good aunt Mary has the like desire ; and as there 
are two castles to be had there, together with 
twelve villages (enough to qualify me, in all con- 
science, for a baron of the holy Roman empire), 
I beseech you, with as little loss of time as may 
be, to transmit, in such manner as Herries may 
best direct, the sum of two pounds to W. H. 
Reinganum, Banquier, No. 13 Rue Zeil, Frank- 
fort sur Maine, to purchase one ticket in my 
name, and one in my aunt Mary's, in the lottery 
for the seven estates in Bohemia which are to be 
played for at Vienna on the 1st of next month ; 
and I invite you, Grosvenor, to purchase a ticket 
also, and let us go shares in the adventure ; and 
if we get the prize, we will make a merry and 
memorable journey to Prague, and you shall take 
your choice of seven titles for your baronship, 
to wit, Zieken, Wolschow, Koyschitz, Shunkau, 
Libietitz, Prytanitz, and Oberstankau. 

" Just suppose, Grosvenor, that Fortune, in 
one of her freaks, was to give us this prize, and 
we were to set out for the purpose of taking pos- 
session of twelve villages, two chateaux, seven 
farms, and several mills and manufactures, and 
valued judicially at 894,755 florins of Vienna. 
I suppose the inhabitants are included. The no- 
tion, I think, will amuse you as much as it does 
us. So buy the tickets, Grosvenor. The castles 
in question are certainly two of the King of Bo- 
hemia's castles, because they make the great 
prize in an imperial lottery ; but whether they 
are two of the seven castles the history of which 
Corporal Trim began to Uncle Toby, I pretend 
not to determine. By all means, however, let 
us have a chance for them. I should like a good 
fortune well, and much the better if it were a 
queer one, and came in a comical way. 

"So God bless you, Grosvenor ! and make us 



both barons, and my aunt a Bohemian baron 
ess. R. S." 

To the Rev. Neville While. 

" Keswick, Oct. 20, 1821. 
" My dear Neville, 

•*•##"■■#■#■ t #.»♦. # 
You form a just opinion of the character and tend 
ency of William Taylor's conversation. A most 
unfortunate perversion of mind has made him al- 
ways desirous of supporting strange and para- 
doxical opinions by ingenious arguments, and 
showing what may be said on the wrong side of 
a question. He likes to be in a state of doubt 
upon all subjects where doubt is possible, and has 
often said, ' I begin to be too sure of that, and 
must see what reasons I can find against it.' 
But when this is applied to great and moment- 
ous truths, the consequences are of the most fatal 
kind. I believe no man ever carried Pyrrho- 
nism further. But it has never led him into im- 
moralities of any kind, nor prevented him from 
discharging the duties of private life in the most 
exemplary manner. There never lived a more 
dutiful son. I have seen his blind mother weep 
when she spoke of his goodness ; and his kind- 
ness and generosity have only been limited by 
his means. 

" "What is more remai'kable is, that this habit 
ual and excessive skepticism has weakened none 
of the sectarian prejudices in which he was 
brought up. He sympathizes as cordially with 
the Unitarians in their animosity to the Church 
and State as if he agreed with them in belief, 
and finds as strong a bond of union in party spirit 
as he could do in principle. 

"With regard to his talents, they are very 
great. No man can exceed him in ingenuity, 
nor in the readiness with which he adorns a sub- 
ject by apt and lively illustrations. His knowl- 
edge is extensive, but not deep. When first 1 
saw him, three-and-twenty years ago, I thought 
him the best-informed man with whom I had 
ever conversed. When I visited him last, after 
a lapse of eight years, I discovered the limits of 
his information, and that upon all subjects it was 
very incomplete. 

" Of his heart and disposition I can not speak 
more highly than I think. It is my belief that 
no man ever brought a kindlier nature into this 
world. His great talents have been sadly wast- 
ed; and, what is worse, they have sometimes 
been sadly misemployed. He has unsettled the 
faith of many, and he has prepared for his own 
old age a pillow of thorns. Tb all reasoning, the 
pride of reason has made him inaccessible ; and 
when I think of him, as I often do, with affection 
and sorrowful forebodings, the only foundation of 
hope is, that God is merciful beyond our expec- 
tations, as well as beyond our deserts. 

" Thank you for the copy of Cromwell's Let- 
ters. The transcriber has tasked his own eyes, 
and mine also, by copying them in the very form 
of the writing. I can not attempt to read them 
by candle-light. You will by this time have seen 
my sketch of Cromwell's Life. It is the only 



404 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 48 



article of mine which was ever printed in the 
Quarterly Review without mutilation. Gilford 
has made only one alteration ; that, however, is 
a very improper one. I had said that Hampden 
might have left behind him a name scarcely in- 
ferior to Washington's ; and he has chosen to 
alter this to a memorable name, not calling to 
mind that his name is memorable. The sen- 
tence is thus made nonsensical. Pray restore 
the proper geading in your copy of the Review. 
Murray wishes me to fill up the sketch for sepa- 
rate publication. I am fond of biography, and 
shall probably one day publish a series of English 
lives. I spent a week lately at Lowther Castle, 
and employed all my mornings in reading and 
extracting from a most extensive collection of 
pamphlets of Cromwell's age. 

j/, JA. JL J£- «U- ' «U- - Jfc 

■7T ^f TT -W TP TT TF 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Yours very affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 11, 1821. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" Lakers and visitors have now disappeared 
for the season, like the swallows and other birds 
who are lucky enough to have better winter 
quarters allotted to them than this island affords 
them. The woodcocks and snipes have arrived, 
by this token, that my bookbinder here sent me 
a brace of the latter last week ; and this reminds 
ine to tell you, that if you ever have an owl 
dressed for dinner, you had better have it boiled, 
and smothered with onions, for it is not good 
roasted. Experto crede Roberto. 

" Two or three weeks ago, calling at Calvert's, 
I learned that Raisley C. had committed the great 
sin of shooting an owl. The criminality of the 
act was qualified by an ingenuous confession, 
that he did not know what it was when he fired 
at it; the bird was brought in to show us, and 
then given me that I might show it to your god- 
son, owls and monkeys being of all created things 
those for which he has acquired the greatest lik- 
ing from his graphic studies. Home I came 
with the owl in my hand, and in the morning 
you would have been well pleased had you seen 
Cuthbert's joy at recognizing, for the first time, 
the reality of what he sees daily in Bewick or in 
some other of his books. Wordsworth and his 
wife were here, and as there was no sin in eat- 
ing the owl, I ordered it to be dressed and brought 
in, in the place of game, that day at dinner. It 
was served up without the head, and a squat- 
looking fellow it was, about the size of a large 
wild pigeon, but broader in proportion to its 
length. The meat was more like bad mutton 
than any thing else. Wordsworth was not val- 
iant enough to taste it. Mrs. W. did, and we 
agreed that there could be no pretext for mak- 
ing owls game and killing them as delicacies. 
But if ever you eat one, by all means try it boil- 
ed, with onion sauce. 

"I asked your opinion, a good while since, 
concerning a dedication for the Peninsular War, 



and hitherto you have not opined upon the sub 
ject in reply. It has this moment, while I am 
writing, occurred to me, that I could, with sin- 
cere satisfaction in so doing, inscribe it to Lord 
Sidmouth. I have always felt thankful to him 
for the peace of Amiens, and should like to tell 
him so in public, as I once did viva voce. And 
I should do it the more willingly if he is going 
out of office, which I rather think he is. 

" Gifford will have a paper upon Dobrizhoffer 
from me for this next number. Will you tell 
him that in a volume of tracts at Lowther, of 
Charles I.'s time, I found a Life of Sejanus by 
P. M., by which initials some hand, apparently 
as old as the book, had written Philip Massin- 
ger. I did not read the tract, being too keenly 
in pursuit of other game ; but I believe it had a 
covert aim at Buckingham. I have not his Mas- 
singer, and therefore do not know whether he is 
aware that this was ever ascribed to that author ; 
if he is not, he will be interested in the circum- 
stance, and may think it worthy of further in- 
quiry. 

"My History is in good progress. I am fin- 
ishing the longest chapter in the volume, and 
one of the most interesting. It contains the 
events in Portugal from the commencement of 
the insurrection in Spain till the arrival of our 
expedition. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, Nov. 29, 1821. 
" My dear Neville, 

" What you relate of William Taylor is quite 
characteristic of the manner in which he abuses 
his own powers, playing the mere sophist, and 
disregarding the opinions and feelings of others ; 
careless how he offends and hurts them, though 
as incapable as man can be of giving intentional 
pain, or doing intentional wrong. He was not 
serious, for he knows very well that to call for 
proof of a negative is an absurdity, and that rea- 
son and discourse of reason are very different 
things. If he misleads some, his example oper- 
ates as a warning upon others. They see how 
he has squandered his abilities, and that the 
hereditary blindness which he has some cause to 
apprehend, and of which he lives in fear, is not 
the darkest evil in his prospect. There is no 
rest but in religious faith, and none know this 
more feelingly than they who are without it. 

" It would not surprise me if an expert Ro- 
man Catholic priest (where he to come in his 
way) should ensnare him in a spider's web of 
sophistry, more skillfully constructed than his 
own, and of a stronger thread. The pleasure of 
defending transubstantiation would go a long way 
toward making him believe in it. 

" What a state is Ireland in at this time ! 
The horrors of the Irish massacres may be cred- 
ited in their whole extent, because we see that 
the same temper is exhibited at this time, and 
the same atrocities perpetrated in retail, oppor- 
tunity being all that is wanted for committing 



Mtat. 48. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



4Uo 



them upon the great scale. The state of things 
in that country is a reproach to human nature, 
and our government has much to answer for. 
They must know that such a people ought to be 
kept under military law till they are fit for any 
thing better ; that they stand in need of Roman 
civilization, and that no weaker remedy can pos- 
sibly suffice. Cromwell's government, if it had 
lasted twenty years longer, would have civilized 
that island. His tyranny was as useful there 
and in Scotland as it was injurious in England, 
because they were barbarous countries, and he 
introduced order and despotic justice into both. 
But in England we had order and justice before 
his time. The rebellion dislocated both, and it 
was not possible for him to repair the evil in 
which he had been so great an agent. =* * 
" God bless you, my dear Neville ! 
" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

The reader will have observed in his later let- 
ters to Mr. May frequent allusion to Brazilian 
affairs as affecting his fortunes, and in the fol- 
lowing one my father speaks of his having trans- 
ferred to him for his present use what little mon- 
ey he had at command, and expressing a regret 
at not being able more effectually to assist him 
in his difficulties. These passages, though re- 
lating to matters of a private nature, I am glad 
to have the opportunity of publishing, with Mr. 
May's approval, as illustrative of the kindness 
of my father's heart, the warmth and stability of 
his friendships, and his grateful remembrance of 
many similar services rendered to him by his 
friend in past years. 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 10, 1821. 
" My dear Friend, 

" It is not often that I allow myself to wish the 
accidents of fortune had been more in my favor, 
and that I were in possession of that property 
which, in the just ordinary course of things, 
ought to have devolved upon me ; but I can not 
help feeling that wish now. 

" By this post I write to Bedford, desiring 
that he will transfer to you <£625 in the three 
per cents. I wish it was more, and that I had 
more at command in any way. I shall in the 
spring, if I am paid for the first volume of my 
history as soon as it is finished. One hundred I 
should, at all events, have sent you then. It 
shall be as much more as I may receive. 

" One word more. I entreat you break away 
from business, if it be possible, as early in the 
spring as you can, and put yourself in the mail 
for this place. Though you can not leave your 
anxieties behind you, yet you may, by means of 
change of air and scene, be assisted in bearing 
them, and lay in here a store of pleasant recol- 
lections, which in all moods of mind are whole- 
some. 

" I can not write to you about indifferent 
things, troubled as you needs must be, and sym- 
pathizing as I must do with you. Yet I trust 



that you now know the extent of the evil, and 
that, when this storm is weathered, there may 
be prosperity and comfort in store for one who 
so eminently deserves them. 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

» '■ Keswick, Dec. 11, 1821. 

" My dear Neville, 

" When the Life is reprinted, I can modify 
the passage which expresses an essential differ- 
ence of opinion upon religious subjects with 
Henry. That difference is certainly not now 
what it was then, but it is still a wide one ; 
though, had Henry lived till this time, I believe 
there would scarcely have been a shade of dif- 
ference between us. I am perfectly sure that, 
with a heart and intellect like his, he would have 
outgrown all tendency toward Calvinism, and 
have approached nearer in opinion to Jeremy 
Taylor than to the Synod of Dort. 

" You wrong the government with regard to 
Ireland. They neither now have, nor ever have 
had, a wish to keep the savages in that country 
in their state of ignorance and barbarity ; and 
it would surprise you to know what funds have 
been established for their education. I know 
Dr. Bell was surprised at finding how large the 
endowments were, and felt that on that score it 
was not means that were wanting, but the just 
direction of them. How to set about enlighten- 
ing such a people as the wild Irish is one of the 
most difficult duties any government was ever 
called upon to perform, obstructed as it is by 
such a body of priests, who can effectually pre- 
vent any better instruction than they themselves 
bestow. I want more information concerning 
certain parts of Irish history than I possess at 
present ; but in one or more of the works which 
I have in hand I shall trace the evils of Ireland 
to their source. Meantime, this I may safely 
assert, as a general deduction from all that I 
have learned in the course of history, that the 
more we know of preceding and coexisting cir- 
cumstances and difficulties, the more excuse we 
shall find for those men and measures which, 
with little knowledge of those circumstances, 
we should condemn absolutely. This feeling 
leads not to any thing like indifference concern- 
ing right and wrong, nor to any lukewarmness 
or indecision in opinion, but certainly to a more 
indulgent and charitable tone of mind than com- 
monly prevails. 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! 
" And believe me yours affectionately, 
"Robert Southey." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 19, 1821. 
" At last I have received the books* — a rich 
cargo, in which I shall find much to amuse, »nd 
not a little to profit by. As yet, I have only had 



A present of various foreign books from Mr. Landor. 



406 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 48 



time to catalogue them, and look into them as 
this was done. In so doing, I saw that you had 
given a Jesuit the lie for what he said of the 
cause of the first rebellion. A lying Jesuit he 
is ; but in this instance the falsehood is merely 
chronological. The Long Parliament passed a 
decree forbidding all persons to bow at the name 
of Jesus ; Sir Edward Dering made a very elo- 
quent speech upon the occasion, which I shall 
send you ere long in the little sketch of our 
Church history which I am preparing. This de- 
cree was subsequent to the Irish massacre. The 
fact which the Jesuit might have dwelt upon 
with advantage is, that the intolerance of the 
Parliament seeking to enforce the penalty of 
death against recusant priests, when Charles, 
like his father, was inclined to toleration, gave a 
pretext for the rebellion, and furnished those who 
instigated it with means for alarming and enrag- 
ing the populace. 

" I shall send your letter to Wordsworth, who 
will, I am sure, be much gratified at seeing what 
you say of him. His merits are every day more 
widely acknowledged, in spite of the duncery, in 
spite of the personal malignity with w T hich he is 
assailed, and in spite of his injudicious imitators, 
who are the worst of all enemies. 

" Nothing can be more mournful than the 
course of events abroad. All that the Spanish- 
Americans w T anted they would have obtained 
now, in the course of events, without a struggle, 
if they had w T aited quietly. A free trade could 
not, from the first, have been refused them, nor 
any internal regulations which they thought 
good ; and now the separation would have taken 
place unavoidably. As it is, it has cost twelve 
vears of crime and misery. It is a most inter- 
esting part of the world for its natural features, 
for what we know of its history, and for what 
we do not — how some parts should have attain- 
ed to so high and curious a state of civilization, 
and how the greater part of its inhabitants should 
have sunk so completely into savages. I w T ill 
send you, m the next package, Humboldt's Trav- 
els, as far as they are published. He is among 
travelers what Wordsworth is among poets. Of 
Italian nobility I would take your opinion with- 
out hesitation, knowing nothing of them myself; 
but in Spain and Portugal I would have had a 
house of peers, were it only in respect to great 
names, and those heroic remembrances which 
are the strength and glory of a nation. The 
nobles were, for the most part, deplorably de- 
generate ; but as a bad spirit had degraded, a 
better one w T ould improve the next generation, 
and I would demolish nothing but what is inju- 
rious. My fear is, that they will demolish every 
thing, and this fear I have felt from the begin- 
ning. Deeply, therefore, as I detested the old 
misrule, I did not rejoice in the Spanish and Port- 
uguese revolutions. In Portugal I wished for 
i great minister, such as Pombal would have 
been in these times ; in Spain, for a court revo- 
lution, which should have sent Ferdinand to a 
monastery, and established a vigorous ministry 
under his brother's name, by whom the reforms 



which the country needed might have been stead- 
ily but gradually effected. I entirely agree with 
you that old monarchical states can not be made 
republican, nor new colonial ones be made mo- 
narchical. 

" Since the disappearance of the queen's fever 
this country has been unusually calm : little is 
heard of distress, and less of disaffection. Of 
the latter w T e shall hear plentifully when the bills 
of restriction are expired, and of the former also 
when it shall be found (as it will be) that the re- 
newed activity of our manufacturers will have 
again glutted the South American markets. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

RELIGIOUS FEELINGS THE BOOK OF THE 

CHURCH HISTORY OF THE PENINSULAR WAR 

LORD BYRON SPANISH AFFAIRS MR. LAN- 

DOr's NEW WORK IMPROVEMENTS IN LONDON 

EFFECTS OF GENERAL EDUCATION VISIT 

FROM MR. LIGHTFOOT DR. CHANNING AND 

THE REV. CHRISTOPHER BENSON GENERAL 

PEACHEY DWIGHT's TRAVELS EDITORSHIP 

OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW THE LAURE- 

ATESHIP WAYS AND MEANS THE PENINSU- 
LAR WAR COURSE OF HIS READING CATHO- 
LIC EMANCIPATION ILLUSTRATIONS OF ROD- 
ERIC POSTHUMOUS FAME THE QUARTER- 
LY REVIEW AMERICAN VISITORS WORDS- 

WORTH'S POETRY MR. MORRISON OWEN OI 

LANARK DANGER OF THE COUNTRY BLANCC 

WHITE THE FRENCH IN SPAIN JOURNEY TO 

LONDON ROWLAND HILL THE DAILY STUDY 

OF THE SCRIPTURES RECOMMENDED. 1822- 

1823. 

The careful reader can hardly have failed to 
observe the gradual progress of my father's mind 
upon religious subjects, and to have marked how 
his feelings on those points had deepened and 
strengthened from the frequent references he 
makes to them as the only sure foundation for 
rational happiness. Few men, indeed, had ever 
the thoughts of the life to come more constantly 
present to them ; and his anticipations of a hap- 
py futurity are so frequent as to have met with 
the charge of an overweening confidence ap- 
proaching to irreverence. But, although his 
manner of speaking may have been such as to 
seem irreverent to other minds constituted dif- 
ferently from his own, his nature was not really 
so ; and the truth would seem to be, that from 
a fervid imagination combined with strong posi- 
tive faith, and a habit of mind the opposite to the 
Pyrrhonism he lamented in his friend William 
Taylor, he realized the idea of another life so 
vividly as to make him express himself on that 
subject with an unusual familiarity. The point 
which he most frequently alludes to, and which 
he appears to dwell upon with the greatest pleas- 
ure, is that of the meeting of ' : the spirits of just 
men made perfect ;" and the natural buoyancy 



/Etat. 48. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



407 



of his temperament, united with the wide char- 
itableness of his creed, saved him from the mis- 
givings which would have checked more timid 
religionists, both in contemplating the future 
state itself, and in peopling the blessed mansions 
with those whom he honored and loved. 

The very course of his studies and the habits 
of his life forced upon him such continual thoughts 
of the "mighty dead" that they seem to have 
been almost like living and breathing compan- 
ions, and his wishes to meet and commune with 
them face to face became like the intense desire 
we sometimes feel to meet a living person known 
intimately yet not personally. 

I can not resist quoting here his own lines on 
the subject, written a few years before this pe- 
riod of his life : 



" My days among the dead are past ; 
Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 
The mighty minds of old ; 
My never-failing friends are they, 
With whom I converse day by day. 



" With them I take delight in weal, 

And seek relief in woe ; 

And while I understand and feel 

How much to them I owe, 

My cheeks have often been bedewed 

With tears of thoughtful gratitude. 



" My thoughts are with the dead, with them 

I live in long past years ; 
Their virtues love, their faults condemn, 

Partake their hopes and fears ; 
And from their lessons seek and find 
Instruction with an humble mind. 



" My hopes are with the dead ! Anon 
My place with them will be, 
And I with them shall travel on 
Through all futurity ; 
Yet leaving here a name, I trust, 
That will not perish in the dust."* 

I have before spoken of the prevalence of skep- 
tical opinions (p. 200) among young men of the 
higher classes at the commencement of this cen- 
tury, and I have mentioned that many of my 
father's acquaintances and some of his friends 
were at one period or another troubled with 
doubts upon religion. Accordingly, as opportu- 
nity occurred, he often endeavored, when he had 



* I have an additional pleasure in quoting these lines 
here, because Mr. Wordsworth (now, alas ! himself num- 
bered among those " mighty dead") once remarked that 
they possessed a peculiar interest as a most true and 
touching representation of my father's character. He 
also wished three alterations to be made in them, in order 
to reduce the language to correctness and simplicity. In 
the third line, because the phrase " casual eyes" is too un- 
usual, he proposed 

" Where'er I chance these eyes to cast." 
In the sixth line, instead of " converse," " commune ;" 
because as it stands, the accent is wrong. 
In the second stanza, he thought 

" While I understand and feel, 
My cheeks have often been bedewed," 
was a vicious construction grammatically, and proposed 
instead, 

" My pensive cheeks are oft bedewed." 
These suggestions were made too late for my father to 
profit by them. 



any reasonable hopes of doing good, to impress 
upon such persons the perfect adaptation of 
Christianity to the wants and nature of man, and 
especially the deep and never-failing sources of 
comfort it affords in all times of sorrow and 
trouble. 

To one of these friends who had passed 
through the stages of doubt and settled into a 
firm conviction of the truth of Christianity, and 
whom he had the happiness of knowing he had 
been partly instrumental, through Providence, in 
leading to this better mind, the following letter 
was addressed. 

To 

"Keswick, Feb. 8, 1822. 
" My dear , 

" I heard with sorrow of your ill health. Per- 
haps you are at this time a happier man than if 
you were in the enjoyment of vigorous health, 
and had never known sickness or sorrow. Any 
price is cheap for religious hope. The evidence 
for Christianity is as demonstrative as the sub- 
ject admits : the more it is investigated, the 
stronger it appears. But the root of belief is in 
the heart rather than in the understanding ; and 
when it is rooted there, it derives from the un- 
derstanding nutriment and support. Against 
Atheism, Materialism, and the mortality of the 
soul, there is the reductio ad absurdum in full 
force ; and for revealed religion there is the 
historical evidence, strong beyond the concep- 
tion of those who have not examined it ; and 
there is that perfect adaptation to the nature and 
wants of man, which, if such a revelation had 
not already been made, would induce a wise and 
pious man to expect it, as fully as a Jew expect? 
the Messiah. For many years my belief has 
not been clouded with the shadow of a doubt. 

" When we observe what things men will be- 
lieve who will not believe Christianity, it is im- 
possible not to acknowledge how much belief 
depends upon the will. 

"I shall have a large share of abuse in the 
course of this year. In the first place, my Book 
of the Church, which I am writing con amore 
and with great diligence, will strike both the 
Catholics and the Puritans harder blows than 
they have been of late years accustomed to re- 
ceive. The Emancipationists, therefore, and the 
Dissenters will not be pleased ; and you know 
the temper of the latter. My History of the 
War smites the Whigs, and will draw upon me, 
sans doubt, as much hatred from the Bonapart- 
ists in France as I have the satisfaction of en- 
joying from their friends in England. This 
volume is in great forwardness ; more than five 
hundred pages are printed. As for Lord Byron 
and his coadjutors in the Times, Chronicle, &c, 
&c, I shall, of course, not notice the latter, and 
deal with his lordship as he may deserve and as 
I may feel inclined. I have the better cause 
and the stronger hand. 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

" R. Southey." 



408 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 48. 



To the Rev. Herbert Hill. 

"Keswick, Feb. 24, 1822. 
" My dear U>-cle, 

With regard to Lord Byron, I have suffered him 
to attack me with impunity for several years. 
My remarks upon the Satanic School were gen- 
eral remarks upon a set of public offenders ; and 
it was only in reply to the foulest personalities 
that I attacked him personally in return. The 
sort of insane and rabid hatred which he has 
long entertained toward me can not be increas- 
ed ; and it is sometimes necessary to show that 
forbearance proceeds neither from weakness nor 
from fear. 

"Your copy of Landor's book was franked up 
through the Admiralty to Gifford. His Latin. I 
believe, is of the best kind ; but it is, like his En- 
glish, remarkably difficult : the prose, however, 
much less so than the verse. The cause of this 
obscurity it is very difficult to discover. 

" My correspondence with Frere has been 
very brisk. Something, also, I have had from 
Whittingham, and am every day expecting an- 
swers to further questions which I have sent ; 
but the most valuable papers which I have yet 
had are from Sir Hew Dalrymple, relating to his 
first communications with the Spaniards, and the 
whole proceedings in the south of Spain, while 
the junta of Seville ruled the roast. They will 
cause me to cancel a few pages, and replace 
them with fuller details. Luckily, the greater 
part comes in time to be introduced in its place 
without any inconvenience of this kind. These 
papers have given me a clear insight into many 
points with which I was imperfectly acquainted 
before. They contain also proof of scandalous 
neglect on the part of ministers, or something 
worse than neglect — a practice of leaving their 
agents without instructions for the sake of shift- 
ing the responsibility from themselves. At the 
commencement of the troubles in Spain, out of 
thirty-four dispatches — certainly the most im- 
portant that any governor of Gibraltar ever had 
occasion to send home — Lord Castlereagh never 
acknowledged more than two. I have heard 
our government complained of for this sort of 
conduct, which, in fact, is practiced in every de- 
partment of state ; but this is the most glaring 
proof of it that has ever fallen in my wav. 

"God bless you! R. S." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Feb. 29, 1822. 
"In looking over your volumes.^ you will, I 
think, wherever you perceive that a passage has 
been struck out, perceive at the same time for 
what reason it was omitted. The reason for 
every omission was such that, I am persuaded, 
you would, without hesitation, have assented to 
it, had you been upon the spot. A most pow- 
erful and original book it is, in any one page of 
which — almost in any single sentence — I should 

* Tbe proof-sheets of a work of Mr. Landor's, on the 
Writings of Charles Fox, had passed through ray father's 
hands. 



have discovered the author, if it had come into 
my hands as an anonymous publication. Notice 
it must needs attract ; but I suspect that it will 
be praised the most by those with whom you 
have the least sympathy, and that the English 
and Scottish Liberals may perhaps forgive you 
even for being my friend. 

" I have not been from home since the sum- 
mer of 1820. Even since that time, London 
has been so altered as to have almost the appear- 
ance of a new city. Nothing that I have seen 
elsewhere can bear comparison with the line of 
houses from Regent's Park to Carleton House. 
A stranger might imagine that our shop-keepers 
were like the merchants of Tyre, and lived in 
palaces. I wish the buildings were as substan- 

! tial as they are splendid ; but every thing is done 

, in the spirit of trade. Durability never enters 
into the builder's speculations, and the unsub- 
stantial brick walls are covered with a composi- 
tion which seems to have the bad property of 

I attracting moisture in a remarkable degree. In 
Regent's Park, before the houses are finished, the 
cornices are perfectly green with slimy vegeta- 
tion. The most impressive sight to me was St. 
Paul's b} T gas-light. I do not think any thing 
could be more sublime than the effect of that 
strong light upon the marble statues ; and the 
darkness of the dome, which the illumination 
from below served only to render visible. They 
have attempted to warm this enormous building 
by introducing heated air ; but, after expending 
d£800 in stoves and flues, the effect was to ren- 

[ der the quire unendurably cold, for the whole 
body of cold air from the dome came rushing 
down, so that the attempt has been given up as 
hopeless. 

" In London I scarcely went out of the circle 
of my own immediate friends. But as I went 
east and west upon a round of flying visits to old 
friends and familiar acquaintances, some of w T hom 
I had not seen for more than twenty years, I had 
opportunity enough of perceiving a more gen- 
eral disposition to be satisfied with things as 
they are, than ever existed within my memory 
at any former time. There happened to be no 
question afloat with which any party feeling 

] could be connected, and the people were sensi- 
ble of their general prosperity. Few, indeed, 
are they who apprehend the momentous conse- 
quences of the changes which are taking place. 
One effect of general education (such as that ed- 
ucation is) is beginning to manifest itself. The 
two-penny journals of sedition aad blasphemy 
lost their attraction when they no longer found 
hunger and discontent to work upon. But they 
had produced an appetite for reading. Some 
journeymen printers who were out of work tried 
what a weekly two-penny-worth of miscellaneous 
extracts would do ; it answered so well, that 
there were presently between twenty and thirty 
of these weekly publications, the sale of which 
is from 1000 to 15,000 each. How I should 
like to talk with you concerning the prospects 
of the Old World and of the New. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



jEtat. 48. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



409 



lo Grosvcnor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, July 12, 1822. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

"My old friend Lightfoot is with me, whom 
you remember at Oxford, and whom I had not 
seer, since we parted upon leaving Oxford eight- 
and-twenty years ago. The communication be- 
tween us had never been broken. I had a great 
regard for him, and talked of him often, and 
oftener thought of him ; and, as you may sup- 
pose, the more I became known and talked of in 
the world, the larger part I occupied in his 
thoughts. So at length he mustered up resolu- 
tion to make a journey hither from Crediton dur- 
ing his Midsummer holidays, being master of the 
grammar school there. 

" He declares me to be less altered in appear- 
ance and manners than any man whom he ever 
saw. I should not have known him ; and yet he 
has worn better than I have ; but he is thinner, 
and altogether less than when he was a young 
man, and his face has lengthened, partly because 
he has lost some of his hair. His life has been 
laborious, uniform, successful, and singularly 
happy. 

" He trembled like an aspen leaf at meeting 
me.* A journey to Cumberland is to him as 
formidable a thing as it would be for me to set 
off for Jerusalem, so little has he been used to 
locomotion. And he has shocked Edith May by 
wishing that the mountains would descend to fill 
up the lakes and vales, because then I should re- 
turn to the south and be within reach of him. 

' ; The only thing short of this which would be 
likely to remove me from this country, would be, 
if upon Gifford's giving up the management of 
the Quarterly Review, it were to be offered me 
and made worth my acceptance. In that case I 
should probably, from prudential reasons, think 
it proper to accept the offer, and fix myself with- 
in ten or twelve miles of town. But this is not 
likely, and I am not sure that it would be de- 
sirable. 

" What a pleasure it is in declining life to see 
the friends of our youth such as we should wish 
them to be ; and how infinitely greater will be 
the pleasure of meeting them in another world, 
where progression in beatitude will be the only 
change ! 

" God bless you! my dear Grosvenor. 

"R. S." 

In the course of the summer Dr. Channing 
made a brief visit to Keswick, bearing a letter 
of introduction to my father, from whom it seems 
he had requested one to the Rev. Christopher Ben- 
son, the late master of the Temple. This is in- 
teresting as relating to two distinguished indi- 
viduals. I may add that my father used to speak 
of Mr. Benson as the most impressive and pleas- 
ing preacher he had ever heard, " so as to admit 
of no comparison with any other." 



* In another letter he says, " I shall never forget the 
manner in which he met me, nor the tone in which he 
said, ' that, having now seen me, he should return home 
and die in peace.' '—Sept. 1, 1822. 



To the Rev. Christopher Benson. 

"Keswick, July 17, 1822. 
"Dear Sir, 

" Dr. Channing, of Boston, in New England, 
is equally distinguished in his own country by 
the fervor and eloquence of his preaching, and 
the primitive virtues of his life. I take the lib- 
erty of introducing him to you, because you will 
feel yourself in accord with him upon many of 
the most important points, and because I am very 
desirous that he should see and converse with 
one who holds as high a rank in Old England as 
he does in America. I have learned from him 
with some surprise that, under the name of Uni- 
tarianism, Arianism is the prevailing doctrine in 
the Massachusetts' states, and that he himself is 
of that persuasion. But I have told him that he 
will find himself much more in sympathy with 
our clergy than with the Dissenters, and this he 
already apprehends. He is in opulent circum- 
stances, and has devoted, and almost spent, him- 
self in the ministerial duties. 

" I need say no more of him ; his conversa- 
tion and the truly Christian temper of his mind, 
notwithstanding the doctrinal errors which he 
holds, will sufficiently recommend him. But I 
feel the necessity of apologizing for the liberty 
which I am taking with you. You will, I trust, 
impute it to the true cause, and not be offended 
if, in excuse for it, I say to you that, having had 
the good fortune once to hear you in the pulpit, 
and having since perused with the greatest satis- 
faction the series of your discourses, I earnestly 
wish that this excellent American should receive 
the most favorable impressions of the English 
Church. When I spoke of you to him last night, 
and put your volume into his hands, I did not know 
whether you were in this or in a better world. 
To-day, by mere accident, I learn that you have 
happily resumed your labors, and, yielding to the 
first impulse, I offered this introduction to Dr. 
Channing with as much pleasure as he manifested 
at receiving it. 

" When you visit this your native county, you 
would gratify me greatly by giving me an op- 
portunity of personally repeating an apology for 
this intrusion, and offering you such hospitality 
as my means afford. 

" Believe me, dear sir, yours, with the high- 
est esteem and respect, 

"Robert Southey." 

The following letter refers to an amusing ad- 
venture which had just happened to General 
Peachey, whose name has before occurred, and 
who was one of my father's most friendly and 
hospitable neighbors. His seat was on one of 
the islands in Derwentwater, and a more lovely 
spot fancy could not picture. It was not, how- 
ever, a convenient residence, especially for a 
dinner-party in unfavorable weather ; for, al- 
though the passage was short, still silks and 
satins suffered woefully when the waves rose 
high, and occasionally covered the fair wearers 
with their spray, and great was the reluctance 
to leave blazing fires and lighted rooms for 



410 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 49. 



pitchy dax-kness, and a voyage not only unpleas- 
ant, but sometimes formidable. 

Many adventures, generally, however, of a 
more ludicrous than perilous kind, occurred in 
consequence of this watery barrier. Large par- 
ties have been compelled to remain all night, the 
gentlemen bivouacking round the drawing-room 
fire ; sometimes a dense fog came on, so that the 
rowers lost their way, and either wandered up 
and down the lake for several hours, or landed 
their hapless boat loads on some distant fenny or 
stony shore, to act, unwillingly, to the life " the 
Children of the Mist." On one occasion the 
general himself, returning home unexpectedly, 
found it impossible to cross, and after waiting 
upon the inhospitable shore till he was wet and 
weary, made his way up to Greta Hall in sad 
plight. 

The general was a great lover of aquatics, 
and his favorite amusement was a sailing boat, 
which, in spite of all warnings (for the sudden 
gusts w T hich rash down the mountain gorges 
render the smaller lakes extremely unsafe for 
sailing on), he persevered in navigating with 
more boldness than skill. More than once his 
only place of refuge was the keel of his vessel, 
on which he hung till help arrived, and some- 
times he was driven hopelessly aground on the 
mid-shallows of the lake. All these accidents, 
however, served as good stories to circulate 
around his cheerful board, and many was the 
hearty laugh he raised and joined in at his own 
misadventures. The reader will find scattered 
up and down this volume occasional allusions to 
pleasant days passed in his company, nor did any 
one entertain a truer respect and a more friendly 
regard for my father. With him departed the open 
hand and kind heart of a true English gentleman. 

To the Rev. Nicholas Light foot. 

" Keswick, Sept. 16, 1822. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 
" The general has lately had a narrow, though 
ludicrous escape. He upset himself with an um- 
brella in a little skiff which Sir Frederic Mores- 
head had given him. It was within hearing of 
his own island. The skiff was corked so that it 
could not sink, but being half full of water after 
he had righted it, it was not possible for him to 
get in, and he being well buttoned up against a 
stormy day in a thick great-coat, was in no plight 
for swimming ; so he held on, and hallooed stout- 
ly for assistance. His two men hastened off in 
his little boat, the large one happening to be on 
the opposite shore. The general had presence 
of mind enough to consider that if he attempted 
to get into the little boat he should in all likeli- 
hood pull her under water, and that neither of 
the men could swim; he therefore very coolly 
directed them to take the rope of the skiff and 
tow it to the island with him at the end, and in 
this way he came in like a Triton, waving his hat 
round his head, and huzzaing as he approached 
his own shores. I ought to have told you that 
there came an invitation from him for you to 
dinner the day after your departure. 



" John May left me this day fortnight, and Dr. 

j Bell departed some days after him. The exer- 

■ cise which I took with him completed the good 

work which was begun with you, and has left 

j me in a better state than I had been in for the 

! two last years. By way of keeping it up while 

j the season permits (nothing being so salutary to 

j me as vigorous exercise), I went up Skiddaw 

Dod this morning — one of the expeditions which 

is reserved for your next visit ; on my return I 

found a letter from my brother Henry, saying he 

shall be here on Wednesday. This will give me 

ten days more of laking and mountaineering, if 

the weather permit. 

" The temptation which the country holds out 
to that exercise which is peculiarly necessary 
for me must be weighed among the many rea- 
sons for remaining in it ; for, with my sedentary 
habits and inactive inclinations, I require every 
inducement to draw me out. But whether I re- 
main or remove I shall see you, my dear Light- 
foot, often again (God willing) both in Devon- 
shire and wherever I may be. I shall certainl) 
come down to you when, next I visit London, 
which will probably be in February or March. 
"During the little time I had for business 
have written about half a paper for the Quarter 
ly, upon a history of the Religious Sects of the 
last century, by the ex-Bishop Gregoire. The 
book is curious for its strange mixture of revolu- 
tionary feelings with Catholic bigotry, and for 
the account which it gives of irreligion in France. 
It gives me matter for an interesting paper, 
be wound up with some seasonable observatior 
upon the progress of infidelity at home. G( 
bless you, my dear Lightfoot ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

' : Robert Sou they 

To Dr. Southey. 

" Keswick, Oct. 30, 1823 
" Mr dear Harry, 

" As soon as you departed I settled regularly 
to my habitual course of life, which has been so 
much to my benefit broken up through the sum- 
mer. At the same time I very dutifully began 
to observe your directions, and have walked every 
day with the exception of one stormy one. This 
is against the grain, but I feel the benefit of it, 
and therefore do not grumble. 

" The American books have arrived, and I am 
reading with much interest Dwight's Travels in 
his own country — a posthumous work. The 
author (whose unhappy name is Timothy) wrote 
in his youth, some forty years ago, an heroic 
poem upon the Conquest of Canaan, which was 
puffed and reprinted in London. Its stilted ver- 
sification was admired in those days, but it had 
little or no real merit. D wight, however, though 
a bad poet — because of a bad school — was a 
sensible man, and he kept a journal of his travels, 
and prepared it for publication, from a convic- 
tion that a faithful description of New England 
in all its parts, such as it then was, would in a 
few generations become exceedingly interesting, 
however unimportant it might appear if pub- 



^Etat. 49. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



411 



lished as soon as it was written. A great deal, 
of course, is only interesting locally ; but, on the 
whole, the picture of what the country is, his fair 
views of the state of society then, with its advant- 
ages and disadvantages, and the number of curi- 
ous facts which are brought together, make it 
very well worth reading. I would give a good 
deal to see as trustworthy and minute an account 
of the Southern States. This is just the sort of 
book which ought to be digested into a review. 

" The Quarterly Review will not do itself any 
good by the mealy-mouthed manner in which it 
has dealt with Lord Byron. The excuse for its 
previous silence is wretched; and to preach a 
sermon in refutation of so silly a piece of sophis- 
try as Cain is pitiful indeed. To crown all, 
while they are treating his lordship with so much 
respect, and congratulating themselves on the 
improved morality of his productions — out comes 
' the Liberal.' I have only seen some newspaper 
extracts from this journal, among them the de- 
scription of myself. He may go on with such 
satire till his heart aches, before he can excite in 
me one uncomfortable emotion. In warryig with 
him, I have as much advantage in my temper as 
Orlando had in his invulnerable hide. But there 
is no necessity for striking a blow at one who 
has so completely condemned himself. I wish 
the Liberals joy of their journal.* 

" Love from all. God bless you ! 

" Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

" Keswick, Nov. 8, 1822. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 

" By my brother Henry's means, I have found 
how the impediment between me and your cider 
may be removed. If you will direct it for me to 
the care of George Sealy, Esq., Liverpool, and 
ship it for that place, letting me know by what 
vessel it is sent, he will look after it there and 
forward it to Keswick, and then we will all drink 
your health in the juice, of the apple. It will 
need a case to protect it from the gimlet. 

" There is little chance of any circumstance 
drawing me from this country to reside in the 
vicinity of London — at least I can foresee none. 
The question whether or not the Quarterly Re- 
view should do so has been fairly considered and 
decided, in consequence of Giftbrd's dangerous 
illness. He had written to me soon after you 
left us, saying he could not long continue to con- 
duct the Review, and he knew not where to look 
for a successor. He was not ill at the time, and 
therefore my consideration of the matter was not 
hastily, but deliberately made. If I had chosen 
to propose myself, the office must have been 
mine, of course. The objections to it were, that 
the increased expenditure which I must incur 
near London would fully consume any increase 



* " Lord Byron has rendered it quite unnecessary for 
me to resent his attacks any further. This last publica- 
tion is so thoroughly infamous that it needs no exposure. 
It may reach a second number if it escape prosecution, 
but h:\rdly a third. He and Leigh Hunt, no doubt, will 
quarrel, and their separation break up the concern." — To 
the Rev. Neville White, Nov. 16, 1822. 



of income which I should have obtained, and 
therefore the time consumed in the mere man- 
agement of the journal would have been a dead 
loss. This time would be unpleasantly as well 
as unprontably spent in corresponding upon the 
mere business of the Review, examining com- 
munications, and either correcting them myself 
where there was any thing erroneous, imprudent, 
or inconsistent with those coherent opinions which 
the journal should have maintained under my 
care, or in persuading the respective writers to 
amend and alter according to that standard. 
Lastly, it seemed that there was nothing which 
could recompense me for the sacrifice which it 
needs would be to quit a country in which I take 
so much delight, and of which all my family are 
as fond as myself; and there was this weightier 
consideration — that if I gave up the quantity of 
time which the management of such a journal 
requires, it would take away all reasonable hope 
of my completing the various great works for 
which I have been so long making preparations. 

"I talked this matter over with John May, 
who entered entirely into my feelings. The 
next point, having fully made up my mind con- 
cerning myself, was to secure the succession (as 
far as my influence extended) for some person 
with whom I could freely and heartily co-oper- 
ate. John Coleridge is just such a person ; and 
having ascertained that he would like the situa- 
tion, I mentioned him to Gifford and to Murray. 
GifFord's illness has occurred since. He is bet- 
ter at present, and I have good reason to believe 
it is all but settled that John Coleridge is to 
become the editor of the Quarterly Review. 
Without taking him from his profession, it will 
render him independent of it, and place him at 
once in a high and important situation. 

" =* # * * This is a long ex- 

planation, and yet I think you will like to know 
the how and the why of my proceedings. In 
consequence, I may possibly take more part in 
the Review, and certainly more interest in it ; 
because, knowing the tenor of his opinions, and 
his way of thinking, I am sure he will admit 
nothing that either in matter or manner could 
offend a well-regulated mind. He will hold a 
manly and straightforward course, and censure 
will always come with weight and effect, he- 
cause it will never be unduly or insolently ap- 
plied. # ^ ^ ^ # # # 
u Believe me, my dear Lightfoot, 
" Yours affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 20, 1822. 
" My dear G., 
" I have no written form of admission to the 
office of laureate, and very well remember being 
surprised at the thoroughly unceremonious man- 
ner of my induction. At the day and hour ap- 
pointed (a very memorable one, the Prince Re- 
gent going to Parliament just after the news of 
the battle of Leipsic had been made public), I 
went to a little low, dark room in the purlieus of 



4i2 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 49. 



St. James's, where a fat old gentleman usher, in 
full buckle, administered an oath to me, in pres- 
ence of a solitary clerk ; and that was all, pay- 
ment of fees excepted, which was not made at 
the time. Walter Scott, I recollect, was amused 
at the description which I sent him of this cere- 
mony, and said it was a judgment upon me for in- 
serting among the Notes to the Cid a reflection 
of Sir John Finett's upon the ' superstition of a 
gentleman usher.' Whether any entry was 
made, and whether I signed my name, I can not 
call to mind, it being nine years ago. Gazetted, 
however, I was, and P. L. I have been from that 
time. But how can this concern you ? 

" You know the proverb, that he who is not 
handsome at twenty, wise at forty, and rich at 
fifty, will never be rich, wise, or handsome. 
Quoad my handsomeness — handsome is as hand- 
some does, and whatever I may have been, they 
have made a pretty figure of me in magazines. 
There is a portrait in a German edition of my 
smaller poems, which it will be a treat for you 
to see. You will never again complain of your 
ugly likeness below stairs. Concerning the sec- 
ond part of the adage, certain it is that about the 
age of forty, my views upon all important sub- 
jects were matured and settled, so that I am not 
conscious of their having undergone any change 
since, except in slight modifications upon inferior 
points. But for the last part of the story — rich 
at fifty — I certainly shall not be, nor in the way 
to be so. 

" When I deliberated, if deliberating it can be 
called, about the Quarterly Review, the single 
motive on one side was the desire of having an 
adequate and sure income, which I have never 
had since I discontinued the Edinburgh Annual 
Register, because it ceased to pay me for my 
work. My establishment requires c£600 a year, 
exclusive of other calls. The average produce 
of my account with Longman is about d£200 ; 
what I derive from the Exchequer you know, 
the rest must come from the gray goose quill ; 
and the proceeds of a new book have hitherto 
pretty generally been anticipated. They may 
float me for a second year, perhaps. Roderic 
did for three years, with the help of the Pilgrim- 
age ; then the tide ebbs, and so I go on. At 
present it is neap tide in the Row. My tale of 
Paraguay, when I can finish it, will about make 
it high water. 

" This is all very well while I am well ; but 
if any of the countless ills which flesh is heir to 
should affect my health, eyesight, or faculties, I 
should instantly be thrown into a state in which 
my income would only amount to about half my 
expenditure. Concerning death I have no anx- 
ieties. # # On that score I am easy, 
and not uneasy upon any other. But I have said 
all this to explain why it was that I could even 
ask myself the question whether it would become 
me to take the Quarterly Review into my own 
hands. I am quite satisfied that it would not ; 
but that it behooves me to go on, as I have al- 
ways hitherto clone, hopefully, contentedly, and 
thankfully, taking no further care for the mor- 



row than that of endeavoring always to be able 
to say, sufficient for the day has been the work 
thereof. 

"I have made a valiant resolution that the 
produce of this History shall not be touched for 
current expenses, looking to it always as the work 
wherewith I was to begin to make myself inde- 
pendent. The Book of the Church I must eat, 
but I will not eat these Peninsular quartos. The 
Whigs may nibble at them if they please. 

" I have just received an official communica- 
tion from Sir William Knighton, which, though 
it be marked private, there can be no unfitness 
in my communicating to you. It is in these 
words : 'lam commanded by the king to con- 
vey to you the estimation in which his majesty 
holds your distinguished talents, and the useful- 
ness and importance of your literary labors. I 
am further commanded to add, that his majesty 
receives with great satisfaction the first volume 
of your valuable work on the late Peninsular 
War.' This is the letter, and at the head of it 
is written, 'Entirely approved. G. R.' Is not 
this very^gracious ? and how many persons there 
are whom such a communication would make 
quite happy. For myself, I am sorry there are 
so few persons connected with me who can be 
gratified by it, and wish my good Aunt Mary 
had been here to have enjoyed it. I may de- 
posit it with my letters affiliatory from the 
Cymmrodorion, &c, and I might write upon the 
packet that contains them vanitas vanitatum, 
omnia vanitas. Not that I would be understood 
as affecting, in the slightest degree, to under- 
value what I am continually laboring to deserve. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 27, 1823. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

"lam very glad to see Herries's appointment. 
By all that I have heard for many years past, a 

more unfit person than could not possibly 

have been in that situation ; to get him out, and 
to have so efficient a man in his stead, is indeed 
a great point. It is the very place in which I 
have wished to see Herries. I hope and trust, 
now, that such means as the existing laws afford 
will be steadily employed for checking the li- 
cense of the press. The radical country papers 
continually lay themselves open to prosecution ; 
and I am certain that repeated prosecutions 
would go far toward stopping the mischief which 
they are doing at present, and have so long been 
doing with impunity. A strict watch over these, 
and over Cobbett, would soon suppress them. 

"I know nothing of the sale of my book; 
Murray has not written to me since it appear- 
ed. Only two opinions of it have reached me, 
except those of my friends — one in a compli- 
mentary letter from Mr. Littleton, the member 
for Staffordshire ; the other in a letter of the ci- 
devant Grand Parleur, which Rickman sent me ; 
and certainly nothing could be more flattering 
than what he said of it — that it was ' a Thucyd- 
idean history, which would last as long as oui 



JEtat. 49. 

country and our language.' I must confess, 
however, that I am not aware of any other re- 
semblance than what the title suggests ; though 
I have always flattered myself that my other his- 
torital work might, in more points than one, be 
comparedwwith Herodotus, and will hereafter 
stand in tne same relation to the history of that 
large portion of the new world, as his work does 
to that of the old. 

" We had an adventure this morning, which, 
if poor Snivel* had been living, would have set 
up her bristles in great style. A foumart was 
caught in the back kitchen : you may, perhaps, 
know it better by the name of polecat. It is the 
first I ever saw or smelled, and certainly it was 
in high odor. Poor Snivel ! I still have the hairs 
cut from her tail thirty years ago ; and if it were 
the fashion for men to wear lockets, in a locket 
they should be worn, for I never had a greater 
respect for any creature upon four legs than for 
poor Sni. See how naturally men fall into relic 
worship, when I have preserved the memorials 
of that momentaiy whim so many years, and 
through so many removals ! 

" To give you some notion of my heterogene- 
ous reading, I am at this time regularly going 
through Shakspeare, Mosheim's Ecc. Hist., Rabe- 
lais, Barrow, and Aitzema, a Dutch historian of 
the seventeenth century, in eleven huge full fo- 
lios. The Dutchman I take after supper, with 
my punch. You are not to suppose that I read 
his work verbatim : I look at every page, and 
peruse those parts which relate to my own sub- 
jects, or which excite curiosity; and a great 
deal I have found there. 

" We have not seen the face of the earth here 
for fifteen days — a longer time than it has ever 
been covered with snow since I came into the 
country. I growl at it every day. It seems a 
long while since I have heard from you. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To Humphrey Senhouse, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 11, 1822. 
" My dear Senhouse, 
" I am sorry to say that the prospect before 
nie is not such as to allow much hope of my see- 
ng Holland! this year. Time, the printers, and 
the constable are leagued together to oppose my 
wishes : I shall overcome the alliance, but not 
till the season will be too far advanced. Per- 
aaps I could be ready by the vintage, which 
would be no unpleasant sight ; but then the days 
are shortening, and daylight is the thing which 
travelers can least spare. 

" My winter has not been idly spent, but it 
has not carried me so far forward as I had an- 
ticipated, chiefly because writing a book is like 
building a house — a work of more time and cost 
than the estimate has been taken at. This is 
the chief reason. But something, I confess, 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



413 



* A dog belonging to Mr. Bedford in early days. 

t My father had for some time wished to visit the Low 
Countries, and had planned a tour there with Mr. Sen- 
house, who had been his companion in a former journey. 
This was not accomplished until 1825, when Mr. S. was 
not able to accompany him. 



must be set down to my besetting sin — a sort 
of miser-like love of accumulation. Like those 
persons who frequent sales, and fill their own 
houses with useless purchases, because they may 
want them some time or other ; so am I forever 
making collections, and storing up materials 
which may not come into use till the Greek Ca- 
lends. And this I have been doing for five-and- 
twenty years ! It is true that I draw daily upon 
my hoards, and should be poor without them ; 
but in prudence I ought now to be working up 
these materials rather than adding to so much 
dead stock. 

" This volume, when it appears, will provoke 
a great branch of the Satanic confederacy — the 
Bonapartists. It is the most damning record of 
their wickedness 1 that has yet appeared in this 
country, and in a form to command both atten- 
tion and belief. Only yesterday I learned from 
General Whittingham, who was in the battle of 
Medellin, that the French had orders to give no 
quarter. A wounded Spanish officer was brought 
into the room where Victor was at supper, and 
Victor said to him, ' If my orders had been obey- 
ed, sir, you would not have been here.' Those 
orders were obeyed so well, that the French 
dragoons that night rubbed their right arms with 
soap and spirits, to recover the muscles from 
the fatigue they had undergone in cutting the fu- 
gitives down. God bless you ! 
" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Sotjthey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 23, 1823. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" Your letter comes in aid of a purpose which 
I had entertained, of putting together what I have 
said upon the Catholic question in the Edinburgh 
Annual Register, recasting it, and publishing it, 
with some needful additions, in the form of a 
pamphlet. About a week ago I put down in 
my note-book the first sketch of an arrangement, 
and actually began to compose what I have to 
say as a letter to some M.P. ; not that it was 
meant to be addressed to any individual one ; 
but having argued with Wilberforce and Sir 
Thomas Acland upon the subject, I knew in 
what light they considered it. The course which 
affairs have taken in Ireland will probably have 
the good effect of quashing the question for this 
year, and in that hope I am willing to postpone 
my own purpose till a season which may be more 
convenient to myself, and when aid of this kind 
may be more needed. 

" The arguments lie in a nut-shell. The re- 
straints which exclude the Catholics from polit- 
ical power are not the cause of the perpetual 
disorder in Ireland ; their removal, therefore, 
can not be the cure. Suppose the question car- 
ried, two others grow from it, like two heads 
from the hydra's neck when one is amputated : 
a Catholic establishment for Ireland, at which 
Irish Catholics must aim, and which those who 
desire rebellion and separation will promote — a 
rebellion must be the sure consequence of agi- 



414 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 49. 



tating tiiis . The people of Ireland care nothing 
for emancipation — why should they ? but make 
it a question for restoring the Catholic Church, 
and they will enter into it as zealously as ever 
our ancestors did into a crusade. 

" The other question arises at home, and 
brings with it worse consequences than any 
thing which can happen among the potatoes. 
The repeal of the Test Act will be demanded, 
and must be granted. Immediately the Dissent- 
ers will get into the corporations every where. 
Their members will be returned ; men as hos- 
tile to the Church and to the monarchy as ever 
were the Puritans of Charles's age. The Church 
property will be attacked in Parliament, as it is 
now at mob meetings and in radical newspa- 
pers ; reform in Parliament will be carried ; and 
then farewell, a long farewell, to all our great- 
ness. 

" Our Constitution consists of Church and 
State, and it is an absurdity in politics to give 
those persons power in the State whose duty it 
is to subvert the Church. This argument is un- 
answerable. I am in good hopes that my Book 
of the Church will do yeoman's service upon the 
question. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 25, 1823. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" Westall has sent me four of the six prints for 
Roderic ; the others are not yet finished. I am 
very much pleased with these. If I were per- 
suaded, according to the custom of these times, 
that it is absolutely necessary to find some fault 



a short one. The next is one of the most im- 
portant in the book, but easily and soon written, 
because the materials are ready. Another chap- 
ter comes down to the Revolution, and one more 
will conclude. Then I shall set out for town, 
and eat ice there instead of oysters. 



God bless you 



R. 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, June 15, 1823. 
" My dear G., 

" The worst symptom of advancing age which 
I am sensible of in myself is a certain anxiety 
concerning ways and means ; to that cause I 
impute it, for I am sure it does not belong to my 
disposition. 

" You tell me it is not politic to- work entirely 
for posthumous fame. Alas ! Grosvenor, had 
you forgotten when you wrote that sentence that 
by far the greater portion of my life has been 
consumed in providing for my household ex- 
penses ? As for reputation, of that, God knows, 
I have as much as either I deserve or desire. 
If I have not profited by it, as some of my co- 
temporaries have by theirs, the fault is not ow- 
ing to my living out of sight. What advantage 
could it possibly be to me to meet great men at 
dinner twice or thrice in the season, and present 
myself as often at court ? There is, I dare say, 
good will enough among some of the men in 
power to serve me, if they knew how; but if 
they asked me how, I should not be able to point 
out a way. 

"Is it impossible for you to break away from 
with every thing, I might perhaps say that the ' London, and lay in a stock of fresh health and 
engraver has aimed at throwing too much ex- : spirits by help of fresh air and exhilarating ex- 



pression into the eyes in some of the plates. 
Those which are come are Roderic at the Foot 
of the Cross, Adosinda showing him the Dead 
Bodies, Florinda at her Confession, and the Death 
of Count Julian. The first strikes me as the 
best, and for this reason, that the subject is alto- 
gether picturesque — it explains itself sufficient- 
ly ; whereas, to know what the others mean, the 
poetical situation must be understood. I am 



ercise ? I wish )~ou would come here and stay 
with me till I could return to town with you. 
You would do me good as well as yourself. God 



bless y< 



R. S. 



To George Ticknor, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 16, 1823. 
"My dear Sir, 
If, as I trust, you have received my first vol- 



much more desirous that this speculation should ume of the Peninsular War, and the lithographic 
succeed on Westall's account than on my own. views which my friend, William Westall, has en- 
He had set his heart upon it, in the belief that it graved to accompany it, you will perceive that, 
would be of service to me to have my poems thus negligent as I have been in delaying so long to 
illustrated (as the phrase is), and in the feeling thank you for the books, and to reply to your wel- 
that the publishers were acting unhandsomely in ! come letter, I had not been wholly unmindful of 
having such things done for every writer of any ' you. Without attempting to excuse a delay for 
note except myself. The success would have j which I have long reproached myself, I may say 
been certain had it been done some years ago. j that it has been chiefly, if not wholly occasioned 
At present it is very doubtful. I by an expectation that I might have communica- 

" How is Chantrey ? Something like a mes- ted to you Gifford's retirement from the manage 
sage from him has been brought me by Mr. Gee, ' ment of the Quarterly Review, and the assump- 
expressing a wish that I would sit to him when | tion of that management by a friend of mine, 



I come to London. When will that be, you ask ? 
And many, I dare say, ask the same question, 
who know not what pains, as well as thought, I 
must take for the morrow before I can afford two 
months of traveling and expenditure. To-night 
I shall finish with Queen Mary's reisjn : Eliza- 



who would have given it a consistent tone upon 
all subjects. Poor Gifford was for several months 
in such a state that his death was continually 
looked for. His illness has thrown the journe« 
two numbers in arrear; he feels and acknowl- 
edges his inability to conduct it, and yet his un- 



beth's will require not a long chapter ; James's willingness to part with a power which he can 



zEtat. 49. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



415 



not exercise has hitherto stood in the way of any 
other arrangement. 

"I have more than once remonstrated both 
with him and Murray upon the folly and mis- 
thief of their articles respecting America; and 
should the journal pass into the hands of any 
person whom I can influence, its temper will 
most assuredly be changed. Such papers, the 
silence of the journal upon certain topics on 
which it ought manfully to have spoken out, and 
the abominable style of its criticism upon some 
notorious subjects, have made me more than once 
think seriously of withdrawing from it ; and I 
have only been withheld by the hope of its 
amendment, and the certainty that through this 
channel I could act with more immediate effect 
than through any other. Inclosed you have a 
list of all my papers in it. I mean shortly to 
see whether Murray is willing to reprint such 
of them as are worth preserving, restoring where 
I can the passages which Gifford (to the sore 
mutilation of the part always, and sometimes to 
the destruction of the sense and argument) chose 
to omit, and beginning with the Moral and Po- 
litical Essays. 

" Your friends and countrymen who come to 
Keswick make a far shorter tarriance than I 
could wish. They ' come like shadows, so de- 
part.' Dr. Channing could give me only part 
of a short evening. Randolph of Roanoake no 
more : he left me with a promise that if he re- 
turned from Scotland by the western side of the 
island, he would become my guest : if he could 
have been persuaded to this, it would have done 
him good, for he stood in need of society, and of 
those comforts which are not to be obtained at 
an inn. Mr. Eliot passed through about five 
weeks ago, and on Monday last we had a youn- 
ger traveler here — Mr. Gardner. No country 
can send out better specimens of its sons. 

" Coleridge talks of bringing out his work 
upon Logic, of collecting his poems, and of adapt- 
ing his translation of Wallenstein for the stage, 
Kean having taken a fancy to exhibit himself in 
it. Wordsworth is just returned from a trip to 
the Netherlands : he loves rambling, and has no 
pursuits which require him to be stationary. I 
shall probably see him in a few days. Every 
year shows more and more how strongly his 
poetry has leavened the rising generation. Your 
mocking-bird is said to improve the strain which 
he imitates ; this is not the case with ours. 

" Nov. 2, 1823. 
" I conclude this too-long-delayed letter on the 
eve of my departure for London. From thence, 
in the course of the next month, I shall send you 
the Book of the Church. Gifford is so far recov- 
ered that he hopes to conduct the Review to the 
60th number. I have sent him the commence- 
ment of a paper upon D wight's book, which I 
shall finish in town. The first part is a review 
of its miscellaneous information ; the second will 
examine the points of difference between an old 
country and a new one, the advantages and dis- 
advantages which each has to hope and to fear, 



and the folly of supposing that the institutions 
which suit the one must necessarily be equally 
suitable to the other. 

" Farewell, my dear sir. Remember me to 
Alston and my other New England friends ; and 
be assured that to them and to their country I 
shall always do justice in thought, word, and deed. 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours with sincere esteem, 

" Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

" Keswick, Sept. 23, 1823. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 

" The summer, or what might have been the 
summer, has slipped away, and the autumn, or 
what ought to be the autumn, is passing after it, 
and I have not yet been further from my fireside 
than a morning's walk could carry me. 

" I can tell you, however, now, that I shall 
start from home with my daughter 'Edith as early 
as possible in November, or, if possible, before 
the beginning of that month ; and that after halt- 
ing a week or ten days in London, I shall pursue 
my course to Crediton. 

" The summer has brought with it its usual 
flock of strangers, some of them sufficiently amus- 
ing. My civilities to them are regulated some- 
thing by the recommendations with which they 
present themselves, and a little more, perhaps, 
by their likeability, which depends something 
upon the cut of their jib. You know how im- 
possible it is not to read faces, and be in some 
degree influenced by what we see in them. We 
have had two travelers from New England — 
young men both, and well qualified to keep up 
the good impression which their countrymen 
have left here. Last week we had an English- 
man, who, having traveled in the Levant, and 
been made prisoner by the Bedouins, near Mount 
Sinai, chooses to relate his adventures instead of 
publishing them, and tells Arabian stories after 
the manner of the professed story-tellers in the 
East. I wish you had seen him the other even 
ing gravely delivering a tale of a magic ring (it 
was a full hour long) to a circle of some sixteen 
persons in this room, the vicar being one of the 
number. But the most interesting stranger who 
has found his way here is a Somersetshire man — 
Morrison by name, who, at the age of two or 
three and thirty, and beginning with little or 
nothing, has realized some c£l 50.000 in trade, 
and was then bound to New Lanark, with the 
intention of vesting c£5000 in Owen's experi- 
ment, if he should find his expectations confirm- 
ed by what he sees there. This person is well 
acquainted with the principal men among the 
free-thinking Christians ; he likes the men, but 
sees reason to doubt their doctrine. He seems 
to be searching for truth in such a temper of 
mind that there is good reason for thinking he 
will find it. 

" My household are in tolerable order. It has 
been increased this year by the acquisition of a 
most worthy Tom-cat, who, when the tenants of 
the next house departed, was invited to this, 



416 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 50 



where he received the name of Rumpelstilzchen, 
and has become a great favorite. I can not say 
of him as Bedford does of a similar animal, that 
he is the best-f or -nothing cat in the world, be- 
cause he has done good service upon the rats, 
and been successively promoted to the rank of 
baron, viscount, and earl. In most other things 
we are as you left us, except that just now the 
waters are not in their place, having overflowed 
their banks. 

" God bless you, my dear Lightfoot ! 

"Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 

To the Lord Bishop of Limerick. 

" Keswick, Oct. 22, 1823. 
"My Lord, 
" I ought to have thanked you for your Visit- 
ation Sermon and for your Charge, both worthy 
of the hand from which they come. I have 
thought, also, more than once, of expressing to 
yourself, as I have done to others, the sincere 
pleasure which your promotion gave me, from a 
public not less than a personal feeling, in these 
times, when it is of such especial importance that 
such stations should be so filled. 

"My anticipations would be of the darkest 
kind if it were not for a calm, unhesitating reli- 
ance upon Providence. Our institutions had 
need be strong when they are so feebly defend- 
ed, and so formidably and incessantly assailed. 
Uncompromising courage was almost the only 
quality of a statesman which Mr. Pitt possessed, 
and that quality has not been inherited by his 
successors. At present they seem to think that 
all is well because the manufacturers are in em- 
ploy, and there is no seditious movement going 
on ; and they would hardly look upon that writer 
as their friend who should tell them that this 
quiet is only upon the surface ; that the leaven 
is at work ; and that there is less danger from 
the negroes in Demerara or Jamaica than from 
a manufacturing population such as ours, with 
such a party of determined radicals and besotted 
reformers in Parliament to excite them. Would 
that I could perceive the remedy as clearly as I 
do the evil ! I have, however, for some time 
been deliberately putting together my thoughts 
upon this subject in a series of Colloquies upon 
the Progress and Prospects of Society, taking for 
my motto three pregnant words from St. Ber- 
nard, Rcspice, aspice, prospice. I am neither so 
vain nor so inexperienced as to imagine that any 
thing which I may offer will change any man's 
opinions ; but I may fix them when they are un- 
confirmed, make the scale turn when it is waver- 
ing, and give a right bias to those who are be- 
ginning their career. 

" There is hope for us at home, because our 
institutions are so good that it is quite certain, 
if they were subverted, the miserable people 
would soon desire nothing so much as their re- 
establishment ; and moreover, with the common- 
est prudence, they are strong enough to resist a 
revolutionary attack. But if we look abroad, 
the contending parties are both in such extremes 



of evil, that I know not from which the wors 
consequences are to be apprehended, the estab 
lishment of old governments or the triumph of 
new ones. You would be pleased, I am sure 
with the paper concerning Spain in the last Quar- 
terly. It is by my friend Blanco White (Leuca 
dio Doblado), a Spanish priest, who came over 
to this country in 1810, a thorough Jacobin and 
a thorough unbeliever, and is at this time as sin- 
cere a Protestant and as devout a minister as 
any whom the Church of England has in her 
service. There are few men whom I respect 
so highly. 

" Before this letter reaches ) r our lordship I 
shall be on the way to London, and as I shall 
not finally leave it before the beginning of Feb- 
ruary, it is possible that I may have the pleasure 
of meeting you there. It will indeed gratify me 
to accept of your obliging invitation, if I can one 
day find opportunity and leisure : there is much 
in your country which I should like to see, and 
many points upon which I should gladly seek for 
information. My Annual Ode two years ago 
was upon the king's visit to Ireland, and the con- 
dition of that country. It would naturally have 
concluded with some complimentary and hope- 
ful mention of Marquis Wellesley, but my spirit 
failed. I felt that the difficulties of his situation 
were more than he could overcome, and the poem 
remained in this respect imperfect. 

" That poem of Langhorn's has certainly a 
Hebrew cast ; but it must be rather a proof that 
this form of composition is the natural figure of 
passion than of imitation. The principle, as a 
principle, he could not have understood ; nor was 
he, being a lawyer, likely to have had any learn- 
ing of that kind ; nor, indeed, being a Catholic, 
even to have been conversant with the scriptural 
style. The part given in the Quarterly Review 
is about a third of the poem, but the whole is in 
the same high and sustained strain of feeling. 

" I am putting the last hand to my long-prom- 
ised Book of the Church. It will give great of- 
fense to the Catholics, and to all those Dissenters 
who inherit the opinions of the Puritans. But I 
hope and trust that it will confirm in many, and 
excite in more, a deep, well-founded reverence 
for the Establishment. 

" Believe me, my lord, with great respect and 
regard, your lordship's obliged and obedient 
servant, Robert Southey." 

The reader may possibly have remarked it as 
an omission, that among the many persons ad- 
dressed and alluded to in my father's letters, the 
name of Charles Lamb should have so rarely oc- 
curred, especially as they were well known tc 
entertain mutual feelings of close friendship, and 
admiration of each other's talents. The cause 
of this has been, on the one hand, that Lamb 
never preserved the letters he received, and, on 
the other, that such of those written by him to 
my father as were of peculiar interest are well 
known in Mr. Justice Talfourd's interesting 
sketch of his life. 

The correspondence, indeed, between them, 



^Etat. 50. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



417 



though not frequent, was yet of a most familiar 
and interesting character ; and to visit his early 
friend,* for they had been intimate for nearly 
twenty years, was one of the choicest pleasures 
my father always looked forward to in going to 
London. 

At the time of his present visit to the metrop- 
olis, a momentary interruption to their friendship 
occurred, which requires to be noticed here. 

In a recent number of the Quarterly (for July, 
1823), in a paper upon the Progress of Infideli- 
ty, my father had taken occasion to remark upon 
the Essays of Elia, that it was a book which 
wanted only a sounder religious feeling to be as 
delightful as it was original. At this expres- 
sion, with which my father himself had not been 
satisfied, but had intended to alter in the proof- 
sheet, which, unfortunately, was not sent him, 
Lamb was greatly annoyed ; and having previ- 
ously taken umbrage at some incidental refer- 
ence to him in former articles, which in his hasty 
anger he attributed erroneously to my father's 
pen, he now addressed a very long letter of re- 
monstrance to him by name, in the London Mag- 
azine for October (1823). In this, which was 
republished after his death in his collected works, 
he dwells particularly upon a point which I have 
before touched upon, as much, I think, as is nec- 
essary at my hands, that some person might af- 
fix a charge of a want of a sufficiently reveren- 
tial habit of speaking on religious topics upon 
my father himself, and also upon the circum- 
stance of his having taken so large a license in 
jesting upon subjects of Diablerie, and in face- 
tious commentaries upon the Legends of Rome ; 
acquitting him, at the same time, of all inten- 
tional irreverence, and affirming that he himself 
had learned from him something of the habit. 

This letter, which contained, besides, much 
more that was written in a resentful spirit, was 
put into my father's hands soon after his arrival 
in London, and he was greatly astonished at its 
contents. He says, speaking of it in a letter to 
Mr. Moxon (July 15, 1837), "When he publish- 
ed that letter to me in the London Magazine, so 
little was I conscious of having done any thing 
to offend him, that upon seeing it announced in 
the contents of that number, I expected a letter 
of friendly pleasantry. My reply was to this 
effect, that if he had intimated to me that he 
was hurt by any thing which had been said by 
me in the Quarterly Review, t I would in the 



next number have explained or qual.fied it to 
his entire satisfaction ; this, of course, it was im- 
possible for me to do after his letter : but I would 
never make sport for the Philistines by entering 
into a controversy with him. The rest was an 
expression of unchanged affection, and a proposal 
to call upon him. 1; And in another letter he 
says, "On my part there was not even a mo- 
mentary feeling of anger ; I was very much sur- 
prised and grieved, because I knew how much 
he would condemn himself. And yet no resent- 
ful letter was ever written less offensively ; his 
gentle nature may be seen in it throughout." 

Lamb's answer to my father's letter, fully con- 
firming this expectation, may fitly be placed here. 

C. Lamb, Esq., to R. Southey, Esq. 

" E. I. H., Nov. 21, 1823. 
" Dear Southey, 
" The kindness of your note has melted away 
the mist that was upon me. I have been fight- 
ing against a shadow. That accursed Quarter- 
ly Review had vexed me by a gratuitous speak- 
ing of its own knowledge* that the Confessions 
of a Drunkard was a genuine description of the 
state of the writer. Little things that are not 
ill meant may produce much ill. That might 
have injured me alive and dead. I am in a pub- 
lic office, and my life is insured. I was prepared 
for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnox- 
ious words, a hard case of repetition directed 
against me. I wish both magazine and review 



* In referring back to the account of my father's short 
residence at Burton in the year 1797, 1 find I have omitted 
to notice a visit which Charles Lamb there paid him, and 
which must have been the commencement of their inti- 
macy. Mr. Justice Talfourd states that their first intro- 
duction to each other took place through Mr. Coleridge 
in 1799, but of this I did not find any traces in my father's 
letters, doubtless because his mind was then fully occu- 

Eied with his own difficulties and distresses. Their most 
•equent intercourse was in 1802, when Lamb was living 
at the Temple, and London for the last time was my fa- 
ther's place of abode. 

t Charles Lamb's bitter feelings against the Quarterly 
and its editor originated in an allusion to him in one of 
the earlier numbers, where, in speaking of a criticism of 
his on the great scene in Ford's play of The Broken Heart, 
where " Calantha dances on after hearing at every pause 
of some terrible calamity, the writer had affected to ex- 
Dd 



cuse Lamb as a maniac." 1 On seeing the passage, which 
the circumstances of Lamb's life rendered so peculiarly 
obnoxious, my father had written to Murray to express 
his sorrow at its having been permitted to appear, and re- 
ceived from Giftbrd, who, it seems, was himself the writer 
of it, an explanation so honorable to him, that I am ex- 
tremely glad to be able to insert it here, especially as my 
father greatly regretted that he had not sent it to Mr. Jus- 
tice Talfourd. 

" James Street, Buckingham Gate, Feb. 13, 1812. 
" My dear Sir, ****** 
" I break off here to say that I have this moment re- 
ceived your last letter to Murray. It has grieved and ifc 
shocked me beyond expression ; but, my dear friend, 1 
am innocent as far aa the intent goes. I call God to wit- 
ness that in the whole course of my life I never heard one 
syllable of Mr. Lamb or his family. I knew not that he 
ever had a sister, or that he had parents living, or that he 
or any person connected with him had ever manifested 
the slightest tendency to insanity. In a word, I declare 
to you, in the most solemn manner, that all I ever knew or 
ever heard of Mr. Lamb was merely his name. Had I 
been aware of one of the circumstances which you men- 
tion, 1 would have lost my right arm sooner than have 
written what I have. The plain truth is, that I was shock- 
ed at seeing him compare the sufferings and death of a 
person who just continues to dance after the death of her 
lover is announced (for this is all her merit) to the pangs 
of Mount Calvary ; and not choosing to attribute it to fol- 
ly, because I reserved that charge for Weber, I unhappi- 
ly, in the present case, ascribed it to madness, for which 
I pray God to forgive me, since the blow has fallen heav- 
ily where I really thought it would not be felt. I consid- 
ered Lamb aa a thoughtless scribbler, who, in circum- 
stances of ease, amused himself by writing upon any sub- 
ject. Why I thought so I can not tell, but it was the opin- 
ion I formed to myself, for I now regret to say I never 
made any inquiry upon the subject, nor by any accident 
in the whole course of my life did I hear him mentioned 
beyond the name. * * * * 

"I remain, my dear sir, yours most sincerely, 

W. G.IFFORD." 



" VV. U.IFKO. 

* This was one of the passages before referred 
wrongfully ascribed to my father. 



to, as 



1 See Final Memorials of C. Lamb, vol. i., p. 215. 



418 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 50. 



were at the bottom of the sea. I shall be asham- 
ed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) 
will be still more so, for this folly was done with- 
t out her knowledge, and has made her uneasy 
ever since. My guardian angel was absent at 
that time. 

"I will make up courage to see you, how- 
ever, any day next week (Wednesday excepted) . 
We shall hope that you will bring Edith with 
you. That will be a second mortification ; she 
will hate to see us ; but come and heap embers ; 
we deserve it, I for what I have done, and she 
for being my sister. 

" Do come early in the day, by sunlight, that 
you may see my Milton. I am at Colebrook 
Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington. A detach- 
ed whitish house, close to the New River, end 
of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from Sadler's 
Wells. 

" Will you let us know the day before ? 

" Your penitent, C. Lamb." 

In a letter to Bernard. Barton of the same day, 
he thus alludes to the expected meeting : "I 
have a very kind letter from the laureate, with 
a self-invitation to come and shake hands with 
me. This is truly handsome and noble. 'Tis 
worthy my old ideas of Southey. Shall I not, 
think you, be covered with a red suffusion ?" 

The proposed visit was paid, and " the affec- 
tionate intimacy, which had lasted for almost 
twenty years, was renewed only to be interrupt- 
ed by death." 

To Mrs. Southey. 

"London, Dec. 30, 1823. 
*.' My dear Edith, 
" We have been this morning to hear Row- 
land Hill. Mrs. Hughes called at his house last 
week to know when he would preach, and was 
answered by a demure-looking woman that (the 
Lord willing) her master would preach on Sun- 
day morning at half past ten, and in the evening 
at six. So this morning I set off with E. May, 
Mrs. and Anne Rickman. We were in good 
time, and got into the free seats, where there 
were a few poor people, one of whom told us to 
go round to another door, and we should be ad- 
mitted. Another door we found, with orders 
that the door-keepers should take no money for 
admittance, and a request that no person would 
enter in pattens. Door-keeper there was none, 
and we therefore ventured in and took our seats 
upon a bench beside some decent old women. 
One of these, with the help of another and 
busier old piece of feminhy, desired us to re- 
move to a bench behind us, close to the wall ; 
the seats we had taken, they said, belonged to 
particular persons ; but if we would sit where 
she directed till the service was over, we should 
then be invited into the pews, if there was room. 
I did not immediately understand this, nor what 
we were to do in the pews when the service was 
at an end, till I recollected that in most schism 
shops the sermon is looked upon as the main 
thing for which the congregation assemble. This 



was so much the case here, that people were con- 
tinually coming in during all the previous part 
of the service, to which very little attention was 
paid, the people sitting or standing as they 
pleased, and coughing almost incessantly. 

" I suppose what is properly called the morn- 
ing service had been performed at an early hour, 
for we had only the communion service. Row- 
land Hill's pulpit is raised very high, and before 
it, at about half the height, is the reader's desk 
on his right, and the clerk's on his left, the clerk 
being a very grand personage with a sonorous 
voice. The singing was so general and so good 
that I joined in it, and, doubtless, made it bet- 
ter by the addition of my voice. During the 
singing, after Rowland had made his prayer be- 
fore the sermon, we, as respectable strangers, 
were beckoned from our humble places by a gen- 
tleman in one of the pews. Mrs. R and 

her daughter were stationed in one pew between 
two gentlemen of Rowland's flock, and E. May 
and I in another, between a lady and a person 
corresponding very^ much in countenance to the 
character of a tight boy in the old Methodistic- 
al magazines. He was very civil, and by find- 
ing out the hymns for me, and presenting me 
with the book, enabled me to sing, which I did 
to admiration. 

" Rowland, a fine, tall old man, with strong 
features, very like his portrait, began by read- 
ing three verses for his text, stooping to the book 
in a very peculiar manner. Having done this, 
he stood up erect and said, ' Why the text is a 
sermon, and a very weighty one too.' I could 
not always follow his delivery, the loss of his 
teeth rendering his words sometimes indistinct, 
and the more so because his pronunciation is pe- 
culiar, generally giving e the sound of ai, like the 
French. His manner was animated and striking, 
sometimes impressive and dignified, always re- 
markable ; and so powerful a voice I have rare- 
ly or never heard. Sometimes he took off his 
spectacles, frequently stooped down to read a 
text, and on these occasions he seemed to double 
his body, so high did he stand. He told one or 
two familiar stories, and used some odd expres- 
sions, such as 'A murrain on those who preach that 
when we are sanctified we do not grow in grace !' 
and again, ' I had almost said I had rather see the 
Devil in the pulpit than an Antinomian !' The 
j purport of his sermon was good; nothing fanatical, 
nothing enthusiastic ; and the Calvinism which 
it expressed was so qualified as to be harmless. 
The manner that of a performer, as great in his 
line as Kean or Kemble, and the manner it is 
which has attracted so large a congregation about 
him, all of the better order of persons in business. 
E. May was very much amused, and I am very 
glad I have heard him at last. It is very well 
that there should be such preachers for those 
who have no appetite for better-dressed food. 
But when the whole service of such a place is 
compared with the genuine devotion and sober 
dignity of the Church service, properly perform- 
ed, I almost wonder at the taste which prevails 
for garbage. 



ffiTAT. 50. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



419 



" One remark I must not omit. I never be- 
fore understood the unfitness of our language for 
music. Whenever there was an s in the word, 
the sound produced by so many voices made as 
loud a hissing as could have been produced by a 
drove of geese in concert, or by some hundred 
snakes in full chorus. 

" Lane is making a picture which promises to 
be as good as Phillips's print is bad, base, vile, 
vulgar, odious, hateful, detestable, abominable, 
execrable, and infamous. The rascally mezzo- 
tinto scraper has made my face fat, fleshy, silly, 
and sensual, and given the eyes an expression 
which I conceive to be more like two oysters in 
love than any thing else. But Lane goes on to 
the satisfaction of every body, and will neither 
make me look like an assassin, a Methodist 
preacher, a sensualist, nor a prig. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Edith May Southey. 

" London, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 1823. 
" My dear Daughter, 

" I have sent you a Bible for a New Year's 
gift, in the hope that with the New Year you 
will begin the custom of reading, morning and 
night, the Psalms and Lessons for the day. It 
is far from my wish that this should be imposed 
as a necessary and burdensome observance, or 
that you should feel dissatisfied and uneasy at 
omitting it, when late hours or other accidental 
circumstances render it inconvenient. Only let 
it be your ordinary custom. You will one day 
understand feelingly how beneficially the time 
has been employed. 

" The way which I recommend is, I verily 
believe, the surest way of profiting by the Scrip- 
tures. In the course of this easy and regular 
perusal, the system of religion appears more and 
more clear and coherent, its truths are felt more 
intimately, and its precepts and doctrines reach 
the heart as slow showers penetrate the ground. 
In passages which have repeatedly been heard 
and read, some new force, some peculiar mean- 
ing, some home application which had before 
been overlooked, will frequently come out, and 
you will find, in thus recurring daily to the Bible, 
as you have done among the lakes and mount- 
ains which you love so well, in the Word of 
God, as in his works, beauties and effects, and 
influences as fresh as they are inexhaustible. I 
say this from experience. May God bless the 
book to the purpose for which it is intended ! and 
take you with it, my dear, dear child, the bless- 
ing of 

" Your affectionate father, 

"Robert Southey,'* 

After pursuing his intended course into the 
West of England, and visiting his aged aunt at 
Taunton, and his friend Mr. Lightfoot at Credi- 
ton, my father reached hom$ early in the next 
year, for the incidents and correspondence of 
which we must open a new chapter. 
B B 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

PLAN FOR UNITING THE WESLEYAN METHODISTS 

WITH THE CHURCH AMUSING DOMESTIC SCENE 

OPINIONS OF THE BOOK OF THE CHURCH 

RODERIC TRANSLATED INTO DUTCH VERSE 

EFFECTS OF THE NITROUS OXYD ENMITY 

MORE ACTIVE THAN FRIENDSHIP ODD BOOKS 

IN READING LORD BYROn's DEATH CAUSE 

OF THE DELAY IN THE PUBLICATION OF THE 
PENINSULAR WAR ESTIMATE OF HUMAN NA- 
TURE THE BOOK OF THE STATE WISHES TO 

PROCURE THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE RECORD 

COMMITTEE REASONS FOR DECLINING TO BE 

NAMED ONE OF THE ROYAL LITERARY ASSOCI- 
ATES PREVALENCE OF ATHEISM HISTORY OF 

THE MONASTIC ORDERS THE DOCTOR, ETC. 

LOVE OF PLANNING NEW WORKS HABIT OF 

READING WHILE WALKING WESLEYAN METH- 
ODISTS LONG LIFE NOT DESIRABLE MR. TEL- 
FORD LORD BYRON THE QUARTERLY RE- 
VIEW PLAN OF OLIVER NEWMAN STATE OF 

IRELAND HE IS ATTACKED IN THE MORNING 

CHRONICLE BIBLE AND MISSIONARY SOCIE- 
TIES EVILS OF SEVERE REVIEWALS SMED- 

LEY'S POEMS MR. BUTLER'S REPLY TO THE 

BOOK OF THE CHURCH REASONS FOR NOT 

VISITING IRELAND LITERARY OBLIGATIONS 

VINDICLE ECC. ANGLICANS IN PROGRESS 

WISHES TO MAKE A TOUR IN HOLLAND WANT 

OF READINESS IN SPEECH HAYLEY. 1824- 

1825. 

At the conclusion of the "Life of Wesley," 
after a brief summary of his character, my father 
expresses a hope that the Society of Methodists 
might cast off the extravagances which accom- 
panied its growth, and that it would gradually 
purify itself from whatever was objectionable in 
its institution ; and he adds that " it is not be- 
yond the bounds of reasonable hope that, con^ 
forming itself to the original intention of its 
founders, it may again draw toward the Estab- 
lishment from which it has receded, and deserve 
to be recognized as an auxiliary institution, its 
ministers being analogous to the regulars, and 
its members to the tertiaries and various confra- 
ternities of the Romish Church." 

These remarks, it appears, and the work in 
general, had met with the approbation of some 
of the Wesleyans, notwithstanding the dislike* 
with which, as a body, they regarded this Life 
of their Founder ; and, as might have been ex- 
pected, certain internal commotions and divisions 
began to arise among them, which at one time 
seemed likely to lead to the results he here de- 
siderates. 

The first intimation he received of this was in 
the following curious communication from Mark 
Robinson, of Beverley, which awaited his return 



* " The mystery of the faith kept in a pure conscience is 
indeed a mystery to Mr. Southey. * * * The 
day will come when the friend and pupil of Hume, and 
the bold historian of ' The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire,' and the compiler of the ' Life of Wesley,' may 
be considered as having been engaged in the same work 
as ■ kicking against the pricks.'" — Preface to the Rev. Hairy 
Moore's Life of Wisley. 



420 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 50 



home, which may not unfitly be inserted here, as 
giving an interesting view of the feelings, wishes, 
and movements of a considerable portion of the 
Methodists at that time. 

From Mark Robinson to Robert Southey, Esq. 
" Beverley, Jan. 13, 1824. 
" Sir, 

"I am encouraged by the representations I 
have received of your affability and willingness 
to afford information to those who apply to you, 
to lay before you a matter which has given me 
no little concern ; and in the hope that you will 
favor me with your views upon the subject, I 
will proceed without further introduction. 

" It has for several years appeared to me, and 
several respectable friends of mine, who, as well 
as myself, are all members of the Wesleyan 
Methodist Society, in which we have for many 
years filled official situations, that the rapid dis- 
sent which we believe the traveling preachers 
have been chiefly instrumental in effecting in the 
society from the Established Church is much to 
be lamented, and that in the same proportion in 
which the society have departed from the orig- 
inal plan of Methodism, in the same proportion 
they have missed their way. We think that a 
secession from the Church has engendered a sec- 
tarian spirit, and given to the preachers a kind 
of influence over the people which, we fear, in 
many of its consequences, will be injurious both 
to their piety and liberty, leading them to ex- 
change the former for party zeal, and the latter 
for a too ready acquiescence in all the measures 
of the preachers. We lately opened a corre- 
spondence with the Church Methodists in Ireland, 
from which we learn — what you, sir, are prob- 
ably already acquainted with — that, in 1817, the 
Methodist Conference in Ireland, after exciting 
the societies throughout the country to petition 
them for the sacraments, determined upon giving 
them to all who should desire it. In consequence, 
7000 among them, among whom were many of 
the most respectable members in Dublin and 
other principal places, withdrew from the Con- 
ference connection and established a separate 
itineracy, and that they have now about 14,000 
in close connection with them. We learn, also, 
that the Bishop of Waterford called together the 
clergy of his diocese, and sent for one of the 
itinerant preachers of the connection, who so 
fully satisfied his lordship and the clergy that 
they all, without one dissenting voice, promised 
to give the Church Methodists countenance and 
support. What particularly satisfied this meet- 
ing was the declaration of the preachers that the 
society had settled their chapels on trustees con- 
ditionally, that if they should ever leave the 
Church, these chapels should go to the crown. 
They hold no meetings in canonical hours, and 
receive the sacrament at the hands of the clergy. 
The bishop and many of his clergy have con- 
tributed to the erection of the Waterford Chapel, 
and not only numbers of the Church people at- 
tend the chapel on the Sunday evenings, but also 
the clergy themselves. 



" This correspondence we have named to sev 
eral, both of the evangelical and orthodox clergy, 
none of whom raise any objection to it, and mos/ 
of whom are its warm advocates. I lately re 
ceived an invitation from the evangelical clergy 
in Hull to meet them in this business; and, in 
company with M. T. Sadler, Esq., of Leeds. 
who is one of our most able coadjutors, I at- 
tended the meeting. The clergy were unani- 
mously of opinion that Church Methodism would 
meet with general support throughout the coun- 
try, and that the pious clergy would give it their 
support. It has also been named in a private 
way to many of our magistrates and other re- 
spectable gentlemen, who profess to think well 
of it. We feel confident that there is an inten- 
tion in the minds of some of the leading Confer- 
ence preachers to get up, not so much a plan of 
regular dissent as a rival Church. This we 
think strongly indicated by the introduction of 
baptism, of the Lord's Supper, burial of the dead, 
the reading the Church service, vergers with 
their uniform and wands, and especially the 
preachers having in the two last Conferences at- 
tempted to introduce episcopal ordination : the 
leading preachers to be bishops, and the remain- 
der regular clergymen. We are also of opinion 
that the preachers holding a regular Conference 
or Convocation, from which they exclude all the 
people, may in the end not only endanger the 
liberties of their own people, but of the country 
at large. Pray, sir, is there any good prece- 
dent for such a meeting ? Did not the proctors 
make part of the Conference or Convocation of 
the English clergy, and are not all the ecclesi- 
astical laws subject to the control of his majesty 
in Chancery, and of the civil courts ? We have 
it in contemplation to petition the next Confer- 
ence to admit a fair representation of the people, 
and to beg that they will deliberate measures 
for the gradual return of the societies to Church 
Methodism. 

" Mr. Sadler is perhaps known to you as the 
author of an excellent pamphlet addressed to Wal- 
ter Fawkes, Esq., late member for the county of 
York, in which he has refuted that gentleman's 
arguments in favor of a reform in Parliament. ] 
had forgotten to say that if the Conference will 
not listen to our request at all, we purpose ap- 
plying to our Irish friends to send over some effi- 
cient preachers, which we believe they will do. 

"I may add, that your excellent conclusion 
of the Life of Wesley has also contributed to in- 
duce me to take the liberty of troubling you on 
this subject, conceiving that our plan is not very 
dissimilar to what you refer to. * * * 
We shall highly value your opinion and advice, 
and shall feel much obliged by as early a reply 
as you can conveniently favor us with. 

"I am, for myself and friends, sir, 

" Your most obedient servant, 

"Mark Robinson." 

My father immediately transmitted a copy of 
this letter to Dr. Howley, at that time Bishop 
of London, who in his reply gives a valuable 



vEtat. 50. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



421 



testimony to the importance and utility of the 
M Book of the Church." 

The Bishop of London to R. Southey, Esq. 
"London, Feb. 25, 1824. 
" My dear Sir, 

" At the time of receiving your communica- 
tion of Feb. 20, it had been my intention for 
some days to trouble you with a line to express 
the high satisfaction which I have derived from 
your Book of the Church. 

" It contains a most interesting sketch of a 
subject which, to the generality of readers, is al- 
most unknown ; and as it can not fail to be pop- 
ular from the beauty of its execution, will, I 
trust, have the effect of turning the attention of 
many persons, who have hitherto been indiffer- 
ent to such matters, through ignorance, to the 
nature of the dangers which this country has es- 
caped, and the blessings of various kinds which 
have been secured to it through the National 
Church Establishment. I could have wished for 
references to the original writers, more especial- 
ly as Lingard has made such a display of his au- 
thorities. But perhaps you had reasons for with- 
holding them at present. A wish has been ex- 
pressed by many judicious persons that the work 
might be published in a reduced form for the ben- 
efit of the lower classes, whose minds would be 
elevated by the zeal and virtue of the first Re- 
formers. . 

" Your communication is very interesting and 
important ; great difficulties, I fear, lie in the 
way of an open and formal reunion with the body 
of the Church, and I am apprehensive the move- 
ment, if it has any effect, will terminate in swell- 
ing the numbers, and perhaps the reputation of 
a party, which count among its members many 
exemplary clergymen, not sufficiently alive ei- 
ther to the benefits of order, or to the prejudice 
resulting to religion from the aspersions thrown 
on the character of their brethren who differ with 
them in opinion on particular points. I am, how- 
ever, not without hopes that in certain situa- 
tions, more especially in parts of the colonies, a 
union of purpose and action at least may silently 
take place, which, under discreet management, 
would be productive of much advantage to the 
one great cause; but this must be effected by 
prudent use of opportunities, and not, I think, by 
formal treaty. 

" With repeated thanks for 3 r our valuable com- 
munication, and with sincere respect, I remain, 

u My dear sir, your faithful servant, 

" W. London." 

Here, for the present, the matter rested. Mark 
Robinson continued, however, to correspond at 
intervals with my father, who took considerable 
interest in the subject, and brought it forward in 
his " Colloquies with Sir T. More," expressing 
a strong opinion as to the practicability and de- 
sirableness of" embodying as Church Methodists 
those who would otherwise be drawn in to join 
one or other of the numerous squadrons of dis- 
sent." This gave, again, some little impetus to 



the exertions of Robinson and his friends ; but 
no results of any consequence followed. The 
subject will be found again alluded to at a later 
period. 

I have placed these two letters together, as 
leading the one to the other. We next find my 
father communicating the news of his return to 
Mr. Bedford, and amusing him with a promised 
account of a scene which the two friends in some 
" Butlerish" mood had planned beforehand. 

The horn here referred to was a long straight 
tin instrument, such as, in the olden times, mail- 
coach guards were wont to rouse slumbering 
j turnpike keepers and drowsy ostlers with, be- 
1 fore the march of music introduced them to key 
bugles and cornopeans, and long before rail- 
roads went steeple-chasing it across the coun- 
try, and shrill steam whistles superseded these 
more dulcet sounds. It had been procured chief- 
ly for the sake of the amusement the unpacking 
it would afford (though there might also be some 
latent intention of awakening the mountain ech- 
oes with it) . Mrs. Coleridge professed an exag- 
gerated horror of all uncouth noises, and " half 
in earnest, half in jest," played, not unwilling- 
' ly, her good-humored part in these pantomimic 
scenes, which my father enjoyed with true boy- 
ish delight. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq 

" Keswick, Feb. 23, 1824. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

"Here then I am, nothing the worse for hav- 
ing been wheeled over fifteen hundred miles in 
the course of fifteen weeks. I no longer feel the 
effect of motion in my head, nor of jolting in my 
tail. I have taken again to my old coat and old 
shoes ; dine at the reasonable hour of four, en- 
joy as I used to do the wholesome indulgence 
of a nap after dinner, drink tea at six, sup at 
half past nine, spend an hour over a sober folio 
and a glass of black currant rum with warm wa- 
ter and sugar, and then to bed. Days seemed 
like weeks while I was away, so many and so 
various were my engagements ; and now that I 
am settling to my wonted round of occupations, 
the week passes like a day. If my life is not 
like that of the prisca gens mortalium, it is quite 
as happy : and when you hear Qui Jit Meccends 
quoted, you may reply that you know one man, 
at least, who is perfectly contented with his lot. 

" I was charged by Edith particularly to de- 
scribe to her how Mrs. Coleridge looked when 
the fatal horn should first be exhibited to her 
astonished eyes. The task which my daughter 
imposed upon me my powers of language are not 
sufficient to discharge. The horn, I must tell 
you, was made useful as a case for Westalfs 
lithographic print of Warwick Castle. The doc- 
tor packed it carefully up with my umbrella in 
brown paper, so that no person could possibly 
discover what the mysterious package contained ; 
and great curiosity was excited when it was first 
observed at home. Mrs. C. stood by (I sent for 
her) w r hile the unpacking was deliberately per- 
formed. The string was untied, not cut ; 1 un- 



422 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF j£tat.50 



bound it round after round, and then method- 
ically took off the paper. The first emotion was 
an expression of contemptuous disappointment at 
sight of the umbrella, which I was careful should 
be first discovered. But when the horn appeared, 
the fatal horn, then, oh, then — 

" Grosvenor, it was an expression of dolorous 
dismay which Richter or Wilkie could hardly 
represent unless they had witnessed it — it was 
at once so piteous and so comical. Up went the 
brows, down went the chin, and yet the face ap- 
peared to widen as much as it was elongated by 
an indefinable drawing of the lips which seemed 
to flatten all the features. I know not whether 
sorrow or resentment predominated in the eyes ; 
sorrow as in the Dutch manner, she pitied her- 
self ; or anger when she thought of me, and of 
your brother from whom I received the precious 
gift, and whose benevolence I loudly lauded. 
She wished him at Mo-ko (where that is, I know 
not), and me she wished to a worse place, if any 
worse there be. In the midst of her emotion, I 
called upon Sarah to observe her well, saying 
that I was strictly charged by my daughter to 
make a faithful and full report. The comical 
wrath which this excited added in no slight de- 
gree to the rich effect. Here I blew a blast, 
which, though not worthy of King Ramiro, was 
nevertheless a good blast. Out she ran ; and 
yet finally, which I hold to be the greatest tri- 
umph of my art, I reconciled her to the horn ; 
yes, reconciled her to it, by reminding her that 
rats might be driven away by it, according as it 
is written in the story of Jeffry. * 

'' God bless you, Grosvenor ! I should prob- 
ably have prattled through the remainder of the 
sheet, but a parcel from the Row has arrived, 
and that always occasions an evening of dissipa- 
tion. Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 7, 1824. 
"My dear Friend, 

" What success this proposalf of my broth- 
er's may meet with remains to be seen. If he 
can obtain 200 subscribers, Longman will take 
the risk of printing 750 copies. The book will 
be respectable and useful, comprising a regular 
view of all that has occurred in those islands 
from their discovery to the present time. Take 
it for all in all, it is perhaps as disgraceful a por- 
tion of history as the whole course of time can 
afford ; for I know not that there is any thing 
generous, any thing ennobling, any thing hon- 
orable or consolatory to human nature to relieve 
it, except what may relate to the missionaries. 
Still it is a useful task to show what those isl- 
ands have been and what they are ; and the book 
will do this much more fully, clearly, and satis- 
factorily than has ever yet been done. 

" Three weeks have now nearly elapsed since 
my return, and they seem like so many days, so 
swiftly and imperceptibly the days pass by when 



* See Life of Wesley, vol. i., p. 445. 
t For the publication of a Chronologic*! History of the 
West Indies, by Capt. T. Southey. 



they are passed in regular employment and uni- 
form contentment. My old course of life has 
become as habitual as if it had never been inter- 
rupted. The clock is not more punctual than I 
am in the division of the day. Little by little I 
get on with many things. The Peninsular War 
is my employment in the forenoon. The Tale 
of Paraguay after tea. Before breakfast, and at 
chance times, as inclination leads, I turn to oth- 
er subjects, and so make progress in all. The 
only thing at present wanting to my enjoyment 
is to have something in the press, that I might 
have proof-sheets to look for — and I shall not be 
long without this. 

" Sunday 7 th. — To-day I have received a 
letter from Locker, who delivers me a message 
from the Bishop of Durham, thanking me for 
what I have done in the Book of the Church. 
The Bishop of London wrote to express his 
' high satisfaction.' Both regret that I have not 
referred to my authorities* — an omission which 
appears to be generally thought injudicious. The 
truth is, that when I began the book it was with 
an expectation that it would not exceed a single 
duodecimo volume ; and that even when enlarg- 
ed it is still a mere epitome for the most part, 
to which I should feel that a display of authori- 
ties was out of place. After the proofs of re- 
search and accuracy which I have given, I have 
a right to expect credit ; and, in fact, the more 
my credit is examined, the higher it will stand. 
Whoever may examine my collections for this 
and for my other historical works (and doubtless 
they will one day be inspected), will find that 
I have always prepared many more materials 
than I have used. #*#=£* 
' ; Believe me, my dear friend, 
" Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Soutuey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford. Esq. 

"March 27, 1824. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" To-day I received the first volume of Rod- 
eric in Dutch verse, translated by the wife of 
Bilderdijk, who is one of the most distinguished 
men of letters in that country. The translation 
appears to be very well done, as far as I am 
able to judge ; that is, I can see in the trying 
passages she has fully understood the original ; 
and her command of her own language is war- 
ranted by her husband's approbation, who is a 
severe critic as well as a skillful poet himself. 
He must be near eighty years of age, for he tells 
me he has been now threescore years known as 
an author. His letter to me is in Latin. The 
book comes in a red morocco livery ; it is dedi- 
cated to me in an ode, and a very beautiful one, 
describing the delight she had taken in the poem, 
and the consolation she had derived from it, 
when parts of it came home to her own feelings 
in a time of severe affliction. 

" She calls me the Crown Poet. I mean to 



This omission was supplied in a later edition. 



ffiTAT. 50. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



423 



send her a set of ,..? Illustrations as soon as I 
know how to transmit them. The packet came 
to me through a merchant at Amsterdam, who 
inclosed it in a Dutch-English letter of his own, 
and an essay upon the character of my Cid, 
which he had read in some literary society, and 
printed afterward. They give me praise enough 
in Holland : I would gladly commute some of it 
for herrings and Rhenish wine. 

#■###### 

" Do let me hear from vou. 

" God bless you ! * R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 27, 1824. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

" Your letter was as welcome as this day's 
rain, w T hen the thirsty ground was gaping for it. 
Indeed, I should have been uneasy at your si- 
lence, and apprehended that some untoward 
cause must have occasioned it, if I had not heard 
from Edith that you had supplied her exchequer. 

" I should, indeed, have enjoyed the sight of 
Duppa in the condition which you describe, and 
the subsequent process of transformation.* How 
well I can call to mind his appearance on his re- 
turn from the theater one-and-twenty years ago ! 
Little did I think that day that the next time I 
was to enter that theater would be in a red gown 
to be bedoctored, and called every thing that 
ends in issimus. And yet of the two days, the 
former was one of the most cheerful in my life, 
and the latter, if not the most melancholy, I think 
the very loneliest. 

" Murray writes to me that he has put the 



* Mr. Bedford's humorously exaggerated description 
may amuse the reader : " A circumstance occurred here 
a little while ago which I wish you could have witnessed. 
Henry had set off to dine at Mrs. Wall's at the nest door. 
Miss Page and I had finished our meal, when- there sound- 
ed a hard knock ; when the door opened, a figure present- 
ed itself in the dim after-dinner light of the season, whose 
features were not easily discernible, when ' Look at me 1 
what shall I do ?' broke out in accents of despair, and be- 
trayed poor Duppa. On one of the dirtiest days of this 
dirty and yet unexhausted winter, he had left Lincoln's 
Inn on foot to meet the gay party at Mrs. Wall's. A vil- 
lain of a coachman had driven by him through a lake of 
mud in the Strand, and Duppa was overwhelmed with 
alluvial soil. A finer fossil specimen of an odd fish was 
never seen. He looked like one of the statues of Pro- 
metheus in process toward animation — one half life, the 
other clay. I sent immediately for Henry to a consulta- 
tion in a case of such emergency. The hour then seven, 
the invitation for half past 6ix ; the guests growing cross 
and silent ; the fish spoiling before the fire ; the hostess 
fidgety I What could be done ? Shirts and cravats it 
was easy to find ; and soap and water few regular fami- 
lies in a decent station of life are without. But where 
were waistcoats of longitude enough? or coats of the lati- 
tude of his shoulders? But, impranso nihil difficile est: 
we stuffed him into a special selection from our joint 
wardrobes. Henry rolled round his neck a cravat, in size 
and stiffness like a Holland sheet starched, and raised a 
wall of collar about his ears that projected like the blink- 
ers of a coach-horse, and kept his vision in an angle of 
nothing at all with his nose ; would he look to the right or 
the left, he must have turned upon the perpetual pivot of 
his own derriere. ***** Thus rigged, 
we launched him, and fairly he sped, keeping his arms 
prudently crossed over the hiatus between waistcoat and 
bi'eeches, and continually avoiding too erect a posture, 
lest he should increase the interstitial space ; he was a 
fair parallel to what he was upon another awful occasion, 
when we both saw him revolving himself into a dew after 
the crowd of the Oxford Theater."— G. C. B. to R. S., April 
16, 1824. 



Book of the Church to press for a second edition. 
I make no alterations, except to correct two slips 
of the pen and the press : where the Emperor 
Charles V. is called Queen Catharine's brother 
instead of her nephew, and Henry IV. printed 
for III., and to omit an anecdote about Gardi- 
ner's death, which Wynn tells me has been dis- 
proved by Lingard. I do not know what num- 
ber Murray printed. But if there should appear 
a probability of its obtaining a regular sale, in 
that case I- shall be disposed to think seriously 
of composing a similar view of our civil history, 
and calling it the Book of the State, with the 
view of showing how the course of political 
events has influenced the condition of society, 
and tracing the growth and effect of our institu- 
tions ; the gradual disappearance of some evils, 
and the rise of others. Meantime, however, I 
have enough upon my hands, and still more in 
my head. 

"Hudson Gurney said to me he wished the 
king would lay his commands on me to write the 
history of his father's reign. I wish he would, 
provided he would make my pension a clear 
66500 a year, to support me while I was writ- 
ing it, and then I think I could treat the subject 
with some credit to myself. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, May G, 1824. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" In the evil habit of answering familiar let- 
ters without having them before me, I forgot to 
notice your question* respecting the nitrous ox- 
yd, which, however, I should not have done, had 
the thing been as hopeful as you supposed it to be. 
What I said was simply this, that the excitement 
produced by the inhalation was not followed by 
any* consequent debility or exhaustion ; on the 
contrary, that it appeared to quicken all the senses 
during the remainder of the day. One case oc- 
curred in which the gas seemed to produce a 
good effect upon a palsied patient. A fellow 
who had lost the use of his hands (a tailor by 
trade) was so far cured that he was turned out 
of the house for picking pockets. 

" The difficulty in finding two hundred sub- 
scribersf arises from this, my dear Grosvenor, 
that our friends are never so ready to bestir them- 
selves in our affairs as our enemies. There are 
half a score persons in the world who would take 
some pains to serve me, and there are half a 
hundred, who would take a great deal more to 
injure me. The former would gladly do any 
thing for me which lay in their way ; the latter 
would go out of theirs to do any thing against 
me. I do not say this complainingly, for no man 
was ever less disposed to be querulous ; and, 
perhaps, no one ever had more friends upon 
whose friendship he might justly pride himself. 



* Mr. Bedford was a sufferer from almost complete 
deafness, and he had imagined that my father, in some 
former letter, had spoken of the nitrous oxyd as effica- 
cious in that infirmity. 

t To his brother Thomas's History of the West Indiea 



424 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 50. 



But it is the way of the world ; and the simple 
reason is, that enmity is a stronger feeling than 
good will. 

^r TT * T? tv vP T? 

. " I am reviewing Hay ley's Life for the desire 
of lucre ; a motive which, according to a writ- 
er in the Lady's Magazine, induced me to com- 
pile the Book of the Church, and is, indeed, ac- 
cording to this well-informed person, the lead- 
ing principle of my literary life. How thorough- 
ly should I be revenged upon such miserable 
wretches as this, if it were possible for them to 
know with what infinite contempt I regard them ! 
" Shall I tell you what books I have in read- 
ing at this time, that you may see how many in- 
gredients are required for garnishing a calf's 
head ? A batch of volumes from Murray relat- 
ing to the events of the last ten years in Spain ; 
Bishop Parker, De Rebus sui Temporis ; Cardi- 
nal D'Ossat's Letters ; the Memoir of the Third 
Duke de Bourbon ; Whitaker's Pierce Plow- 
man ; the Mirror for Magistrates ; the Collec- 
tion of State Poems ; Tiraboschi, and the Nibe- 
lungen in its original old German, and its mod- 
ern German version, the one helping me to un- 
derstand the other. Some of them I read after 
supper, some while taking my daily walk ; the 
rest in odds and ends of time ; laying down the 
pen when it does not flow freely, and taking up 
a book for five or ten minutes by way of breath- 
ing myself. 

;i God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 26, 1824. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I thank you for your note. Its information 
is of a kind to make one thoughtful ; but the sor- 
row which I felt was not such as you were dis- 
posed to give me credit for.* 

" I am sorry Lord Byron is dead, because 
some harm will arise from his death, and none 
was to be apprehended while he was living ; for 
all the mischief which he was capable of doing 
he had done. Had he lived some years longer, 
he would either have continued in the same 
course, pandering to the basest passions and pro- 
claiming the most flagitious principles, or he 
would have seen his errors and sung his palino- 
dia — perhaps have passed from the extreme of 
profligacy to some extreme of superstition. In 
the one case, he would have been smothered in 
his own evil deeds ; in the other, he might have 
made some atonement for his offenses. 

" We shall now hear his praises from all quar- 
ters. I dare say he will be held up as a martyr 
to the cause of liberty, as having sacrificed his 
life by his exertions in behalf of the Greeks. 
Upon this score the Liberals will beatify him ; 
and even the better part of the public will for 
some time think it becoming in them to write 
those evil deeds of his in water, which he him- 



self has written in something more durable than 
brass. I am sorry for his death, therefore, be- 
cause it comes in aid of a pernicious reputation 
which was stinking in the snuff. 

" With regard to the thought that he has been 
cut off in his sins, mine is a charitable creed, and 
the more charitable it is the likelier it is to be 
true. God is merciful. Where there are the 
seeds of repentance in the heart, I doubt not but 
that they quicken in time for the individual, 
though it be too late for the world to perceive 
their growth. And if they be not there, length 
of days can produce no reformation. 

" In return for your news, I have nothing to 
communicate except what relates to the opera- 
j tions of the desk. I am going to press with the 
I second volume of the Peninsular War, after wait- 
ing till now in hope of obtaining some Spanish 
accounts of the war in Catalonia, which it is now 
[ pretty well ascertained are not to be found in 
Spain, though how they should have disappeared 
is altogether inexplicable, unless the whole ac- 
count of the books and their author, Francesco 
di Olivares, given by a certain John Mitford some 
i four or five years ago, in Colburn's Magazine, is 
j fictitious. I am reviewing Hayley's Memoirs. 
Hay ley has been worried as school-boys worry a 
, cat. I am treating him as a man deserves to be 
, treated who was in his time, by popular election, 
king of the English poets ; who was, moreover, 
a gentleman and a scholar, and a most kind- 
hearted and generous man, in whose life there 
is something to blame, more to admire, and most 
of all to commiserate. My first introduction to 
Spanish literature I owe to his notes ; I owe him, 
therefore, some gratitude. I have written some 
verses too, and am going on with the Tale of 
Paraguay resolutely to its conclusion. 

" Farewell, my dear sir ; and believe me, 
yours with sincere regard, 

"Robert Sotjthey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 1, 1824. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 
" You deserve to be rated for saying that noth- 
ing is so cold as friendship, in saying which you 
belie yourself, and in inferring it as my opinion 
from what I said,* you belie me. A friend will 
not take half the trouble to do you a trifling serv- 
ice, or afford you a slight gratification, that an 
enemy would to do you a petty mischief, annoy 
! your comfort, or injure your reputation. But 
| this same enemy would not endanger himself for 
the pleasure of doing you a serious injury, where- 
! as the friend would go through fire and water to 
i render you an essential benefit, and, if need were, 
, risk his own life to save yours. Now and then, 
indeed, there appears a devil-incarnate who 
seems to find his only gratification in the exer- 
cise of malignity ; but these are monsters, and 



* "You will, I do not doubt, consider his death as use- 
ful to the world ; but do you not feel personal commiser- 
ation r—H. T.loR. S., May 14, 1824. 



* "I could not but smile at the mode in which you speak 
of the difficulties of getting 200 subscribers to your broth- 
er's book. Had I said any thing half as censoriously true, 
how you would have rated me ! But true it is there is 
nothing so cold as friendship, nothing so animated as en- 
mity."— G. C. B. to R. S., May 13, 1824. 



/Etat. 50. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



42-5 



are noted as such. If I formed an estimate of 
human nature from what I observed at school, I 
should conclude that there was a great deal more 
evil in it than good ; if from what I have observ- 
ed in after life, I should draw the contrary infer- 
ence. Follies disappear, weaknesses are out- 
grown, and the discipline of society corrects more 
evils than it breeds. You and I, and Wynn, and 
Elmsley, and Strachey are very much at this time 
what each must always have expected the others 
to be. But who would have expected so much 
abilities from the two A.'s (mischievously as 
those abilities are directed) ? Who would have 

thought that B , boorish and hoggish as he 

was, would have become a man of the kindest 
manners and gentlest disposition ; and that 
C would have figured as a hero at Water- 
loo ? It is true that opposite examples might 
be called to mind ; but the balance would be 
found on the right side. 

"I am much gratified by what you tell me 
from Mr. Roberts.* Such opinions tend greatly 
to strengthen my inclination for setting about a 
Book of the State, which, though not capable of 
so deep and passionate an interest, might be 
made not less useful in its direct tendency. The 
want of books would be an obstacle, for I am 
poorly provided with English history, and have 
very little help within reach. I should want 
(and do want for other objects also) the publica- 
tions of the Record Committee. They were 
originally to be purchased, but they were beyond 
my means. The sale of them is given up, I 
think (at least there was a report recommending 
that it should be discontinued, as producing lit- 
tle), and the remaining copies must be lying in 
lumber ; and yet, though there is a pleasant 
opinion abroad that I can have any thing from 
government which I please to ask for, I might as 
well whistle for a south wind against this blast 
from the east, as ask for a set of these books, 
well assured as I am that there is no man living 
to whom they would be of more use, or who 
would make more use of them. My end is not 
answered by borrowing books of this description, 
and I will explain to you why ; when a book is 
my own, I read or look through it, and mark it 
as I proceed, and then by very brief references 
am enabled to refer to and compose from it at 
any future time. But if it is a borrowed book, 
the time which it costs to provide myself with 
extracts for future use may be worth more than 
the cost of the work, a lesson which I have learn- 
ed of late years at no little price. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Light foot. 

" Keswick, June 16, 1824. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 
" I told you my reasons for declining the pro- 
posal of being named one of the Royal Literary 
Associates. Had it been a mere honor, I should 



* " Mr. Roberts is delighted with the Book of the Church, 
»nd desires me to 6ay that he never read any thing that 
ifforded him so much at once of entertainment, and in- 
formation, and general instruction upon any subject." — 
G. C. B. to R. S., May 13, 1834. 



have accepted it as a matter ol course and of 
courtesy. In my situation, any individual who 
pleases may throw dirt at me, and any associa- 
ted body which pleases may stick a feather in 
my cap : the dirt does not stick, the feathers are 
no encumbrance if they are of no use, and I re- 
gard the one as little as the other. But in this 
case the feather was clogged with a condition 
that I was to receive a £100 a year, for which 
it was to be my duty every year to write an es- 
say, to be printed, if the committee approved it, 
in their transactions. What should I gain by 
doing that once a year for this committee which 
I may do once a quarter for the Quarterly Re- 
view? and which I could not do without leav- 
ing a paper in that Review undone. With this 
difference, that what I write in the Review is 
read every where, is received with deference, 
and carries with it weight ; whereas their trans- 
actions can not by possibility have a fiftieth part 
of the circulation, and will either excite ridicule, 
or drop still-born from the press. I would have 
accepted a mere honor in mere courtesy, and I 
would thankfully have accepted profit ; but when 
they contrived so to mix up both as to leave nei- 
ther the one nor the other, all I had to do was 
civilly to decline the offer. 

" God bless you, my dear Lightfoot ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To , Esq. 

'•Keswick, Aug. 7, 1824. 
" My dear Sir, 

" Your letter is not of a kind to remain unac- 
knowledged, and my time is often less worthily 
employed than it will be in making a few re- 
marks upon some parts of it. 

" You tell me of the prevalence of Atheism 
and Deism* among those persons with whose 
opinions you are acquainted. Are those persons, 
think you, fair representatives of the higher or- 
ders, whom you suppose to be infected with such 
opinions in the same proportion? Or are they 
not mostly young men, smatterers in literature, 
or literati by profession ? 

" Where the principles of reasonable religion 
have not been well inculcated in childhood, and 
enforced by example at home, I believe that in- 
fidelity is generally and perhaps necessarily one 
step in the progress of an actiTe mind. Very 
many undoubtedly stop there ; but they whose 
hearts escape the corruption which, most cer- 
tainly, irreligion has a direct tendency to pro- 
duce, are led into the right path, sooner or later, 
by reflection, inquiry, and the instinct of an im- 
mortal spirit, which can find no other resting- 
place in its weal, no other consolations in its 
afflictions. This has been the case in the circle 
of my experience, which has not been a contract- 
ed one. I have mixed with men of all descrip- 



* " In numbering those with whose opinions I am ac- 
quainted, I find one half of them to be Atheist9 and two 
thirds of the remainder Deists : I should not be surprised 
if this were found to be about the general proportion in 
the higher orders of society, and infidelity has been 
brought among the lower orders by political disatfection.' 
toR. S., Aug. 1, 1824. 



426 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat 51. 



tions — Atheists, Roman Catholics, and Dissent- j 
ers of every kind, from the Unitarians, whose 
faith stands below zero, to the disciples of Rich- j 
ard Brothers and Joanna Southcote, whose trash 
would raise the thermometer to the point of fever 
heat. I have seen them pass from one extreme , 
to another, and had occasion to observe how 
nearly those extremes meet. And now, when I 
call to mind those persons who were unbelievers 
some thirty years ago, I find that of the surviv- 
ors the greater and all the better part are settled 
in conformity with the belief of the national 
Church, and this conformity in those with whom I 
am in habits of peculiar and unreserved friendship 
I know to be sincere. A very few remain skep- 
tical and are unhappy ; and these, with the best 
feelings and kindest intentions, have fallen into 
degrading and fatal habits, which gather strength 
as they grow older and older, and find themselves 
more and more unable to endure the prospect of 
a blank futurity. Some others, who were prof- 
ligates at the beginning, continue to be so. 

" According to my estimate of public opinion, 
there is much more infidelity in the lower ranks 
than there ever was before, and less in the higher 
classes than at any time since the Restoration. 
The indifferentists — those who used to conform 
tvithout a thought or feeling upon the subject — 
are the persons who have diminished in numbers. 
Considering the connection of infidelity with dis- 
affection in all its grades, and the alliance for 
political purposes between Catholics, Dissenters, 
and unbelievers, I think with you that a tremen- 
dous convulsion is very likely to be brought 
about ; but I am not without hope that it may 
be averted ; and even should it take place, I have 
no fear for the result, fatal as it must needs be 
to the generations who should witness the shock. 

" The progress of my own religious opinions 
has been slow, but steady. You may probably 
live to read it ; and, what is of more conse- 
quence, may, without reading it, follow uncon- 
sciously the same course, and by God's blessing- 
rest at last in the same full and entire belief. 
" Yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 4, 1824. 
" My bear Grosvenor, 
" Murray states that, having conversed with 
Heber and some other literary friends upon my 
proposed History of the Monastic Orders, ' he 
now comprehends its probable interest and pop- 
ularity,' and shall be happy to come to ' closer 
quarters upon the subject.' He says something 
of future papers for the Quarterly Review, ask- 
ing me to undertake the Pepys' Memoirs and 
Sir Thomas Brown's Works, and writes request- 
ing a brief sketch of my monastic plan. I have 
told him little more than that it may be included 
in six octavo volumes, and comprises matter 
hardly less varied and extensive than Gibbon's 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. If he 
offers me £500 per volume, I will, ere long, 
make it my chief employment, but he shall not 



have it for less, and I am in no haste to proceed 
with the negotiation, being at present sufficiently 
employed, and to my heart's content. 

"The 'medical practitioner' would not have 
puzzled you if Fortune had permitted us to have 
been somewhat more together during the last 
ten years. Yet you have heard from me the 
name of Doctor Daniel Dove, and something, I 
think, of the Tristramish, Butlerish plan of his 
history, which, if the secret be but kept, must, 1 
think, inevitably excite curiosity as well as no- 
tice. I have lately taken a pleasant spell at it, 
and have something more than a volume ready ; 
that is to say, something more than half of what 
I propose to publish, following it or not with as 
much more according to its sale and my own 
inclination. One reason why I wished for you 
here at this time was to have shown it to you, 
and to have had your help, for you could have 
excellently helped me, and I think would have 
been moved in spirit so to do. If I finish it 
during the winter, of which there is good hope, 
I will devise some pretext for going to town, 
where I must be while it is printed, to avoid the 
transmission of proofs, by which it would be 
easy, from calculation of time, to ascertain how 
far they had traveled, and so, of course, to dis- 
cover the author, to whom the printers are to 
have no clew. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 10, 1824. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" My literary employments have never, in the 
slightest degree, injured my health ; for, in truth, 
I neither am, nor ever have been, a close student. 
If I do not take sufficient exercise, it is not from 
any love of the desk, but for the want of a com- 
panion or an object to draw me out when the 
season is uninviting ; and yet I overcome the 
dislike of solitary walking, and every day, unless 
it be a settled rain, walk long enough, and far, 
and fast enough, to require the wholesome pro- 
cess of rubbing down on my return. At no time 
of my life have I applied half so closely to my 
employment as you always do to yours. They 
impose upon me no restrictions. There is noth- 
ing irksome in them ; no anxiety connected with 
them ; they leave me master of my time and of 
myself; nor do I doubt but they would prove 
conducive to longevity, if my constitution were 
disposed for it. 

" With regard to the prudence of working up 
ready materials rather than laying in more, upon 
whatever I employ myself, I must of necessity 
be doing both. The work which I am most de- 
sirous of completing is the History of Portugal, 
as being that for which most preparation has 
been made, and most time bestowed on it ; and 
when the Peninsular War shall be completed, by 
God's blessing, a week shall not elapse before it 
goes to the press, for it has been long in much 
greater forwardness than any work which I ever 
before began to print. 

" I am, however, conscious now of a disposi 



Mtat. 51. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



427 



tion the reverse of Montaigne's, who loved, he 
said, rather to forge his mind than to furnish it. 
Avarice, you know, is the passion of declining 
years, and avaricious I confess myself to be of 
the only treasure I have ever coveted or ever 
shall possess. My temper or turn of mind in- 
clines also to form new projects. But it is one 
thing to perceive what might be done, and an- 
other to dream of doing it. No doubt, wherever 
Mr. Telford is traveling, he can not help seeing 
where a line of road ought to be carried, a har- 
bor improved, or a pier carried out. In like 
manner, I see possibilities, and capabilities, and 
desirabilities, and I think no more of them. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 12, 1824. 
"My dear Grosvenor^ 

" With regard to my labors in English his- 
tory, the plan which I not long ago communi- 
cated to you, of sketching it in a Book of the 
State down to the accession of the reigning 
family, and following that by the Age of George 
the Third, is all that I dream of accomplishing. 
The works on which I ought to employ myself, 
Grosvenor, are those for which I have laid in ! 
stores, on which a large portion of my previous j 
studies may be brought to bear, and for which 
no other person is at present, or is likely to be 
hereafter, so well qualified. Such a work was 
the History of Brazil, and such will be, if I live I 
to accomplish it, that of the Monastic Orders. 

" I can not but smile at your grave admoni- 
tions* concerning the Doctor, and would give 
something to have the satisfaction of reading to 
you the chapters which were written last week. 
Such a variety of ingredients I think never be- 
fore entered into any book which had a thread 
of continuity running through it. I promise you 
there is as much sense as nonsense there. It is 
vex'y much like a trifle, where you have whipped 
cream at. the top, sweetmeats below, and a good 
solid foundation of cake well steeped in ratafia. 
You will find a liberal expenditure of long-hoard- 
ed stores, such as the reading of few men could 
supply ; satire and speculation ; truths, some of 
which might beseem the bench or the pulpit, 
and others that require the sanction of the cap 
and bells for their introduction ; and, withal, a '. 
narrative interspersed with interludes of every t 
kind, yet still continuous upon a plan of its own, 
varying from grave to gay, and taking as wild 
and yet as natural a course as one of our mount- J 
ain streams. 

" I am reading Scaliger's Epistles at this 
time, treading in my uncle's steps, who gave me 



* Mr. Bedford seemed to be under the apprehension 
that the " Cap and Bells" would be in too great requisi- 
tion during the composition of the Doctor. " I am too ig- 
norant," he says, " of Dr. D. D.'s concerns to be able to 
speak about him, but there is one thing which ought not 
to be lost sight of, that a joke may be very well received 
across a table which would be considered the dullest in 
the world in print. The success of Tristram Shandy af- 
fords no argument in favor of a second attempt to induce 
the public to join in making fools of themselves." — Oct. 
7, 1824. 



the book when I was in town. Not long ago I 
finished Isaac Casaubon's. Oh, what men were 
these ! and, thank God ! men will never be want- 
ing like them in one respect at least — that they 
will pursue the acquisition of knowledge with as 
much zeal as others follow the pursuit of wealth, 
and derive a thousand-fold more pleasure in the 
acquirement. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Oct. 30, 1824. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

" Your ill news had reached me some days 
ago.* 

" There are many things worse than death. 
Indeed, I should think any reasonable person 
would prefer it to old age, if he did not feel that 
the prolongation of his life was desirable for the 
sake of others, whatever it might be for himself. 
If the event be dreaded, the sooner it is over the 
better ; if it desired, the sooner it comes ; and 
desired or dreaded it must be. If there were a 
balloon-diligence to the other world, I think it 
would always be filled with passengers. You 
will not suppose from this that I am weary of 
life, blessed with enjoyments as I am, and full of 
employment. But if it were possible for me 
(which it is not) to regard myself alone, I would 
rather begin my travels in eternity than abide 
longer in a world in which I have much to do 
and little to hope. 

" Something upon this topic you will see in 
my Colloquies. They will go to press as soon 
as I hear from Westall in what forwardness the 
engravings are. Murray has announced the 
second volume of the War for November; it 
would require the aid of some other devils than 
those of the pi'inting-oflice to finish it before the 
spring, and this he knows very well, both the 
MS. and the proof-sheets passing through his 
hands. Just one quarter is printed, and I am 
about a hundred pages ahead of the printers. 
Of late I have made good progress in forward- 
ing various works, in the hope of clearing my 
hands and bettering my finances. I can not get 
on fast with the Tale of Paraguay because of 
the stanza, but on with it I am getting, and am 
half through the third canto ; a fourth brings it 
to its close. A good deal has been done to the 
Colloquies, which will gain me much abuse now, 
and some credit hereafter ; and a good deal to 
the Doctor, which I should very much like to 
show you. You shall see me insult the public, 
Mr. Bedford, and you will see that the public 
wonders who it is that insults them, for I think 
that I shall not be suspected. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 9, 1824. 
"My dear R., 
"I see by the papers that Mr. Telford recom- 
mends paving roads where there is much heavy 



* Of the dangerous illness of their mutual friend, the 
Rev. Peter Elmsley 



428 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 51. 



carriage. In some of the Italian cities the streets 
are paved in stripes. The wheels run upon two 
lines of smooth pavement, as over a bowling 
green, with little sound and no jolting, and the 
space between, on which the horses go, is com- 
mon pitching. This is the case at Milan and 
Como, and probably in most other places. Mac- 
adamizing the streets of London is likely, I think, 
to prove Quackadamizing. But the failure will 
lead to something better. 

"Lord Byron is gibbeted by his friends and 
admirers. Dr. Stoddart sent me those papers in 
which he had commented upon these precious 
conversations. The extracts there and in the 
Morning Herald are all that I have seen, and 
they are quite enough. I see, too, that Murray 
has been obliged to come forward. * * 

I am vindictive enough to wish that he had 
known how completely he failed of annoying me 

by any of his attacks. should be called 

Lord B.'s blunderbuss. There is something 
viler in re grating slander, as he has done, than 
in originally uttering it. 

"If this finds you in town, and you can lay 
your hand on the Report on the Salmon Fishery, 
I should like to have it, as a subject of some local 
interest. I am working away steadily, and with 
good will, making good progress with my sec- 
ond volume and with the Colloquies. We are 
all well, and Cuthbert in the very honey-moon 
of puerile happiness, being just breeched. God 



you ! 



R. S. 



To George Ticknor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 30, 1824. 
"My dear Sir, 
" I have delayed thus long to acknowledge 
and thank you for your last consignment of books 
in the hope of telling you, what I am now at last 
enabled to do, that Gifford has finally given up 
the Quarterly Review, and that, after the forth- 
coming number, it will be under John Coleridge's 
management. This is a matter which I have 
had very much at heart, that there might be 
an end of that mischievous language concerning 
your country. I opposed it always with all my 
might, and forced in that paper upon Dwight's 
Travels ; yet in the very next number the old 
system was renewed. You may be assured that 
they have occasioned almost as much disgust 
here as in America. So far is it from being the 
language or the wish of the government, that 
one of the cabinet ministers complained of it to 
me as most mischievous, and most opposite to 
the course which they were desirous of pursuing. 
There is an end of it now, and henceforth that 
journal will do all in its power toward establish- 
ing that feeling which ought to exist between 
the two nations. Let me be peace-maker ; and 
use what influence you have that the right hand 
of good will may be accepted as frankly as it is 
offered. 

"I know not what the forthcoming number 
may contain, but I can answer for the Review 
afterward. A friend of mine (Hughes, who 
wrote a pleasant book about the South of France) 



is preparing a paper upon your literature ; and 
Buckminster's sermons are reprinting at my sug- 
gestion. 

"Now, then, let me thank you for Philip's 
War, so long desired; for G. Fox, digged out 
of his burrows, and their companions. These 
Quaker books are very curious ; it is out of such 
rubbish that I have to pick out the whole mate- 
rials for my intended edifice, and good materials 
they are when they are found. Before this reach- 
es you I shall have finished the Tale of Paraguay, 
which has hung like a millstone about my neck, 
owing to the difficulty which the stanza occa- 
sioned. As soon as I am rid of it I shall take 
up the New England poem as a regular em- 
ployment, and work on with it steadily to the 
end. A third part is done ; I am not making a 
hero of Philip, as it now seems the fashion to 
represent him. In my story the question be- 
tween the settlers and the natives is very fairly 
represented, without any disposition either to fa- 
vor the cause of savage life against civilization, 
or to dissemble the injuries which trading colo- 
nists (as well as military ones) have always com- 
mitted upon people in an inferior grade of society 
to themselves. Better characters than the his- 
tory affords me, or, to speak more accurately, 
characters more capable of serving the purposes 
of poetry, I need not desire. The facts are not 
quite so manageable. I may say, as a friend 
of mine heard Bertrand de Moleville say when, 
after relating a story, he was told that the facts 
were not as he had stated them, Jlh, monsieur ! 
tant pis pour lesfaits. So I must deal with them 
in fiction as a Frenchman deals with facts in his- 
tory ; that is, take as little truth, and mingle it 
with as much invention as suits my object. To 
what an extent the French do this I should hardly 
have thought credible, if I had not daily evidence 
in their memoirs upon the Peninsular War, com- 
paring them with the undeniable documents in 
my hands. 

" My niece desires me to thank you for the 
sweet story of Undine, which is surely the most 
graceful fiction of modern times. Some other 
pieces of the same author have been translated 
here, all bearing marks of the same originality 
and genius. 

" I had made a half promise of going to Ire- 
land, to visit one of the best and ablest persons 
there, the Bishop of Limerick ; but it is not likely 
that the intention can be fulfilled. An Irishman, 
well informed of the state of things there, writes 
to me in these words : ' Pray don't think of going 
to Ireland. I would not insure any man's life 
for three months in that unhappy country. The 
populace are ready for a rebellion ; and if their 
leaders should for their own purpose choose to 
have one, they may have to-morrow a second 
edition of the Irish massacre.' 

" Wordsworth was with me lately, in good 
health, and talked of you. His brother, the Mas- 
ter of Trinity, has just published a volume con- 
cerning the Eikuv BaaiTiiKij, a question of no 
trifling importance both to our political and lit- 
erary history. As far as minute and accumu'a 



jEtat. 51. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



429 



tive evidence can amount to proof, he has proved 
it to be genuine. For myself, I have never, since 
I read the book, thought that any unprejudiced 
person could entertain a doubt concerning it. I 
am the more gratified that this full and satisfac- 
tory investigation has been made, because it grew 
out of a conversation between the two Words- 
worths and myself at Rydal a year or two ago. 
" Remember me to all my Boston friends ; it 
is a pleasure to think I have so many there. The 
only American whom I have seen this year is 
Bishop Hobart, of New York. God bless you ! 
" Yours affectionately, 

' ; Robert Southey." 

A most atrocious attack having appeared about 
this time upon my father in the Morning Chron- 
icle, he took counsel with some legal friends as 
to the expediency of prosecuting that paper for 
a libel. " You will see Turner," he writes at 
the time to Mr. John Coleridge, " though he rec- 
ommends a course which I shall not follow — 
that of proceeding by information, and involving 
myself in expense and trouble, for the purpose 
of giving a solemn denial to charges which most 
certainly are not believed by the miscreant him- 
self who made them. He wishes to avoid any 
appearance of an attack on my part upon the 
press and the Morning Chronicle ; whereas it 
appears to me, that if I have an opportunity of 
punishing that newspaper for its abuse of the 
press, I ought just as much to do it in this case 
as I would bring a fellow to justice for assault- 
ing me on the highway. Allowing them as 
large a latitude as they desire for political abuse, 
I would rest solely upon the charge of ' impious 
and blasphemous obscenities.'* * * 

" Should it appear as clear in law as it is in 
equity that it is a foul and infamous libel, which 
any judge and any jury must pronounce such, 
then certainly I would bring an action for dam- 
ages against the Morning Chronicle, without 
caring who the author may be, that paper hav- 
ing not only inserted it, but called attention to 
it in its leading paragraph. The rest may be 
thrown overboard. Let them revile me as an 
author and a politician till their hearts ache. 
Their obloquy serves only to show that my opin- 
ions have an influence in society which they 
know and feel ; and if it gives me any feeling, 
it is that of satisfaction at seeing to what base 
and unmanly practices they are obliged to de- 
scend. But this goes beyond all bounds of po- 
litical and even personal animosity ; there can 
be no villainy of which a man would not be ca- 
pable who is capable of bringing forward such 
charges upon such grounds. True it is that my 
character needs no vindication, and I would not 
lift a finger to vindicate it ; but if I have a villain 
by the throat, I would deliver him over to justice. 
Nevertheless, if you and Turner agree in opin- 
ion that I had better let the matter alone, I shall, 



* He conceived this to have been founded " literally 
upon an extract from a Roman Catholic Book of Devo- 
tions to the Virgin Mary, in the first volume of the Om- 
niana." 



without hesitation, follow the advice ; and it is 
well to bear in mind that there has more than 
once been manifested a most reprehensible dis- 
position on the part of the judges to favor the 
wrong side, lest they should be suspected of 
leaning toward the right." 

The advice of these friends being that he 
should not adopt legal proceedings, he patiently 
acquiesced. A private remonstrance was, how- 
ever, carried to the editor by Allan Cunningham, 
who was well acquainted with him, and who 
showed him an anonymous letter my father had 
received from the writer of the published attack, 
which was couched in terms of the most horrible 
and disgusting kind. The editor affected to rec- 
ognize " the hand of a young nobleman ;" to 
which Allan Cunningham replied, " that he 
would sooner have cut his hand off than have 
written such a letter ;" and to the excuse that 
Mr. Southey had : ' insulted the Scotch and the 
Dissenters," he rejoined, " that, had this been the 
case, he, w T ho was a Scotchman and a Presby- 
terian, would never have been his friend." The 
attack was also promptly replied to by his friend 
Mr. Henry Taylor, whom he thanks in the fol 
lowing letter for his friendly interposition. 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 10, lSito. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I thank you for both your letters — the one 
in writing, and the one in print. As laws, judges, 
and juries in these days always favor the wrong 
party, partly from principle, partly from fashion, 
and a little in the middle, if not the latter case, 
from fear, I am advised not to prosecute the 
Morning Chronicle, and as I have no desire 
ever to put myself in the way of anxiety, the ad- 
vice is deferred to without hesitation or reluct- 
ance. A more atx*ocious libel was never admit- 
ted into a newspaper, bad as the newspapers 
have long been. You suspect something more 
than the malignity of party spirit in it ; so did 
I ; and that suspicion has been verified by an 
anonymous letter from the author, which reach- 
ed me this day. The letter is as blackguard as 
words can make it, and comes from a red-hot 
Irish Roman Catholic, who shows himself, in 
every sentence to be ripe for rebellion and mas- 
sacre. It is well they have no Prince Hohen- 
lohe among them, who can kill at a distance as 
well as cure ; for if they had, I should certainly 
be murdered by miracle. 

"But I thank you heartily for what you have 
done. The letter is what it should be — manly, 
scornful, and sincere. I am very glad to have 
such a friend, and not sorry to have such ene- 
mies. They can only stab at my character, 
which they may do till they are tired without 
inflicting a scratch. The only mournful thing is 
to think that the newspapers should be in the 
hands of men who not only admit such infamous 
slanders, but lend their active aid to support 
them. 

" The last Review not having reached me, 1 
have not seen your father's paper upon Banks. 



430 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. oj 



In that upon Landor, I liked every thing that 
had no reference to him, and nothing that had. 
The general tenor I should, no doubt, have liked 
better if Gifford had not struck out the better 
parts ; but nothing could have reconciled me to 
any thing like an assumption of superiority to- 
ward such a man. Porson and I should not have 
conversed as he has exhibited us, but we could 
neither of us have conversed better. 

"My letter to the Courier* was in all its 
parts fully justified by the occasion which called 
it forth. I am never in the habit of diluting my 
ink. The sort of outcry against it is in the spirit 
of these liberal times. These gentlemen of the 
press assert and exercise the most unlimited 
license in their attacks, and allow no liberty of 
defense. 

" I shall publish a vindication of the Book of 
the Church, in reply to Mr. Butler, with proofs 
and illustrations. In this I shall treat him with 
the respect and courtesy which he so well de- 
serves, but I will open a battery upon the walls 
of Babylon. Think of the Acta Sanctorum — 
more than fifty ten-pounders brought to bear in 
breach. God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John Taylor Coleridge, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 30, 1825. 
" My dear Sir, 

"There is certainly a most pernicious set of 
opinions mixed up both with the Bible and Mis- 
sionary Societies — so there is with the Abolition- 
ists — and yet we can not have the good without 
the evil, and it is no little advantage when the 
men who hold these opinions direct some of their 
restless zeal into a useful channel. In that point 
of view the Missionary Societies are so many 
safety-valves. Even the best men whom they 
send abroad would be very likely to be mischiev- 
ous at home. 

" Bishop Law (the present bishop's father) ad- 
vances an opinion that the true nature of reveal- 
•ed religion is gradually disclosed as men become 
capable of receiving it, generations as they ad- 
vance in knowledge and civilization outgrowing 
the errors of their forefathers, so that in fullness 
of time there will remain neither doubt nor dif- 
ficulties. He was a great speculator; wheth- 
er, like one of his sons, he speculated too far, I 
do not know, but in this opinion I think he is 
borne out by history. Providence condescends 
to the slowness of Christian understandings, as it 
did to the hardness of Jewish hearts. All these 
societies proceed upon a full belief in the dam- 
nation of the heathen : what their future state 
may be is known as little as we do concerning 
our own, but this we know in both cases, that it 
must be consistent with the goodness of our 
Father who is in heaven. # # # Yet 

you could get no missionaries to go abroad un- 
less they held this tenet. The Socinians, you 
see, send none, neither do the Quakers. 



Concerning Lord Byron. 



" The Quarterly Review has been overlaid 
with statistics, as it was once with Greek criti- 
cism. It is the disease of the age — the way in 
which verbose dullness spends itself. The jour- 
nal wants more of the literce humaniores, and in 
a humaner tone than it has been wont to observe. 
I think a great deal of good may be done by con- 
ciliating young writers who are going wrong, by 
leading them with a friendly hand into the right 
path, giving them all the praise they deserve, 
and advising or insinuating rather than repre- 
hending. Keats might have been won in that 
manner, and perhaps have been saved. So I 
have been assured. Severity will have ten times 
more effect when it is employed only where it 
is well deserved. 

"Do not over- work yourself, nor sit up too 
late, and never continue at any one mental em- 
ployment after you are tired of it. Take this 
advice from one who has attained to great self- 
management in this respect. 

"God bless you! R. Southey. 

" Smedley's poems are very clever, but he 
seems quite insensible to the good which is con- 
nected with and resulting from this mixture of 
weakness, enthusiasm, and sectarian zeal. It 
does nothing but good abroad, and that good 
would not be done without it. The Bible So- 
ciety has quadrupled the subscribers to the Bart- 
lett's Buildings' one, and given it a new impulse. 
I hate cant and hypocrisy, and am apt to sus- 
pect them wherever there is much profession of 
godliness ; but, on the other hand, I do not like 
men to be callous to the best interests of their 
fellow-creatures." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 16, 1825 
" My dear Friend, 

" It is a very old remark that one sin draws 
on another ; and, as an illustration of it, I believe 
one reason why you have not had a letter from 
me for so long a time is that my Autobiography 
has been standing still. This is the first symp- 
tom of amendment, and, in pursuance of it, when 
this letter is dispatched, I propose to begin the 
17th of the Series. 

" Thus much has been left undone, and now 
for what I have been doing. You may have 
learned from John Coleridge that I sat to work 
for him as soon as he was installed into his new 
office,* and sent him a paper upon the Church 
Missionary Society, and a few pages upon Mrs. 
Baillie's Letters from Lisbon. 

" You must have heard of Mr. Butler's attack 
upon the Book of the Church. My uncle says 
of it — his contradicting you and saying that you 
had misstated facts may have the same answer 
as Warbjirton gave to one of his antagonists : 
'it may be so for all he knows of the matter.' 
The Bishop of London wrote to ask if I intend- 
ed to answer it, for if I did not they must look 
about for some person who would, ' as it had 
imposed upon some persons who ought to have 

* As successor to Gifford in the editorship of the Quar- 
terly Review. 



Mr at. 51. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



431 



known better, and he hoped I should demolish 
what he called his flimsy structure of misstate- 
ments and sophistry.' Upon my replying that 
it was my intention so to do, he communicated to 
me an offer of any books that might be useful 
from Lambeth. But it does not do to have bulky 
volumes sent 300 miles, when the object is to 
consult them perhaps only for half an hour. 
However, I shall avail myself of this permission 
when next I may be at Streatham. My reply 
will bear this title, 'Vindiciae Ecclesiae Angli- 
canse' — the Book of the Church Vindicated and 
Amplified. The first portion of the manuscript 
would reach London this morning on its way to 
the press. 

" Last week I spent at Rydal with Words- 
worth, going thither partly in the hope that 
change of air might rid me of a cough, which, 
though apparently slight, has continued upon me 
long enough to show that it is deep seated. It 
was left behind some two months ago by an en- 
demic cold that attacked the throat in a peculiar 
manner. I am better for the change. But it 
will be necessary for me to take a journey as 
soon as the summer begins, in the hope of es- 
caping that annual attack which now regularly 
settles in the chest. I meant to have visited Ire- 
land, but this I must give up on Edith's account, 
for I was strongly advised not to go by a man in 
power, who knew the country well, and said he 
would not insure any man's life there for three 
months : and this, with a sort of cut-throat anon- 
ymous letter from an Irishman (the same that 
made that infamous attack upon me in the Chron- 
icle), abusing me as an Orange Boy in the foul- 
est and most ferocious terms, has made her be- 
lieve that I should be in danger there ; and, of 
course, I should not think it right to leave her 
with that impression upon her mind. My inten- 
tion, therefore, is to make a hasty visit to Streat- 
ham, and run down again to the west, unless I 
should meet with a suitable companion who 
would go over with me to Holland for three or 
four weeks. 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! 
" Yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. William Lisle Bowles. 

" Keswick, March 19, 1825. 
" My dear Sir, 

"I am induced to write to you by a letter 
which I have this day received from G. Peachey. 
In answer to the request which he communi- 
cates, though I am little behind you in the vale 
of years, and likely, perhaps, to reach the end of 
our mortal journey by a shorter road, yet, should 
I prove the survivor, any wish which you may 
please to signify I will faithfully, and to the best 
of my power, discharge. There are three co- 
temporaries, the influence of whose poetry on 
my own I can distinctly trace. Sayers, your- 
self, and Walter Landor. I owe you something, 
therefore, on the score of gratitude. 

" But to a pleasanter subject. Peachey tells 
me that you had begun to print some observa- 



tions upon Mr. Butler's book, but that you have 
suppressed them upon hearing that I was en- 
gaged in answering it. I am sorry for this, be- 
cause the more answers that are called forth the 
better. False and shallow as the book is (the 
Bishop of London calls it, very justly, ' a flimsy 
structure of misstatements and sophistry'), it im- 
poses upon shallow readers, and is gladly ap- 
pealed to as an authority by the Liberals, who 
are at this time leagued against the Church. 
Every answer that may appear would have a cer- 
tain circle, within which no other can act with 
equal effect ; and I am so persuaded of this, that 
I desired Murray not to announce my intended 
work, lest it should have the effect of preventing 
others from coming forward in the same good 
cause. I hope, therefore, that you will resume 
the pen. The Church ought not to be without 
defenders at this time. If the Catholic writers 
had been put down whenever they appeared dur- 
ing the last five-and-twenty years, as they might 
and ought to have been, by an exposure of their 
gross and impudent misrepresentations, that party 
would not have been so daring as it now is. 

"Dr. Phillpotts* is answering the theological 
part of Butler's. t My business, of course, must 
be, to attack him along the whole of his line, 
which I am doing most effectually. For the sake 
of relieving the tone of controversy, I take the 
opportunity of introducing biographical and his- 
torical matter, and call my work, therefore, Vin- 
diciae Ecclesias Anglicanae — The Book of the 
Church Vindicated and Amplified. My temper is 
not controversial. I had much rather be indus- 
triously and thankfully reading old books, than 
detecting the defects and vices of new ones ; but 
when I am provoked to it, I can wield a sledge- 
hammer to as good purpose as my old friend 
Wat Tyler himself. God bless you, my dear sir ! i 
" Yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 28, 1825. 
" My dear Sir, 
" Now then for my summer movements. Do 
not think me actuated by mere fickleness if I 

* Now Bishop of Exeter. 

t Dr. Phillpotts had thus courteously communicated 
his intention to my father : 

" Stanhope, Durham, Feb. 28, 1825. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I know not whether it may interest you to be inform- 
ed that (feeling as I do the absolute necessity of some de- 
tailed confutation of Mr. Butler's statement of the doc- 
trines of his Church, contained in the Letter X. of his 
book, especially when so many various misstatements of 
those doctrines are continually made by other writers 
and speakers) I have resolved speedily to undertake that 
work ; indeed. I am at present as busy with it as infirm 
health will permit. Mr. Butler's book did not fall in my 
way until these three or four weeks. 

" You will do me the justice of believing that I do not 
presume to interfere in any way with your work. That 
you are preparing a proper punishment for his offense 
against you I can not doubt, nor would I weaken the ef- 
fect of that punishment from the most powerful of mod- 
ern writers by any interference of mine. I strictly con- 
fine myself to the mere theological matters. 

" Allow me to offer you my heartiest thanks for your 
very admirable book. 

" Yours my dear sir, most sincerely, 

" H. Phillpotts." 



432 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. M 



propose crossing the Channel instead of the Sev- 
ern, and drinking Rhenish wine instead of Welsh 
ale. I want to see Holland, which is a place of 
man's making, country as well as towns. I 
want monastic books, which it is hopeless to 
look for in England, and which there is every 
probability of finding at Brussels, Antwerp, or 
Le}-den. In the course of three or four weeks, 
going sometimes by trekschuits and sometimes 
upon wheels, we might see the principal places 
in the Dutch Netherlands, visit the spot where 
Sir Philip Sidney fell, talk of the Dousas and 
Scaliger at Leyden, and obtain such a general 
notion of the land as would enable us better to 
understand the history of the Low Country wars. 
Neville White would perhaps join us ; and al- 
ways, in traveling, three persons are better than 
two, especially as neither you nor I (I suspect) 
are such good men of business as not to be glad 
if a better could be found to officiate as paymas- 
ter. Tell me if you like this scheme. If you 
do, I will write to Neville without delay, and be 
ready to start from London by the 1st of June. 

"I had heard of # # # as an Amer- 
ican by birth, a man of great talents and unhap- 
py opinions, which, from him, had spread widely 
among his cotemporaries at Cambridge. Jere- 
my Bentham is now to such young men what 
Godwin was two or three-and-thirty years ago ; 
for those who pride themselves most upon think- 
ing for themselves, are just as prone as others 
jurare in verba magistri, only it must be a mag- 
ister of their own choosing. 

" I never made a speech since I was a school- 
boy, and am very certain that I never had any 
talent for speaking. Had I gone to the bar, my 
intent was to have spoken always as briefly and 
perspicuously as possible, and have endeavored 
to win a jury rather by appealing to their good 
sense than by mystifying their understanding. 
Burke's speeches, which will always be read, 
were never listened to ; many members used to 
walk out of the House when he stood up. I be- 
lieve that I derived great advantage from the 
practice sometimes of translating, sometimes of 
abridging, the historical books which are read in 
certain forms at Westminster ; and, in like man- 
ner, I am inclined to think a habit of speaking 
upon business might be acquired by giving orally 
the substance of what one has just read. I have 
none of that readiness which is required for pub- 
lic life, or even which is looked for among diners 
out. When I am reading I have it ; few things 
then escape me in any of their bearings. My 
mind is never so prompt as it is then. In writ- 
ing it is sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. 

" So you do not like Hayley. I was born dur- 
ing his reign, and owe him something for hav- 
ing first made me acquainted by name with those 
Spanish writers of whom I afterward knew much 
more than he did. Compare him with ordinary 
country gentlemen, and see,, what he gains by his 
love of literary pursuits. Compare him with 
the general run of literary men, and see to what 
advantage his unenvious and liberal spirit ap- 
pears. 



" My Vindication is in the press. It contains 
a fuller account of Bede than can be found else- 
where ; and I shall introduce in it lives of St. 
Francis and of good John Fox, whom the Papists 
hate worse than they do the Devil, and belie as 
virulently and as impudently as they do your 
friend, Robert Southey." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 2, 1825. 
" My dear H. T., 

" You do not expect enough from Holland. 
It is a marvelous country in itself, in its history, 
and in the men and works which it has produced. 
The very existence of the country is at once a 
natural and a moral phenomenon. Mountaineer 
as I am, I expect to feel more in Holland than 
in Switzerland. Instead of climbing mountains, 
we shall have to ascend church towers. The 
panorama from that at Harlaem is said to be one 
of the most impressive in the world. Evening 
is the time for seeing it to most advantage. 

" I have not yet forgotten the interest which 
Watson's Histories of Philip II. and III. excited 
in me when a school-boy. They are books 
which I have never looked into since ; but I have 
read largely concerning the Dutch war against 
the Spaniards, on both sides, and there is no part 
of Europe which could be so interesting to me 
as historical ground. Perhaps my pursuits may 
have made me more alive than most men to as- 
sociations of this kind ; but I would go far to see 
the scene of any event which has made my heart 
throb with a generous emotion, or the grave of 
any one whom I desire to meet in another state 
of existence. 

" My translatress, Katharina Wilhelmina Bil- 
derdijk, is old enough to be your mother. She 
dedicates her translation to me in a very affect- 
ing poem, touching upon the death of her son, 
whom she lost at sea, and in what manner, before 
she knew his death, she had applied certain pas- 
sages in Roderic to herself. # # # * 

" God bless you ! R.S" 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



TOUR IN HOLLAND HE IS LAID UP AT LEYDEJX 

AT MR. BILDERDIJRS REV. R. PHILLIPS MR. 

BUTLER MR. CANNING MOTIVES FOR CHOOS- 
ING FRIENDS VISITORS TO KESWICK TEND 

ENCY OF HIS ECCLESIASTICAL WRITINGS SIS- 
TERS OF CHARITY THE QUARTERLY REVIEW 

METAPHYSICS RULES FOR COMPOSITION- 
KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY THE FIRST REQUI 
SITE FOR A STATESMAN THE BULLION QUES- 
TION JACOB CATS WISHES TO WRITE A CON- 
TINUATION TO WARTON'S HISTORY OP POETRY 

MR. BILDERDIJK DANGERS OF THE MANU 

FACTURING SYSTEM EFFECTS OF TIME UPOM 

THE MIND HIS OWN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 

SHORT TOUR IN HOLLAND DEATH OF HIS 

YOUNGEST DAUGHTER WISHES AS TO POSTHU- 
MOUS PUBLICATIONS LETTER TO HIS DAUGH- 



/Etat. 51. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



433 



TERS ON THE DEATH OF THEIR SISTER. 1825- 

1826. 

The reader has seen that my father had been 
for some time contemplating a tour in Holland ; 
and his arrangements being now completed, he 
left home the end of May, and after passing a 
week in London, and joining there the other 
members of the party, consisting of Mr. H. Tay- 
lor, Mr. Neville White, and Mr. Arthur Malet, 
a young officer, they crossed the Channel from 
Dover to Boulogne, and made their way from 
thence first of all to Brussels. 

The revisiting this place and the field of Wa- 
terloo recalled, naturally, many sad thoughts to 
my father's mind. He says in his Journal, " I 
hope I shall never see this place again. On my 
first and second visit Henry Koster and Nash 
were with me ; and I pleased myself with bring- 
ing away little memorials for Herbert. Nash 
was with me again two years later — ' where are 
they gone, the old familiar faces !' " 

A visit to Verbeyst, however, the great book- 
seller of Brussels, from whom, in 1817, he had 
purchased the Acta Sanctorum (fifty-two vols, 
folio), and many other valuable works, brought 
back pleasanter remembrances. " Right glad," 
he says, "I was to find him in a larger house, 
flourishing to his heart's content, and provided 
with books to mine. He has more than 300,000 
volumes, among which I passed the whole morn- 
ing, till it was time to go to the bankers' before 
the hours of business had elapsed. On our re- 
turn (for Neville was with me) Verbeyst had 
provided claret, Burgundy, and a loaf of bread, 
on which I regaled ; and with the help of his 
wife, the handsome, good-natured woman whom 
I saw eight years ago, we made out some cheer- 
ful conversation. Verbeyst tells me he is build- 
ing a house on the Boulevards ; the salle is as 
large as the whole house which he now occu- 
pies, the whole edifice big as the dwelling of an 
English lord, and the garden as large as the 
Grand Place. I am glad that the world goes 
so well with them." 

This journey, however, was doomed to be an 
unfortunate one, from an apparently trifling 
cause. Before leaving England, my father had 
received a slight injury on the foot, owing to a 
tight shoe, and traveling in hot weather had much 
inflamed it ; then at Bouchain the diseased spot 
was chosen by one of those little gentry, whose 
name and presence are alike disagreeable, for 
his attacks^and the wound soon assumed a some- 
what alarming appearance. At Antwerp, he 
feays, " here I am a prisoner, with my foot poul- 
ticed, heartily wishing myself at home." After 
a few days, however, the surgeon permitted him 
to proceed on his journey, which he did in great 
pain, suffering more from this trifling cause in 
one week than he ever remembered to have en- 
dured in his whole life ; and when the party 
reached Leyden, he was again obliged to put 
himself under a surgeon's hands. 

Here, however, he quickly and most fortu- 
nately met with kind friends and a temporarv 
E e 



home. He has before mentioned (see letter to 
Mr. Bedford, March 27, 1824) receiving a copy 
of Roderic translated into Dutch by Mrs. Bilder- 
dijk, and a letter from her husband, a man who 
was highly distinguished in the literature of his 
country ; it was, in a great measure, for the pur- 
pose of seeing them that he had come to Ley- 
den, and no sooner were they aware of his situa- 
tion than they insisted upon his being removed 
to their residence, to which he at first reluctant- 
ly consented.^ This, of course, broke up the 
party. Mr. Neville White and Mr. A. Malet 
pursued their own course, while Mr. Taylor 
"stayed by the wreck." There my father re- 
mained more than three weeks, most hospitably 
treated and most kindly nursed. "My time," 
he says, "has passed most profitably and happi 
ly ; and I have formed a friendship in this family 
which time will not weaken nor death divide." 
His letters from thence will supply all other 
needful particulars. 

To Mrs. Southey. 
" Leyden, Thursday, June 30, 1825. 
" My dear Edith, 

" My foot is going on as well as possible, and 
will, according to all appearances, be complete- 
ly healed in the course of three or four days. 
Having begun with this statement, pour votre 
tranquillity as the aubergists at Besancon said 
at every word, I have next to tell you that I am 
quartered at Mr. Bilderdijk's, where every im- 
aginable care is taken of me, and every possible 
kindness shown, and where I have all the com- 
forts which Leyden can afford. 

"How I came here you are now to learn. 
Upon applying to Mr. B. to procure a lodging 
for Henry Taylor and myself, he told me there 
was a difficulty in doing it, gave a bad account 
of Leyden lodgings, and proposed that we should 
both go to his house. Such an offer was not 
lightly to be accepted. Henry Taylor made in- 
quiries himself, and looked at lodgings which 
would have contented us ; but when he was 
asked for how long they might be wanted, and 
said a week or perhaps ten days, the people said 
that for so short a time he might be lodged at 
a hotel. The matter ended in my yielding to 
solicitations which were so earnest that I could 
not doubt their sincerity, and in his remaining at 
the hotel. So on Tuesday morning Neville and 
Arthur Malet departed for the Hague ; they may 
fall in with us at Ghent or they may not, as it 
may happen. And in the evening I and my 
lame leg, and my trunk and bag, were deposited 
at Mr. Bilderdijk's. 

* This reluctance quickly vanished before the kind 
friendliness of the Bilderdijks. " I shall not easily for- 
get," Mr. H. Taylor writes to him after their return, " the 
easy confidence of good will and true welcome with 
which you threw yourself upon the sofa the first time 
you entered the house, and the satisfaction to yourself 
with which you rejoiced your host and hostess for three 
weeks, by listening to all that the mind of the 'Heer' 
could unfold in his singular intertexture of tongues, and 
by accepting, and eating, and drinking all that the heart 
of the ' Vraue,' in her profusion of Dutch delicacies, could 
invent. Such confidence as yours was certainly never 
better bestowed."— if. T. to R. S., Oct. 20, 1825. 



434 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JKtat. 51. 



" You may imagine how curious I was to see 
the lady of the house,* and yet I did not see her 
when we first met, owing to the shade of the trees 
and the imperfectness of my sight. She was kind 
and cordial, speaking English remarkably well, 
and with very little hesitation, without any foreign 
accent. The first night was not well managed : 
a supper had been prepared, which came so late, 
and lasted so long by the slowness which seems 
to characterize all operations in this country, that 
I did not get to bed till one o'clock. My bed- 
room is on the ground floor, adjoining the sitting- 
room in which we eat, and which is given up to 
me. Every thing was perfectly comfortable and 
nice. I asked for my milk at breakfast, t and when 
Mr. Droesa, the surgeon, came in the morning, I 
had the satisfaction of hearing that he should not 
dress the wound again in the evening, but leave 
it four-and-twenty hours, because there was now 
a disposition to heal. Mr. Bilderdijk brought 
me some curious manuscripts of the eldest Dutch 
poets ; the morning passed pleasantly. Henry 
Taylor dined with us at half past two ; dinner last- 
ed, I hardly know how, till six or seven o'clock. 
I petitioned for such a supper as I am accustomed 
to at home, got some cold meat accordingly, and 
was in bed before eleven. I slept well, and the 
foot is proceeding regularly toward recovery. 
Mr. Droesa just left me before I begun to write. 
By Sunday I hope to be able to walk about the 
house, and then my imprisonment will soon be 
over. I am in no pain, and suffer no other in- 
convenience than that of keeping the leg always 
on a chair or settee. 

" You will now expect to hear something of 
the establishment into which I have been thus, 
unluckily shall I say, or luckily, introduced. The 
house is a good one, in a cheerful street, with a 
row of trees and a canal in front; large, p.nd 
with every thing good and comfortable about it. 
The only child, Lodowijk Willem, is at home, 
M. Bilderdijk being as little fond of schools as I 
am. The boy has a peculiar, and, to me, an in- 
teresting countenance. He is evidently of a 
weak constitution ; his dress neat, but formal, 
and his behavior toward me amusing from his 
extreme politeness, and the evident pleasure 
with which he receives any attempt on my part 
to address him, or any notice that I take of 
him at table. A young vrouw waits at table. I 
wish you could see her, for she is a much odd- 
er figure than Maria Rosa}: appeared on her 
first introduction, only not so cheerful a one. 
Her dress is black and white, perfectly neat, 
and not more graceful than a Beguine's. The 
cap, which is very little, and has a small front 
not projecting further than the green shade 
which I wear sometimes for my eyes, comes 
down to the roots of the hair, which is all combed 
back on the forehead : and she is as white and 



* She was not less curious to see him, and, on Mr. Bil- 
derdijk's return from the hotel, eagerly inquired "how he 
looked ;'" to which the reply was given that " he looked as 
Mr. Southey ought to look :" a description which delighted 
my father exceedingly. 

t A basin of hot milk was for many years my father's 
substitute for tea or coffee at breakfast. 

1 A Portuguese servant. 



wan in complexion as her cap ; slender, and not 
ill made ; and, were it not for this utter pale- 
ness, she would be rather handsome. Another 
vrouw, who appears more rarely, is not in such 
plain dress, but quite as odd in her way. Noth- 
ing can be more amusing than Mr. Bilderdijk's 
conversation. Dr. Bell is not more full of life, 
spirits, and enthusiasm ; I am reminded of him 
every minute, though the English is much more 
uncouth than Dr. Bell's.* He seems delighted to 
have a guest who can understand, and will listen 
to him ; and is not a little pleased at discerning 
how many points of resemblance there are be- 
tween us ; for he is as laborious as I have been ; 
has written upon as many subjects ; is just as 
much abused by the Liberals in his country as I 
am in mine, and does ' contempt' them as heart- 
ily and as merrily as I do. I am growing inti- 
mate with Mrs. Bilderdijk, about whom her hus- 
band, in the overflowing of his spirits, tells me 
every thing. He is very fond of her and very 
proud of her, as well he may ; and, on her part, 
she is as proud of him. Her life seems almost 
a miracle after what she has gone through. 

" Friday morning. — My foot continues to 
mend, and proceeds as well as possible toward 
recovery. I can now, with the help of a stick, 
walk from room to room. My time passes very 
pleasantly. A more remarkable or interesting 
a person, indeed, than my host it was never my 
fortune to meet with ; and Mrs. Bilderdijk is not 
less so. I shall have a great deal to talk about 
on my return. Early next week I hope to be at 
liberty ; and I may travel the better, because 
we move here by trekschuits, so that the leg 
may be kept up. Now do not you vex yourself 
for an evil which is passed, and which has led to 
very pleasant consequences. Once more God 
bless you ! R. S." 

I well remember my pleasure at receiving the 
following letter, being at that time seven years of 
age. It is, I think, so good a specimen of a let- 
ter to a child, that the reader will not regret its 
insertion. 

To C. C. Southey. 

" Leyden, July 2, 1826. 
"My pear Cuthbert, 
" I have a present for you from Lodowijk 
Willem Bilderdijk, a very nice, good boy, who 
is of the age of your sister Isabel. It is a book 
of Dutch verses, which you and I will read to- 
gether when I come home. When he was a lit- 
tle boy and was learning to write, his father, 
who is very much such a father as I am, made 
little verses for him to write in his copy-book ; 
and these verses pleased some good people so 
much, that leave was asked to print them. They 
were printed from Lodowijk's writing, and have 
been thought so fit for the purpose, that a great 
many of them have been sold. Lodowijk will 
write his name and yours in the book. He is a 



* Dr. Bell spoke with a strong Scotch accent 



/Etat. 51. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



435 



very gentle, good boy, and I hope that one of 
these days somewhere or other he and you may 
meet. 

" I must tell you about his stork. You should 
know that there are a great many storks in this 
country, and that it is thought a very wicked 
thing to hurt them. They make their nests, 
which are as large as a great clothes basket, 
upon the houses and churches, and frequently 
when a house or church is built, a wooden frame 
is made on the top for the storks to build in. 
Out of one of these nests a young stork had fall- 
en, and somebody, wishing to keep him in a gar- 
den, cut one of his wings. The stork tried to 
fly, but fell in Mr. Bilderdijk's garden, and was 
found there one morning almost dead.; his. legs 
and his bill had lost their color, and were grown 
pale, and he would soon have died if Mrs. Bilder- 
dijk, who is kind to every body and every thing, 
had not taken care of him, as we do of the dum- 
beldores when they have been in the house all 
night. She gave him food, and he recovered. 
The first night they put him into a sort of sum- 
mer-house in the garden, which I can not de- 
scribe to you, because I have not yet been there ; 
the second night he walked to the door himself 
that it might be opened for him. He was very 
fond of Lodowijk, and Lodowijk was as fond of 
his oyevaar, which is the name for stork in Dutch, 
though I am not sure that I have spelled it right- 
ly, and they used to play together in such a man- 
ner that his father says it was a pleasure to see 
them ; for a stork is a large bird, tall and up- 
right, almost as tall as you are, or quite. The 
oyevaar was a bad gardener ; he ate snails, but 
with his great broad foot he did a great deal of 
mischief, and destroyed all the strawberries and 
many of the smaller vegetables. But Mr. and 
Mrs. Bilderdijk did not mind this, because the 
oyevaar loved Lodowijk, and therefore they loved 
the oyevaar, and sometimes they used to send a 
mile out of town to buy eels for him, when none 
could be had in Leyden. 

" The very day I came to their house the stork 
flew away. His wings were grown, and most 
likely he thought it time to get a wife and settle 
in life. Lodowijk saw him rise f up in the air 
and fly away. Lodowijk was very sorry, not 
only because he loved the oyevaar, but because 
he was afraid the oyevaar would not be able to 
get his own living, and therefore would be 
starved. On the second evening, however, the 
stork came again and pitched upon a wall near. 
It was in the twilight, and storks can not see at 
all when it is dusk ; but whenever Lodowijk 
called Oye ! oye ! (which was the way he used 
to call him), the oyevaar turned his head toward 
the sound. He did not come into the garden. 
Some fish was placed there for him, but in the 
morning he was gone, and had not eaten it; so 
we suppose that he is married, and living very 
happily with his mate, and that now and then he 
will come and visit the old friends who were so 
good to him. 

"It is very happy for mo that I am in so com- 
fortable a house, and with such excellently kind 



and good people * * where I learn 
more of the literature, present and past state, 
and domestic manners of the country, than it 
would have been possible for me to do in any 
other manner. 

" Yesterday Mr. Bilderdijk received a letter 
from Algernon Thelwall, who is at Amsterdam, 
saying he had heard that I was here, and ex- 
pressing a great desire to see me. Both Mr. 
and Mrs. Bilderdijk speak very highly of him. 
This news is for your mamma. I shall have a 
great deal to tell her on my return. 

" I hope you have been a good boy, and done 
every thing that you ought to do, while I am 
away. "When I come home you shall begin to 
read Jacob Cats with me. My love to your sis- 
ters and to every body else. I hope Rumpel- 
stilzchen has recovered his health, and that Miss 
Cat is well, and I should like to know whether 
Miss Fitzrumpel has been given away, and if 
there is another kitten. The Dutch cats do not 
speak exactly the same language as the English 
ones. I will tell you how they talk when I 
come home. 

" God bless you, my dear Cuthbert ! 
" Your dutiful father, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Mrs. Southey. 

" Leyden, Thursday, July 7, 1825 
" My dear Edith, 
" * # # This is our manner of 

life. At eight in the morning Lodowijk knocks 
at my door. My movements in dressing are as 
regular as clock-work, and when I enter the ad- 
joining room, breakfast is ready on a sofa-table, 
which is placed for my convenience close to the 
sofa. There I take my place, seated on one 
cushion, and with my leg raised on another. 
The sofa is covered with black plush. The 
family take coffee, but I have a jug of boiled 
milk. Two sorts of cheese are on the table, one 
of which is very strong, and highly flavored with 
cummin and cloves : this is called Leyden cheese, 
and is eaten at breakfast laid in thin slices on 
bread and butter. The bread is soft, in rolls, 
which have rather skin than crust ; the butter 
very rich, but so soft that it is brought in a pot 
to table, like potted meat. Before we begin Mr. 
B. takes off a little gray cap, and a silent grace 
is said, not longer than it ought to be ; when it 
is over he generally takes his wife's hand. They 
sit side by side opposite me; Lodowijk at the 
end of the table. About ten o'clock Mr. Droesa 
comes and dresses my foot, which is swathed in 
one of my silk handkerchiefs. I bind a second 
round the bottom of the pantaloon, and if the 
weather be cold I put on a third, so that the leg 
has not merely a decent, but rather a splendid 
appearance. After breakfast and tea Mrs. B. 
washes up the china herself at the table. Part 
of the morning Mr. B. sits with me. During 
the rest I read Dutch, or, as at present, retire 
into my bed-room and write. Henry Taylor 
calls in the morning, and is always pressed to 
dine, which he does twice or thrice in the week 



436 



xWFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



^TAT. 51. 



We dine at half past two or three, and the din- 
ners, to my great pleasure, are altogether Dutch. 
You know I am a valiant eater, and having re- 
tained my appetite as well as my spirits during 
this confinement, I eat every thing which is put 
before me. Mutton and pork never appear, be- 
ing considered unfit for any person who has a 
wound, and pepper, for the same reason, is but 
sparingly allowed. Spice enters largely into 
their cookery ; the sauce for fish resembles cus- 
tard rather than melted butter, and is spiced. 
Perch, when small (in which state they are con- 
sidered best), are brought up swimming in a 
tureen. They look well, and are really very 
good. With the roast meat (which is in small 
pieces), dripping is presented in a butter-boat. 
The variety of vegetables is great. Peas, peas 
of that kind in which the pod also is eaten, purs- 
lain, cauliflowers, abominations* kidney beans, 
carrots, turnips, potatoes. But, besides these, 
many very odd things are eaten with meat. I 
had stewed apples, exceedingly sweet and high- 
ly spiced, with roast fowl yesterday ; and another 
day, having been helped to some stewed quinces, 
to my utter surprise, some' ragout of beef was to 
be eaten with them. I never know, when I be- 
gin a dish, whether it is sugared or will require 
salt ; yet every thing is very good, and the pud- 
dings excellent. The dinner lasts very long. 
Strawberries and cherries always follow. Twice 
we had cream with the strawberries, very thick, 
and just in the first stage of sourness. We have 
had melons also, and currants — the first which 
have been produced. After coffee they leave 
me to an hour's nap. Tea follows. Supper at 
half past nine, when Mr. B. takes milk, and I a 
little cold meat with pickles, or the gravy of the 
meat preserved in a form like jelly ; olives are 
used as pickles, and at half past ten I go to bed. 
Mr. B. sits up till three or four, living almost 
without sleep. 

" Twice we had a Frisian here, whom we 
may probably see at Keswick, as he talks of go- 
ing to England on literary business. Halberts- 
maf is his name, and he is a Mennonite pastor 



* Broad beans, which he always so denominated. 

t " Mr. Halbertsma is a very good and learned man, 
who has particularly directed his attention to the early 
languages of these countries, and is now planning a jour- 
ney to England for the purpose of transcribing some MSS. 
of Junius's which are at Oxford. He speaks English, and 
made his first essay at conversing with an Englishman 
with me. His pronunciation was surprisingly good, con- 
sidering that till that moment he had never heard English 
spoken by an Englishman. But the Frisians have nothing 
in their own language which it is necessary for them to 
forget : he read me some verses in their tongue that I 
might hear the pronunciation. To my ear they were 
much less harsh than the Dutch, being wholly free from 
gutturals. The language, however, is regarded as a bar- 
barous dialect." I subjoin a few other extracts from his 
Journal : 

" Very few of the Mennonites retain the orthodox faith 
of their fathers. In this generation they have generally 
lapsed into Socinianism, which, with other kindred isms, 
prevails extensively in Holland, Pantheism being the stage 
to which the speculative Atheists in this country proceed. 
Another people, like the unbelievers in England, all act 
in iavor ot Romanism and in league with it. Their prin- 
ciple is, that superstition is necessary for the vulgar ; so 
they would have a papal establishment, with infidel priests 
and an indifl'ereut government. The Romanists are pal- 
bly favored, and visibly increase in numbers. At the 



at Deventer.^ Twice we have had the young 
Count Hoogmandorp, a fine young man, one of 
the eight who for six weeks watched day and 
night by Mr. B. in his illness 5 and once a Dr. 
Burgman, a young man of singular appearance 
and much learning, drank tea here. My host's 
conversation is amusing beyond any thing I ever 
heard. I can not hope to describe it so as to 
make you conceive it. The matter is always 
so interesting, that it would alone suffice to keep 
one's attention on the alert; his manner is be- 
yond expression animated, and his language the 
most extraordinary that can be imagined. Even 
my French can not be half so odd. It is English 
pronounced like Dutch, and with such a mix- 
ture of other language, that it is an even chance 
whether the next word that comes be French, 
Latin, or Dutch, or one of either tongues shaped 
into an English form. Sometimes the oddest 
imaginable expressions occur. When he would 
say ' I was pleased,' he says { I was very pleas- 
ant;' and instead of saying that a poor woman 
was wounded, with whom he was overturned in 
a stage-coach in England, he said she was severe- 
ly blessed. Withal, whatever he says is so full of 
information, vivacity, and character, and there is 
such a thorough good nature, kindness, and frank- 
ness about him, that I never felt myself more 
interested in any man's company. Every moment 
he reminds me more and more of Dr. Bell. 



Fete de Dieu, the king committed the gross offense to his 
own religion of having his palace decorated in honor of 
the procession. This could not gratify his Romish sub- 
jects so much as it has disgusted all those who know how 
to appreciate the blessings of the Reformation ; for the 
great body of the Dutch people are attached to that re- 
ligion, the enjoyment of which their ancestors purchased 
so dearly. 

" The government has followed that base policy which 
all restored kings seem to follow, as if to show, if persons 
alone were to be considered, how little they have deserved 
their restoration. The old enemies of the house of Orange 
are favored and preferred ; the old friends, true servants 
and sufferers in their cause, are left with their sufferings 
for their reward. The system of Liberalism prevails ; 
the press is made an engine of mischief here as in En- 
gland ; and every thing that presumptuous ignorance and 
philosophism can do, is doing to undermine the religion 
and morals of the people. 

"During the triumph of the anti-stadtholder faction, 
popular feeling manifested itself in some odd ways. The 
body of the people have always been gratefully attached 
to the house of Orange, as it became them to be. To pre- 
vent all manifeitation of that feeling, the ruling faction 
forbade the market-women to expose carrots for sale. 
They were enjoined, on pain of fine, to keep them cover- 
ed under other greens. Carroty cats were hunted down 
to be extirpated, and marigolds rooted up by men sent for 
the purpose. Of course, such measures provoked the 
spirit which they were desired to suppress. The fish- 
women cried orange-salmon through the streets, marigold 
seeds were scattered every where, and particularly in the 
gardens of the factious, and pigeons were dyed orange 
color and let fly. The two latter tricks excited some su- 
perstitious feeling. 

" The University here has sadly declined. There are 
not thirty professors, and not more than 300 students. 
The want of able men and the appointment of unfit ones 
has occasioned the decline. Freshmen are called greens, 
and a ceremony was (and perhaps is) used in ungreening 
them, and admitting them to their full academical privi- 
leges. Bread, according to its degree of fineness, wa8 
called in military and- academic towns, from the rank of 
those who might be supposed to eat it, cadef s, captain's, 
or colonel's bread ; and here, from greens' up to profes- 
sor's bread ; the sort above which was called prophet's. 
If a fisherman offered for sale a remarkably fine and large 
fish, a haddock, for example, he will say it is a professor 
among haddocks." — From his Journal. 

* The Mennonites were Dutch Baptists. 



jEtat. 51. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



437 



"I gather by one word which dropped from 
him that Mrs. B. is his second wife. They are 
prOud of each other, as well they may. She has 
written a great many poems, some of which are 
published jointly with some of his, and others by 
themselves. Many of them are devotional, and 
many relate to her own feelings under the various 
trials and sufferings which she has undergone. 
In some of them I have been reminded some- 
times of some of my own verses, in others of 
Miss Bowles's. One would think it almost im- 
possible that a person so meek, so quiet, so re- 
tiring, so altogether without display, should be a 
successful authoress, or hold the first place in 
her country as a poetess. The profits of litera- 
ture here are miserably small. In that respect, 
I am, in relation to them, w T hat Sir Walter Scott 
is in relation to me. Lodowijk (thus the name 
is spelled) is a nice, good boy, the only survivor 
of seven children. He is full of sensibility, and 
I look at him with some apprehension, for he is 
not strong, and I fear this climate, which suits 
his father better than any other, is injurious to 
him. Tell Cuthbert that the oyevaar has pa,id 
him another visit, and that Lodowijk's other 
playmate is a magnificent tabby cat, as old as 
himself, who, however, is known by no other 
name than puss, which is good Dutch as well as 
English. 

" English books are so scarce here that they 
have never seen any work of mine except Rod- 
eric. Of course I have ordered over a complete 
set of my poems and the History of Brazil, and 
as E. May is in London-, I have desired her to 
add, as a present from herself to Mrs. B., a copy 
of Kirke White's Remains. I can never suffi- 
ciently show my sense of the kindness which I am 
experiencing here. Think wiiat a difference it 
is to be confined in a hotel, with all the dis- 
comforts, or to be in such a family as this, who 
show by every word and every action that they 
are truly pleased in having me under their roof. 

" I manage worst about my bed. I know 
not how T many pillow r s there are, but there is one 
little one which I used for my head till I found 
that it was intended for the small of my back. 
Every thing else I can find instruction for, but 
here is nobody to teach one how to get into a 
Dutch bed, or how to lie in one. A little bottle 
of brandy is placed on the dressing-table, to be 
used in cleansing the teeth. Saffron is used in 
some of the soups and sauces. The first dish 
yesterday was marrow in a tureen, w r hich w T as 
eaten upon toast. I eat every thing, but live in 
daily fear of something like sucty pudding or 
tripe. About an hour before dinner a handsome 
mahogany case containing spirits is produced ; a 
glass waiter is taken out of it, and little tum- 
blers with gilt edges, and we have then a glass 
of liqueur with a slice of cake. Deventer cake 
it is called ; and an odd history belongs to it. 
The composition is usually intrusted only to the 
burgomaster of that city, and when the baker 
has made all the other ingredients ready, the 
chief magistrate is called upon, as part of his 
duty, to add that portion of the materials which 



constitute the excellence and peculiarity of the 
Deventer cake. I shall have much to tell you, 
for I know not where I have heard so much to 
amuse, so much to affect, so much to interest 
and inform me as since I have been a prisoner 
here. ###### 

" Love to the children. God bless you, my 
dear Edith ! 

" Your affectionate husband, R. S." 

To Miss Katherine Southey. 

" Amsterdam, Saturday, July 16, 1825. 
" My dear Kate, 
# # # Tuesday w T e had a pleasant 
day on the water, and saw at the sluices of the 
Rhine enough to undeceive us concerning the 
common statements about this country. That 
the sea is higher than the towers of Ley den is 
altogether false : the truth is, that the general 
level of Holland is above the low-water mark, 
and a little below that of high- water; and 
though the lands are much below the rivers and 
canals, it is because the beds of the rivers have 
been raised by what they bring down, or because 
the lands were formerly large meres or deep 
morasses, which have been drained. Wednes- 
day I went w T ith Henry Taylor to the Hague, 
saw the museum of pictures, called on one of 
my Dutch curmudgeons, Mr. De Clerc, who is 
an improvisatore poet, and returned in the even- 
ing. Thursday I settled my business as to 
booksellers. Oh, joy when that chest of glori- 
ous folios shall arrive at Keswick ! the pleasure 
of unpacking, of arranging them on the new 
shelves that must be provided, and the whole 
year's repast after supper which they will afford ! 
After dinner we took what Mr. Bilderdijk calls 
a walk in a carriage, and drank tea in a village, 
where w T e had a very entertaining scene with 
the hostess — a woman shaped very much like a 
jumping Joan, supposing the said Joan to be tall, 
and lean in the upper half. Her birth-day had 
occurred a few T days before, and on that occasion 
a poem had been addressed to her by the sur- 
geon's man : this poem she brought to Mr. Bil- 
derdijk to read, and he read it just as Mr. Words- 
worth would have read a piece of doggerel, if 
under like circumstances it had been brought to 
I him in some such public house as John Stanley's. 
The woman stood by in silent delight at hearing 
her own praises entoned by his powerful voice, 
and set off by his gestures and emphatic manner : 
Mrs. Bilderdijk kept her countenance to admira- 
tion. I sat by, not knowing w T hether the verses 
were good or bad, but infinitely amused by the 
scene, and the girl of the public house coming 
out at the unusual sound, stood among the shrubs 
of the garden listening — like Eve in the Paradise 
Lost. 

"Yesterday our kind friends accompanied us 
a little way in the trekschuit on our departure, 
and we parted with much regret on both sides. 
If Mr. Bilderdijk can muster spirits for the un- 
dertaking, they will come and pass a summer 
with me, which of all things in the world would 
give me most pleasure, for never did I meet with 



438 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 52. 



more true kindness than they have shown me, or 
with two persons who have in so many essential 
respects so entirely pleased me. Lodowijk, too, 
is a very engaging boy, and attached himself 
greatly to me ; he is the only survivor of eight 
children whom Mr. Bilderdijk has had by his 
present wife, and of seven by the first ! I can 
truly say, that, unpleasant as the circumstance 
was which brought me under their roof, no part 
of my life ever seemed to pass away more rapid- 
ly or more pleasantly. We got to Harlaem by 
dinner-time, and to Amsterdam afterward. 
" God bless you, my dear child ! 

"Your affectionate father, R. S." 

To the Rev. Robert Philip. 

" Keswick, Aug. 15, 1825. 
"My dear Sir, 

" On returning home after an absence of sev- 
eral weeks, I found, and was pleased to find, 
your friendly letter and the books which accom- 
panied it. For the one relating to South Amer- 
ica, I must beg you to express my thanks where 
they are due. Having inquired so diligently into 
the history and condition of that wide country 
during many years, I am glad to possess any 
documents which may enable me to correct or 
otherwise improve the result of my researches. 
But it will not be my fortune to revise the work. 
Excepting Mrs. Baillie's little book concerning 
Lisbon, I have not reviewed a book of travels for 
many years. 

" I thank you for your own volume. You 
have undertaken a labor of love where it was 
greatly needed, and you will have your reward. 
1 can not doubt but that some of the seed which 
you have sown will take root and bring forth 
fruit. 

" No person can look with more eagerness 
than 1 do for your Life and Times of "VVhitefield, 
nor will any one who peruses it be better dis- 
posed to be pleased with the perusal. The points 
on which I may expect you to differ from me are 
not unimportant ones, but they are less import- 
ant than those on which I am sure that we agree ; 
and my temper will always lead me to consider 
a fair and generous opponent almost as a friend. 

" I am busied at present in demolishing the 
flimsy sophistries of Mr. Butler, treating him, 
however, with the courtesy which is due to a 
kind-hearted man and an old acquaintance. Mil- 
ner will receive a different treatment. What 
think you of his saying Whitefield believed that 
the Angel Gabriel attended on his congregation, 
and quoted a story which I have told to prove 
it ? He says also that I have avowed the Mo- 
ravian doctrine of instantaneous conversion, and 
refers to a passage (vol. iv., p. 159) which ex- 
poses the fallacy of the reasoning by which Wes- 
ley was led to believe it. And of such direct 
and impudent falsehoods his strictures are full. 
I have, however, rather to enlarge my state- 
ments than to vindicate them, and the greater 
part of my book will be historical and biograph- 
ical. 

" Mrs. Southey joins with me in remembrance 



to Mrs. Philips, and desires me to say she has 
not forgotten the few but pleasant hours in which 
we enjoyed your conversation seven summers 
ago. 

" Yours with sincere esteem and regard, 
"Robert Southey." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 22, 1825. 
"My dear H. T., 

Canning came here from Lowther, and sat about 
half an hour with me. My acquaintance with 
him is of some five years standing, and of course 
slight, as it is very rarely that circumstances 
bring me in his way. Had we been thrown to- 
gether in early life — that is, if I had been three 
years older, and had been sent to Eton, instead 

' of Westminster — we might probably have be- 
come friends. ' Very ordinary intelligence' has 
never sufficed for me in the choice of my asso- 
ciates, unless there was extraordinary kindness 
of disposition, or strength of moral character to 
compensate for what was wanting. When these 

I are found, I can do very well without great tal- 

' ents ; but without them, the greatest talents have 
no attractions for me. If Canning were my neigh- 
bor, we might easily become familiar, for we 
should find topics enough of common interest, 

' and familiarity grows naturally out of an easy 

j intercourse where that is the case. But I am 
very sure that his good opinion of me would not 
be increased by any thing that he would see of 
me in general society. 

" With regard to my writings, I am well aware 
that some of them are addressed to a compara- 
tively small part of the public, out of which they 

| will not be read. Probably not half a dozen even 
of those persons who are most attached to me 
ever read all that I have published. But if im- 
mediate reputation were my object, I know not 
how it could more surely be attained than by 
writing to such different classes as those among 

' whom my different books find readers for the 
sake of the subject matter. The truth, however, 
is, that this never enters into my consideration. 
I take up a subject because it interests me. I 
treat it in the manner which seemeth best in my 

| own eyes, and when it has been sent forth to take 
its chance, the only care which I have concern- 

! ing it is to correct and improve it in case it should 

\ be reprinted. 

" The Bishop of Chester has been here, and 
Mackintosh breakfasted with me and spent an 

| evening also. He has been in Holland, but knows 
Bilderdijk only by name and by reputation. 
" My books arrived about a month ago, and I 

; have been in a high state of enjoyment ever since. 
But I have had another pleasure since their ar- 
rival, which is to learn that the second edition 
of Wadding's Annales Minorum, for want of 

> which I was fain to purchase the first of Ver- 
beyst, has been bought for me at Rome by Sen- 
house, this being seventeen volumes, the first 

: only eight. To me, who desire always the full- 
est materials for whatever I undertake, this is a 



iETAT. 51. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



439 



great acquisition. My after-supper book at pres- 
ent is Erasmus's Letters, from which I know not 
whether I derive most pleasure or profit. 

" The tendency of my ecclesiastical writings, 
whether controversial or historical, is not to dis- 
turb established delusions, but to defend estab- 
lished truths. It is not to any difference of re- 
ligion that the better character of the lower or- 
ders in France must be ascribed — the persons 
who are under forty years of age and above 
twenty having grown up without any — but to 
the difference of national manners, amusements, 
&c, the way in which our manufactures are car- 
ried on, and the effect, which, within the last 
thirty years, the poor-laws have produced. So 
far, however, as religion comes into the account, 
it is in favor of the French for these reasons, 
that the lowest class have a religion there, which 
here very generally they have not (I speak of 
large towns and manufacturing districts where 
the neglected population have outgrown the 
churches) ; that a bad religion is better than 
none ; and that the effects of the Roman Catho- 
lic system (as of Methodism) become more and 
more injurious as you trace them up from the 
lowest to the higher ranks. This I shall this 
minute note as a subject to be pursued in my 
Colloquies. ##=&#*# 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Dr. Gooch. 

" Keswick, Dec. 18, 1825. 
"My dear Gooch, 

"I can not refer you to any other account of the 
Sisters of Charity than is to be found in Helyot's 
Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, a very meager 
but useful book ; compared to what a history ought 
to be, it is somewhat like what a skeleton is to 
the body. When I was first in the Low Coun- 
tries, I endeavored to collect what information I 
could concerning the Beguines, and got into their 
principal establishment at Ghent. Their history 
is curiously uncertain, which I found not only 
from themselves, but from pursuing the subject 
in books ; and as I have those books at hand, I 
can at any time tell you what is not known about 
them, for to that the information which they con- 
tain amounts. The Beguines are as much es- 
teemed in the Low Countries as the Saeurs de la 
Charite in France ; but I have incidentally learned 
from books that scandal used to be busy with 
them. A profession of religion naturally affords 
cover for hypocrisy, and it is therefore to be ex- 
pected that scandal should sometimes arise, and 
more frequently be imputed ; but the general 
utility of the institution is unquestionable ; and I 
do not know that there is any thing to be set 
against it, for they are bound by no vows, nor to 
any of those observances which are at once ab- 
surd and onerous. I will have the notes which 
I made concerning them at Ghent transcribed for 
you. As your adventures were in Flanders, not 
in France, have you not mistaken the Beguines 
for the Sisters of Charity ? 

" It is not surprising that your letters in Black- 
wood should have produced -so much impression. 



The subject comes home to every body, and that 
Yarmouth story is one of the most touching in- 
cidents I ever remember to have heard. As an 
example to prove how much a principle of hu- 
manity is wanting, look by all means for an ac- 
count of the Foundling Hospital at Dublin, where 
the most damnable inhumanity of its kind upon 
record was practiced by the nurses for a course 
of years. The mortality was monstrous. I 
think it appeared that these wretches who dealt 
in infant suffering used sometimes to murder the 
children by sitting upon them in the carts where- 
in they conveyed them from the hospital to the 
country. 

" The change of ministry in the Quarterly 
Review is the only change of such a kind which 
could have affected me for evil and for good. 

" As for my importance to the Review, it is 
very little. Just at this juncture I might do 
harm by withdrawing from it ; but at any othei 
time I should be as little missed as I shall be, 
except in my own family and in some half a 
dozen hearts besides, whenever death shakes 
hands with me. The world closes over one as 
easily as the waters. Not, however, that I shall 
sink to be forgotten. 

" But as for present effect, the reputation of 
the Review is made, and papers of less pith and 
moment than mine would serve the bookseller's 
purpose quite as well, and amuse the great body 
of readers, who read only for amusement or foi 
fashion, more. God bless you ! 

' ' Yours affectionately, 

" R. SoUTHEV." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 31, 1825. 
" My dear H. T., 

" I have pursued so little method in my own 
studies at any time of my life, that I am. in truth, 
very little qualified to direct others. Having 
been from youth, and even childhood, an omniv- 
orous reader, I found myself, when I commenced 
man, with a larger stock of general information 
than young men usually possess, and the desul- 
tory reading in which I have always indulged 
(making it, indeed, my whole and sole recreation) 
has proved of the greatest use when I have been 
pursuing a particular subject through all its ram- 
ifications. 

" With regard to metaphysics I know nothing, 
and therefore can say nothing. Coleridge, I am 
sure, knows all that can be known concerning 
them ; and if your friend can get at the kernel 
of his 'Friend' and his 'Aids to Reflection,' he 
may crack peach-stones without any fear of 
breaking his teeth. For logic — that may be con- 
sidered indispensable, but how far that natural 
logic which belongs to good sense is assisted or 
impeded by the technicalities of the schools, 
others are better able to determine than I am, 
for I learned very little, and nothing which I ever 
learned stuck by me unless I liked it. 

" The rules for composition appear to me very 
simple ; inasmuch as any style is peculiar, the 
peculiarity is a fault, and the proof of this is the 



440 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 52. 



easiness with which it. is imitated, or, in other 
words, caught. You forgive it in the original 
for its originality, and because originality is usu- 
ally connected with power. Sallust and Tacitus 
are examples among the Latins, Sir T. Brown, 
Gibbon, and Johnson among our own authors ; 
but look at the imitations of Gibbon and John- 
son ! My advice to a young writer is, that he 
should weigh well what he says, and not be anx- 
ious concerning how he says it; that his first 
object should be to express his meaning as per- 
spicuously, his second as briefly as he can, and 
in this every thing is included. 

" One of our exercises at Westminster was to 
abridge the book which we were reading. I 
believe that this was singularly useful to me. 
The difficulties in narration are to select and to 
arrange. The first must depend upon your judg- 
ment. For the second, my way is, when the 
matter does not dispose itself to my liking, and 
I can not readily see how to connect one part 
with another naturally, or make an easy transi- 
tion, to lay it aside. "What I should bungle at 
now may be hit off to-morrow ; so, when I come 
to a stop in one work, I lay it down and take up 
another. 

" For a statesman, the first thing requisite is 
to be well read in history. Our politicians are 
continually striking upon rocks and shallows 
which are all laid down in the chart. As this 
is the most important and most interesting branch 
of knowledge, so also is it one to which there is 
no end. The more you read the more you de- 
sire to read, and the more you find there is to be 
read ; and yet I would say this to encourage the 
student, not to dismay him, for there is no pleas- 
ure like this perpetual acquisition and perpetual 
pursuit. For an Englishman there is no single 
historical work with which it can be so necessary 
for him to be well and thoroughly acquainted as 
with Clarendon. I feel at this time perfectly 
assured, that if that book had been put into my 
hands in youth, it would have preserved me from 
all the political errors which I have outgrown. 

It may be taken for granted that knows this 

book well. The more he reads concerning the 
history of those times, the more highly he will ap- 
preciate the wisdom and the integrity of Claren- 
don. For general histories of England, Hume's 
is not ranked higher than it deserves for its man- 
ner, and the perpetual presence of a clear intel- 
lect. Henry may be classed* with Rapin as la- 
borious and heavy. I have never had an oppor- 
tunity of reading Carte, in whom I believe there 
is much good matter. For matter and research, 
Turner's is very much the best, as far as it goes. 
But were your friend, as an exercise in composi- 
tion, to undertake the history of a single reign, 
it would surprise him to find into how wide a 
field of reading he would be led, and how much 
he would discover that has been overlooked. 

" The advice I would give any one who is 
disposed really to read for the sake of knowledge, 
is, that he should have two or three books in 
course of reading at the same time. He will 
read a great deal more in that time and with 



much greater profit. All travels are worth read- 
ing, as subsidiary to reading, and, in fact, essen- 
tial parts of it : old or new, it matters not — 
something is to be learned from all. And the 
custom of making brief notes of reference to 
every thing of interest or importance would be 
exceeding useful. 

. " Enough of this. Do you know who wrote 
that paper in Blackwood which you sent me ? 
for I should like to know. Whoever the author 
be, I very much agree with him. But when you 
say that conciliation and comprehension should 
'be the policy of the Church, I agree only as to 
the latter. Comprehension is the principle upon 
which the Articles were framed, but for concili- 
ating enemies, Heaven bless those who attempt 
it ! There are two things which may endanger 
the Church. The Catholic Question is one, scan- 
dalous promotions are the other. Its safety just 
now consists in public opinion acting upon the 
government in both cases, and in some degree 
controlling it. The bigotry which is in the 
Church is hurtful enough, but not so hurtful as 
the promotion of unworthy men who take the 
bigoted party just as they would take the stron- 
gest side in case of danger. 

" A humorous French criticism upon the Tale 
of Paraguay has found its way into the West- 
moreland Gazette, that I have shown off my pro- 
fessional knowledge too much in dwelling upon 
vaccination and the cow-pox. This I get by my 
doctorship. 



God bless you ! 



R. S. 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 18, 1826. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
* * * # # # # 

" You can not hold the Bullion Question in 
greater abhorrence than I do. It is the worst 
plague that ever came out of Pandora's Scotch 
mull. I can not but think that government is 
altogether wrong in abolishing small notes ; they 
should allow of none which have not the stamp 
of national credit, but without small bills there 
will be a want of sufficient currency. And as 
for forgery, Heaven help the wits of those who 
do not perceive that for one who can forge there 
will be twenty who can coin. Peel has never 
recovered the credit with me which he lost by 
becoming a bullionist, and Ricardo's opinion I 
hold in so little respect that I am glad he has 
not an English name. 

" Do you remember me buying a Dutch gram- 
mar in the ' cool May' of 1799, and how we 
were amused at Brixton with the Dutch gram- 
marian who pitied himself, and loved his good 
and rich brother? That grammar is in use 
now ; and Cuthbert and I have begun upon Ja- 
cob Cats, who, in spite of his name, and of the 
ill-looking and not-much-better-sounding lan- 
guage in which he wrote, I verily believe to 
have been the most useful poet that any country 
ever produced. In Bilderdijk's youth, Jacob 
! Cats was to be found in every respectable house 



iftTAT. i2. 



ROBERT SOUTIIEY. 



441 



throughout Holland, lying beside the hall Bible. 
One of his longer poems, which describes the 
course of female life, and female duties from 
childhood to the grave, was in such estimation, 
that an ornamental edition of it was printed sole- 
ly for bridal presents. He is, in the best sense 
of the word, a domestic poet ; intelligible to the 
humblest of his readers, while the dexterity and 
felicity of his diction make him the admiration 
of those who are best able to appreciate the 
merits of his style. And for useful practical 
morals, maxims for every-day life, lessons that 
find their way through the understanding to the 
heart, and fix themselves there, I know of no 
poet who can be compared to him. Mi Cats 
inter omnes. Cedite Romani Scriptores, cedite 
Graii ! 

" I believe you know (which is not yet to be 
made known) that I have engaged to continue 
Warton's History of English Poetry, and bring 
it down to the close of the last century ; that is, 
I mean to conclude with Hayley, Cowper, and 
Darwin, and stop just where my own time be- 
gins. It is to be in three or four octavo volumes, 
as the subject may require, for which I am to 
have d£500 each, paid as each is finished. What 
leads me to speak of this is, that you may un- 
derstand how I am led from history and polemics 
to the humaner study of Jacob Cats. My plan, 
like Warton's, includes and requires excursive 
views of the literature of other countries. How 
far these commercial storms may extend, there 
is no foreseeing ; but as I am not to begin print- 
ing before the beginning of next year, it is likely 
that things will go on smoothly again by that 
time. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To the Lord Bishop of Limerick {Dr. Jebb) . 
"Keswick, April 17, 1826. 
" My Lord, 

u I will be at your door at ten o'clock on 
Saturday, the 20th of May, unless any mishap 
should prevent me. 

" It was not without some degree of shame 
that I received your kind letter — the shame 
which arises from a consciousness of having 
omitted what ought to have been done ; for I 
have often thought of writing to you, and intend- 
ed to write, and as often some avocation has 
made me postpone it till that more convenient 
season, which never arrives for one who is al- 
ways employed, and but too frequently inter- 
rupted. 

" My last year's journey proved an eventful 
one, both for evil and good. I traveled in the 
hope of cutting short an annual catarrh, which 
is of such a nature that, unless the habit of its 
recurrence can be overcome, its work must, in 
a very few visits more, be completed. The ex- 
periment succeeded perfectly, and so far all was 
well. I sent home, also, a goodly consignment 
of folios and of smaller fry from Brussels and 
from Leyden ; heavy artillery, to be mounted in 
ny batteries against Babylon. But my ill for- 



tune began at Douay, whither I went on my out- 
ward journey, partly for the sake of taking a line 
which I had not traveled before ; chiefly because 
I had an ancestor buried there, the first Sir Her- 
bert Croft, who turned Romanist in the reign of 
James I., and died there among the Benedictines. 
Happily for me, his son returned to the faith in 
which he had been borne. I wished to see his 
grave; but when I came to the Benedictine 
church, I was in the same case as Yorick, when 
he looked for the tombs of Amandus and Amanda. 
The church had been gutted, the monuments 
destroyed, in the Revolution ; and the crypt, 
wherein he was buried, was filled with rubbish. 
However, I saw the shell of the building ; and I 
saw, also, the outside of that college where so 
many treasons had been plotted, and so much 
mischief for these kingdoms hatched. But at 
Douay or at Bouchain I was bitten on the foot 
by the vilest of all insects ; an accidental hurt, 
which was but just healed, had disposed the part 
for inflammation. The weather was intensely 
hot ; by the time I reached Antwerp, I was un- 
able to put that foot to the ground ; and having 
proceeded to Leyden, whither, happily, I had a 
strong motive for proceeding, I was told that, 
had the inflammation continued to proceed for 
another day, the limb would have been in dan- 
ger. So there I lay nearly three weeks under a 
surgeon's hands. Such, however, was my good 
fortune, that I never passed three weeks more 
happily. Bilderdijk, whose wife translated Rod- 
eric into Dutch verse, and who is himself, take 
him for all in all, the most extraordinary and ad- 
mirable person wiiom I have ever known, took 
me into his house. Here I was nursed as if I 
had been their brother ; and thither, as they can 
not come and visit me, I am going to see them 
once more ; were Leyden ten times as distant as 
it is, I would take the journey, for the pleasure 
which I shall give and receive. I knew him 
only by letter till I was cast upon their compas- 
sion. But Bilderdijk is one of those men whose 
openness of heart you perceive at first sight; 
and when I came to know them both, if I had 
sought the world over, it would not have been 
possible for me to have found two persons with 
whom I should have felt myself more entirely in 
unison, except, indeed, that my host stands up, 
like a true Hollander of the old stamp, for the 
Synod of Dort. 

" He is above seventy years of age, and con- 
sidering what he has gone through in mind and 
body, it is marvelous that he is alive. From 
infancy he has been an invalid ; and in childhood 
was saved, after his case was pronounced hope- 
less, by a desperate experiment of his own fa- 
ther's — to change the whole mass of his blood by 
frequent bleeding. But, in consequence, his sys- 
tem acquired such a habit of making blood, that 
periodical bleeding has been necessary from that 
time; andWw, in his old age, after every en- 
deavor to prolong the intervals, he is bled every 
six weeks. His pulse is always that of a fever- 
ish man. He has never slept more than four 
hours in the four-and-twenty, and wakes always 



442 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 52. 



unrefreshed, and in a state of discomfort, as if 
sleep exhausted him more than the perpetual in- 
tellectual labor in which he is engaged. None 
of his countrymen have written so much, or so 
variously, or so well ; this is admitted by his ene- 
mies ; and he has for his enemies the whole body 
of Liberals and time-servers. His fortune was 
completely wrecked in the Revolution ; and hav- 
ing been the most confidential and truest friend 
of the Stadtholder, he has received the usual re- 
ward of fidelity after a Restoration. The house 
of Orange, like other restored families, has 
thought it politic to show favor to their enemies 
and neglect their friends. A small pension of 
about d£l40 is all that he has ; and a professor- 
ship, which the king had promised, is withheld, 
lest the Liberals should be offended. 

" His life has been attempted in popular com- 
motions; he has almost wanted bread for his 
family in exile, having had eight children by a 
first wife, seven by the present ! one boy of 
twelve years old is the only one left, whose dis- 
position is every thing that can be desired, but 
his constitution so feeble that it is impossible to 
look at him without fear. The mother is four- 
and-twenty years younger than her husband, and 
in every respect worthy of him ; I have never 
seen a woman who was more to be admired and 
esteemed for every thing womanly ; no stran- 
gers would suppose that so unassuming a person 
was in high repute as a poetess. Bilderdijk's 
intellectual rank is at once indicated by his coun- 
tenance ; but he is equally high-minded and 
humble, in the best sense of those epithets ; and 
both are so suited to each other, so resigned to 
their fortunes, so deeply and quietly religious, 
and, therefore, so contented, so thankful, and so 
happy, that it must be my own fault if I am not 
the better for having known them. 

" This theme has made me loquacious. You 
see that, if I suffered for visiting Holland in- 
stead of Ireland, the evil was amply overpaid. 
For your renewed invitation I can not thank you 
as I ought, nor say more at present than that in 
all likelihood I shall be most happy to accept, 
it. We shall see what twelve months will bring 
forth. 

" Farewell, my lord, till May 20. I beg my 
kind regards to Mr. Forster, and remain, 

" With sincere respect and esteem, your lord- 
ship's obliged and faithful servant, 

"Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 26, 1826. 
"My dear R., 
" * * * * * I can have 

no opinion about the Corn Laws, having no con- 
cern in them, which might make me overcome 
an habitual or natural inaptitude for such com- 
plicated questions. But with regard to the gen- 
eral question of Free Trade, I incline to think 
that the old principle, upon which companies of 
the various trades were formed for the purpose 
of not allowing more craftsmen or traders of one 
calling in one place than the business would sup- 



port, was founded in good common sense ; and 
as a corollary, that if some more effectual step 
is not put to the erection of new cotton mills, 
&c, than individual prudence is ever likely to 
afford, at some time or other the steam-engine 
will blow up this whole fabric of society. Three 
years ago, I was assured that, at the rate of in- 
crease then going on in Manchester, that place 
would, in ten years, double its manufacturing 
population. When we hear of the prosperity of 
those districts, it means that they are manufac- 
turing more goods than the world can afford a 
market for, and the ebb is then as certain as the 
flow; and in some neap tide, Radicalism, Re- 
bellion, and Ruin will rush in through the breach 
which hunger has made. 

" You have had more than your share of this 
world's business. I doubt whether any other 
man who has worked so hardly has worked so 
continuously and so long. Our occupations with- 
draw us all too much from nearer and more last- 
ing concerns. Time and nature, especially when 
aided by any sorrows, prepare us for better in- 
fluences ; and when we feel what is wanting, we 
seek and find it. The clouds then disperse, and 
the evening is calm and clear, even till night 
closes. 

" Long and intimate conversance with Romish 
and sectarian history, with all the varieties of 
hypocritical villainy and religious madness, has 
given me the fullest conviction of the certainty 
and importance of these truths, from the perver- 
sion and distortion of which these evils and 
abuses have grown. There is not a spark of 
fanaticism left in my composition : whatever 
there was of it in youth, spent itself harmlessly 
in political romance. I am more in danger, 
therefore, of having too little of theopathy than 
too much — of having my religious faith more in 
the understanding than in the heart. In the 
understanding I am sure it is ; I hope it is in 
both. This good in myself my ecclesiastical 
pursuits have certainly effected. And if I live 
to finish the whole of my plans, I shall do better 
service to the Church of England than I could 
ever have done as one of its ministers, had I 
kept to the course which it was intended that I 
should pursue. There is some satisfaction in 
thinking thus. God bless you ! R. S." 

In the following month of June, my father, in 
company with Mr. H. Taylor and Mr. Rickman, 
made a short tour in Holland, and again visited 
the Bilderdijks in Leyden. This was a rapid 
journey, and his letters during the course of it 
do not possess sufficient novelty to interest the 
reader. His return home was a mournful one : 
he found his youngest daughter, Isabel, laid on 
a bed of sickness, from which she never rose. 

Well do I, though but a child, remember that 
return, as we hastened to meet him, and chang- 
ed, by our sorrowful tidings, his cheerful smile 
and glad welcome to tears and sadness. It was 
the first time I had seen sorrow enter that happy 
home ; and those days of alternate hope and fear, 
and how he paced the garden in uncontrollable 



jEtat. 52 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



443 



anguish, and gathered us around him to prayer 
when all was over, are vividly impressed on my 
mind. 

This, too, was the "beginning of troubles;" 
and from this shock my mother's spirits, weak- 
ened by former trials, and always harassed by 
the necessary anxieties of an uncertain income, 
jever wholly recovered. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Sunday night, July 16, 1826. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I have lost my sweet Isabel. There was 
hope of her recovery till yesterday evening, when 
my misgivings were dreadfully confirmed by 
symptoms which I knew too well. This even- 
ing she departed in a swoon, without a struggle, 
as if falling asleep. 

" Under this heavy affliction we have the sup- 
port of religion — the sure and only source of 
comfort. I am perfectly tranquil and master of 
myself, -suffering most for what my wife suffers, 
who yet exerts herself with Christian fortitude. 
But the body can not be controlled like the mind, 
and I fear I shall long feel the effects of an 
anxiety which has shaken every fiber. Were it 
not for the sake of my family, how gladly would 
I also depart and be at rest. 

" God bless you, my dear Grosvenor. 

"R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" July 19, 1826. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" TeTe^eorai . I have seen the mortal remains 
of my sweet Isabel committed earth to earth. 
And what I must now do is, to find occupation 
in the business of this world, and comfort in the 
thought of the next. The loss which I suffered 
ten years ago was greater ; the privation, per- 
haps, not so great ; and there were not so many 
to partake and augment the sorrow. 

" It would be acting a friend's part, Grosve- 
nor, if you would come to me a few weeks 
hence. My mind will soon regain its wonted 
composure, and keep to itself all thoughts which 
would awaken the grief of others. But I should 
be truly glad to have you here, and the house 
would be the better for the presence of an old 
friend. My poor wife would recover the sooner 
if some such turn were given to her thoughts, 
and we might enjoy each other's company; for 
I should enjoy it at leisure, which it is impossi- 
ble that we should ever do in London. Indeed, 
I know not when I shall have heart enough to 
leave home again for a long absence. 

" I wish to show you some things, and to talk 
with you about others ; one business in particu- 
lar, which is the disposal of my papers whenever 
[ shall be gathered to my fathers and to my 
children. That good office would naturally be 
yours, should you be the survivor, if the business 
of the Exchequer did not press upon you, like 
the world upon poor Atlas's shoulders. I know 
not now upon whom to turn my eyes for it, un- 
less it be Henry Taylor. Two long journeys 



with me have made him well acquainted with 
my temper and every-day state of mind. He 
has shown himself very much attached to me, 
and would neither want will nor ability for what 
will not be a difficult task, inasmuch as that 
which is of most importance, and would require 
most care, will (if my life be spared but for a 
year or two) be executed by my own hand. 
You do not know, I believe, that I have made 
some progress in writing my own life and recol- 
lections upon a large scale. This will be of 
such certain value as a post obit, that I shall 
make it a part of my regular business (being, 
indeed, a main duty) to complete it. What is 
written is one of the things which I am desirous 
of showing you. If you ever look over my let- 
ters, I wish you would mark such passages as 
might not be improper for publication at the time 
which I am looking forward to. You, and you 
alone, have a regular series which has never been 
intermitted. From occasional correspondents, 
plenty of others, which, being less confidential, 
are less careless, will turn up. I will leave a 
list of those persons from whom such letters may 
be obtained, as may probably be of avail. 

"I am not weary of the world, nor is the 
world weary of me ; but it is fitting that I should 
prepare, in temporal matters, for the separation 
which must take place between us, in the course 
of years, at no very distant time, and which may 
occur at any hour. 

" Our love to Miss Page. She will feel for us 
the more, because she knows what we have lost. 

" God bless you, my dear Grosvenor ! 

' R. S." 

I can not better conclude this chapter than 
with the following beautiful letter : 

To Edith May, Bertha, and Kalhcrinc Southey. 

" July 19, 1826. 
" My dear Daughters, 

" I write rather than speak to you on this oc- 
casion, because I can better bear to do it, and 
because what is written will remain, and may 
serve hereafter for consolation and admonish- 
ment, of which the happiest and best of us stand 
but too often in need. 

" If any thing could at this time increase my 
sorrow for the death of one who was the pride 
of my eyes and the joy of my heart, it would be 
that there are so many who have their full share 
in it. When your dear mother and I were last 
visited with a like affliction, you were too young 
to comprehend its nature. You feel and under- 
stand it now ; but you are also capable of profit- 
ing by it, and laying to your hearts the parental 
exhortations which I address to you while they 
are wounded and open. 

" This is but the first trial of many such which 
are in store for you. Who may be summoned 
next is known only to the All-wise Disposer of 
all things. Some of you must have to mourn for 
others; some one for all the rest. It may be 
the will of God that I should follow more of my 
children to the grave ; or, in the ordinary course 



444 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 52. 



of nature and happiest issue, they may see their 
parents depart. Did we consider these things 
wisely, we should perceive how little it imports 
who may go first, who last ; of how little con- 
sequence sooner or later is, in what must be. 
We must all depart when our time comes — all 
to be reunited in a better state of existence, where 
we shall part no more. 

"Our business here is to fit ourselves for that 
state — not by depreciating or renouncing those 
pleasures which may innocently and properly be 
enjoyed, but by correcting the faults to which 
we are prone, cultivating our better dispositions, 
doing the will of God by doing all we can for the 
good of others, and fixing our dearest hopes on 
Heaven, which is our resting-place and our ever- 
lasting home. 

" My children, you have all brought into the 
world good dispositions : I bless God for it, more 
than for all the other blessings which he has 
vouchsafed me. But the best dispositions re- 
quire self- watchfulness, as there is no garden but 
what produces weeds. Blessed be God, I have 
never seen in either of you any one symptom of 
an evil nature. Against great sins there is no 
occasion to warn you ; but it is by guarding 
against little ones that we acquire a holy habit 
of mind, which is the sure foundation of happi- 
ness here and hereafter. 

" You know how I loved your dear sister, my 
sweet Isabel, who is now gathered to that part 
of my family and household (a large one now !) 
which is in Heaven. I can truly say that my 
desire has ever been to make your childhood 
happy, as I would fain make your youth, and 
pray that God would make the remainder of 
your days. And for the dear child who is de- 
parted, God knows that I never heard her name 
mentioned, nor spoke, nor thought of her, with- 
out affection and delight. Yet this day, when I 
am about to see her mortal remains committed 
earth to earth, it is a grief for me to think that 
I should ever, by a harsh or hasty word, have 
given her even a momentary sorrow which might 
have been spared. 

" Check in yourselves, then, I beseech you, 
the first impulses of impatience, peevishness, ill- 
humor, anger, and resentment. I do not charge 
you with being prone to these sins ; far from it ; 
but there is proneness enough to them in human 
nature. They are easily subdued in their begin- 
nings ; if they are yielded to, they gather strength 
and virulence, and lead to certain unhappiness 
in all the relations of life. A meek, submissive, 
obliging disposition is worth all other qualities. 
I beseech you, therefore, to bear and forbear, 
carefully to guard against giving offense, and 
more carefully (for this is the more needful ad- 
monition) to guard against taking it. A soft an- 
swer turneth away wrath. There is no shield 
against wrongs so effectual as an unresisting 
temper. You will soon find the reward of any 
conquest which you shall thus obtain over your- 
selves: the satisfaction is immediate; and the 
habit of equanimity which is thus easily ac- 
quired, will heighten all your enjoyments here, 



as well as enable you the better to support those 
afflictions which are inseparable from humanity. 

" Your sister is departed in her innocence : 
' of such is the kingdom of Heaven.' For you, 
if your lives are prolonged, there will be duties 
and trials in store, for which you must prepare 
by self-government, and for which God will pre- 
pare you if you steadfastly trust in his promises, 
and pray for that grace which is never withheld 
from humble and assiduous prayer. 

" My children, God alone knows how long I 
may be spared to you. I am more solicitous to 
provide for your peace of mind and for your ever- 
lasting interest than for your worldly fortunes. 
As I have acted for myself in that respect, so do 
I feel for you. The longer I may live, the more, 
in all likelihood, will be the provision which may 
be made for you ; large it can never be, though, 
whenever the hour comes, there will be enough, 
with prudence and good conduct, for respecta- 
bility and comfort. But were it less, my heart 
would be at rest concerning you while I felt and 
believed that you were imbued with those prin- 
ciples, and had carefully cultivated in yourselves 
those dispositions which will make you heritors 
of eternal life. 

"I copy this letter for each of you with my 
own hand. It will be read with grief now. But 
there will come a time when you may think of 
it with a solemn rather than melancholy pleas- 
ure, and feel grateful for this proof of love. Take 
it, then, with the blessing of 

" Your afflicted and affectionate father, 

" Robert Southey." 



CHAPTER XXX. 

HE IS RETURNED TO PARLIAMENT FOR THE BOR- 
OUGH OF DOWNTON DECLINES TO TAKE HIS 

SEAT GROWTH OF HIS OPINIONS HIS AUTO- 
BIOGRAPHY EMIGRATION THE EDINBURGH 

ANNUAL REGISTER A USEFUL OCCUPATION TO 

HIM SHARON TURNER'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

AMBITION— -FRUITLESS EFFORTS TO INDUCE 

HIM TO SIT IN PARLIAMENT REASONS FOR DE- 
CLINING TO DO SO FORTUNATE COURSE OF 

LIFE DIFFERENT MODES OF PREACHING NEC- 
ESSARY TO DIFFERENT CONGREGATIONS HE 

IS WISHED TO UNDERTAKE THE EDITORSHIP OF 

THE GARRICK PAPERS ILLNESS OF MR. BIL- 

DERDIJK DEATH OF BARD WILLIAMS A QUA- 
KER ALBUM DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS STATE 

OF HOLLAND DEATH OF LORD LIVERPOOL 

DISLIKE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY FOREIGN 

QUARTERLY REVIEW STATE OF THE SCOTCH 

KIRK POLITICS, HOME AND FOREIGN RELA- 
TIVE HAPPINESS OF NATIONS DECREASING 

SALE OF HIS WORKS NATIONAL EDUCATION. 

1826-1827. 

During my father's absence in Holland, one 
of the most curious of the many odd circum- 
stances of his life occurred to him, and one which 
proved that, notwithstanding the amount of ob 
loquy, misrepresentation, and enmitv his writ- 



JEtat. 52. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



445 



ings had stirred up against him, there were not 
wanting striking instances of their producing the 
effect he so earnestly desired. 

While passing through Brussels, to his great 
astonishment, a report reached him that he was 
elected a member of Parliament, no intimation 
of the likelihood of such an honor being thrust 
upon him having previously reached him. 

On his arriving in London, he found the fol- 
lowing letter awaiting his return : 

"July 10, 1826. 

" A zealous admirer of the British Constitu- 
tion in Church and State, being generally pleas- 
ed with Mr. Southey's ' Book of the Church,' 
and professing himself quite delighted with the 
summary* on the last page of that work, and 
entertaining no doubt that the writer of that 
page really felt what he wrote, and, consequent- 
ly, would be ready, if he had an opportunity, to 
support the sentiments there set forth, has there- 
fore been anxious that Mr. Southey should have 
a seat in the ensuing Parliament ; and having a 
little interest, has so managed that he is at this 
moment in possession of that seat under this sin- 
gle injunction : 

( 'Ut sustineat firmiter, strenue et continuo, 
quae ipse bene docuit esse sustinenda." 

This was without signature, but the hand- 
writing was recognized as that of Lord Radnor, 
to whom my father was personally an entire 
stranger. 

His answer, addressed to a mutual friend, was 
in the following terms : 

To Richard White, Esq. 

1 Harley Street, July 1, 1826. 
" My dear. Sir, 

" I heard accidentally at Brussels that I had 
been returned for the borough of Downton, and 
on my arrival here on Wednesday last, I found 
a letter, announcing, in the most gratifying and 
honorable manner, that this distinction had been 
conferred upon me through the influence of the 
writer, whose name had not been affixed : had 
that, however, been doubtful, the writing was 
recognized by my old and intimate friend Mr. 
John May. 

" Oar first impulses in matters which involve 
any question of moral importance are, I believe, 
usually right. Three days allowed for mature 
consideration have confirmed me in mine. A 



* The following is the concluding passage in the Book 
of the Church here referred to : " From the time of the 
Revolution the Church of England has partaken of the 
stability and security of the State. Here, therefore, I term- 
inate this compendious, but faithful view of its rise, prog- 
ress, and political struggles. It has rescued us, first, from 
heathenism, then from papal idolatry and superstition ; it 
has saved us from temporal as well as spiritual despotism. 
We owe to it our moral and intellectual character as a na- 
tion ; much of our private happiness, much of our public 
strength. Whatever should weaken it, would, in the same 
degree, injure the common weal; whatever should over- 
throw it, would, in sure and immediate consequence, bring 
down the goodly fabric of that Constitution, whereof it is 
a constituent and necessary part. If the friends of the 
Constitution understand this as clearly as its enemies, and 
act upon it as consistently and as actively, then will the 
Church and State be safe, and with them the liberty and 
prosperity of our country.' 



seat in Parliament is neither consistent with my 
circumstances, inclinations, habits, nor pursuits in 
life. The return is null, because I hold a pen 
sion of c£200 a year during pleasure. And if 
there were not this obstacle, there would be the 
want of a qualification. That pension is my only 
certain income ; and the words of the oath 
(which I have looked at) are too unequivocal 
for me to take them upon such grounds as are 
sometimes supplied for such occasions. 

" For these reasons, which are and must be 
conclusive, the course is plain. When Parlia- 
ment meets, a new writ must be moved for, the 
election as relating to myself being null. I 
must otherwise have applied for the Chiltern 
Hundreds. 

"It is, however, no inconsiderable honor to 
have been so distinguished. This I shall always 
feel ; and if I do not express immediately to your 
friend my sense of the obligation he has confer 
red upon me, it is not from any want of thank- 
fulness, but from a doubt how far it might be 
proper to reply to an unsigned communication. 
May I therefore request that you will express 
this thankfulness for me, and say at the same 
time that I trust, in my own station, and in the 
quiet pursuance of my own scheme of life, by 
God ; s blessing, to render better service to those 
institutions, the welfare of which I have at my 
heart, than it would be possible for me to do in 
a public assembly. 

" I remain, dear sir, 

" Yours with sincere regard, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Dr. Southey. 

" Keswick, July 20, 1826. 
" My dear Harry, 

"lam now endeavoring to turn to my em- 
ployment, as the rest of my sad household must 
do. The girls, as well as their mother, are 
sorely shaken, and sometimes I think ominously 
of the old proverb, which says, welcome evil if 
thou comest alone ! 

" With regard to the mode of getting out of 
Parliament, I am very willing that others should 
decide for me. in the total indifference with which 
I regard the question. Being aware of the nul- 
lity of the return, I abstain from franking,* and 
this is all that it concerns me to do. As for the 
impediment arising from the pension, nothing 
could have been easier than to have removed it, 
by having the pension made for life instead of 
during pleasure, or transferred to my wife. Her- 
ries could have done this, or you could have had 
it done, for it was, in fact, asking nothing but the 
alteration of a few words ; with regard to the 
qualification, no one could have censured me if 
I had gone into Parliament, and as so many 
others do, with one prepared for the nonce. I 
am so sure that my life will be seen in its proper 
light when it is at an end. that misrepresenta- 

* This resolution he steadily persevered in, notwith- 
standing the entreaties of his family for " one frank" in 
memory of his temporary M.P.-ship, and the persecution 
of autograph collectors. 



146 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



/Etat. 52. ] 



ions, however malicious, serve only to make me 
smile ; and I am amused at thinking that many 
persons will be as much surprised at discovering 
what manner of man Southey really was, as all 
.he world was when Madame d'Eon was found 
o be of the masculine gender. 

"This odd affair, however, will be of some 
use : it keeps my name fresh before the public, 
and in a way, too, which raises it in vulgar es- 
timation. Had I arrived here in a chaise instead 
of coming in the mail, the people would have 
Irawn me home in triumph ; and there was a 
consultation about chairing me, which ended in 
the true conclusion that perhaps I should not like 
it. The General* had these honors (except the 
chairing) yesterday afternoon. They drew him 
from the turnpike to his own landing-place, and 
he made a speech from the boat. How he must 
have enjoyed this, and how we should have en- 
joyed it, if that very hour had not been one of 
the bitterest of our lives. God bless you ! 
" Your affectionate brother, 

"R. Southey." 

To Henry 'Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Aug. 31, 1826. 
"My dear Henry Taylor, 

" I have read your long letter with much in- 
terest. The question of political economy may 
stand over till I find a proper place for touching 
upon it. Concerning the Irish question you 
quote the Edinburgh Register ; the question is 
pursued in the fourth volume of that work. 
Thei-e is just now a much more urgent question 
relating to Ireland. I know not how man and 
beast are to be saved from perishing there by 
famine without parliamentary assistance, prompt- 
ly and efficiently administered. The pasturage 
is wholly destroyed by drought, the potatoes 
nearly so. As late as last week they had had 
no rain. 

" Political questions will never excite any 
difference of feeling between us in the slightest 
degree. I have lived all my life in the nearest 
and dearest intimacy with persons who were 
most opposed to me in such things : whether 
you or I be right is of no consequence to our 
happiness, present or future, and of very little as 
to our usefulness in society. The other point 
whereon you touch is of more importance. 

" The growth and progress of my own opin- 
ions I can distinctly trace, for I have been watch- 
fully a self-observer. What was hastily taken 
up in youth was gradually and slowly modified, 
and I have a clear remembrance of the how, and 
why, and when of any material change. This 
you will find (I trust) in the Autobiography 
which I shall leave, and in which some consider- 
able progress is made, though it has not reached 
this point. It will be left, whether complete or 
not (for there is the chance of mortality for this) 
in a state for the press, so that you will have no 
trouble with it. There will be some in collect- 
ing my stray letters, and selecting such, in whole 



♦ General Peachey, then newly elected M.P. for Taunton. 



or in part, as may not unfitly be published, less 
for the sake of gratifying public curiosity than 
of bringing money to my family. 

" One thing more will remain, which is to 
edit my poems from the corrected copies which 
are in my possession. Some pieces there will 
be to add, and some fragments, if I do not finish 
what is begun. The rise and growth of all my 
long poems may be shown (if it be thought worth 
while) from the memoranda made during their 
progress. To those who take an interest in such 
things, these will be curious, as showing how 
the stories developed themselves, what incidents 
were conceived and rejected, and how the plans 
were altered as the composition advanced. But 
for this how much, or how little, or if any, will 
be matter of discretion, to be decided as time and 
circumstances may serve. 

" I spoke to Lockhart about the Georgics, and 
he was very glad to hear of your father for 'the 
subject, and of the subject for your father. God 
bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct 11, 1826. 
" My dear H. T., 

"Thank you for the New Zealander's portrait. 
It may lead one to speculate whether a well tat- 
tooed face remains capable of any other indi- 
vidual expression than what the eye gives. In 
a portrait it appears that eyes, nose, and mouth 
go for nothing. 

" You seem right in thinking that Upper Cana 
da is the country to which government should 
direct such emigrants as may be at its disposal. 
But when the full necessity of widely colonizing 
shall be generally perceived and felt, I hope 
something like a spirit of enterprise may be ex- 
cited in adventurers of the middle and higher 
ranks, and that men may be found w T ho will be 
ambitious of founding a settlement and a family 
in a new world. New Holland is the country 
for them. I doubt whether all history can sup- 
ply such another instance of stupid misgovern- 
ment as has been exhibited in stocking that coun- 
try with male convicts, without any reference tc 
the proportion of the sexes. You ought with all 
speed to ship off ' in good condition' as many fe- 
male volunteers as the Magdalen, the hospitals, 
and the streets can supply. 

" But I want to hear of colonists of a better 
stamp than those who are sent abroad by law 
or driven thither by necessity ; and such, I think, 
may be found. It is a matter of necessity to 
provide an outlet for our overgrown population, 
who will otherwise soon become the wild beasts 
of society ; but it is a matter of perspective pol- 
icy, not less important in its consequences, to 
provide also for the overflow of the educated 
classes. 

" I was at Lowther for three days last week, 
and met Lord Beresford there. The priests in 
Ireland, he says, are loaded and primed, and have 
their fingers upon the trigger. 

" God bless you ! R. S " 



Stat. 53. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



447 



To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Nov. 13, 1826. 
"My dearH. T., 

" You are right in supposing that I should 
have made a bad statesman,* and you may add 
to it that for no one line of life should I have 
been well qualified except for the clerical pro- 
fession. But had I been placed in political life, 
I might very probably have erred more from 
want of decision than from deciding too rapidly. 

" The Benedictine Order was established long 
before the twelfth century — early in the sixth — 
and swallows up all other rules in the Western 
world. It was in the twelfth that the two great 
Mendicant orders (the Franciscan and Domini- 
can) were established. By help of those or- 
ders, and of that said Wadding whereon you 
pun, I shall make a ramp among the Roman 
Catholics. Do but imagine how Butler and 
Bishop Bramston (who is an old acquaintance of 
mine) will look when I set Sister Providence 
upon her head before them ! 

" The Register was perhaps the most success- 
ful occupation for myself in which I was ever en- 
gaged. It led me to look into the grounds of my 
own opinions — to modify some, to change others, 
and to confirm other some. If you remember it, 
when you are reading the Peninsular War, you 
will perceive that imperfect information had led 
me sometimes wrong, and that sometimes I had 
erred in forming my own opinion. But, on the 
whole, it is very satisfactory to find how much 
more frequently I was right in combining facts 
and forming conclusions. Do you know that the 
Whigs held a Council of War, and resolved to 
have me brought as a culprit before the House 
of Commons for certain remarks in that Regis- 
ter upon some of their w r orshipful body ; but 
their decision was reversed upon an appeal, I 
suppose, from Whig drunk to Whig sober. It 
was a great pity, for I should have had good ad- 
visers and good friends, have made my own 
cause good, and have punished them to my 
heart's content. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Sharon Turner, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 12, 1826. 
"My dear Turner, 
" Thank you for your new History, which I 
have read with great attention, great pleasure, 



* " I have thought, as I read the Edinburgh Annual 
Register, how apt you were to state a strong reason as a 
conclusive one. To every extensive measure weighty 
objections exist, whatever reasons there may be to over- 
rule them. Had you been a statesman instead of an au- 
thor, the habits of your mind would have been more 
scrutinizing as to the merits, more inquisitive as to the 
defects of what, upon the whole, you should see cause to 
approve. If not, you would have been very far from what 
is called, in official phrase, ' a safe man.' "-— H. T. to R. S., 
Nov. 10, 1826. 

I may quote here, as applicable to these remarks, a 
passage from a letter of my father's written some years 

later : " What complains of in Sadler's speeches 

and in his book, is exactly what you have complained of 
in certain of my compositions ; that confidence which a 
man feels whose opinions are established upon his relig- 
ious belief, and who looks to the moral consequences in 
every thing, and will no more admit of any measures 
which oppose that belief, or lead to consequences in- 
jurious to it. than a mathematician will listen to any thing 
that contradicts an axiom, or a logician to a train of rea- 



and great advantage. It places Wolsey in a 
worse light than that in which Cavendish had 
led me to view him ; but Cavendish saw onlv 
the better parts of his character, and was neces 
sarily ignorant of the crooked policy which you 
have exposed. I am pleased to see how nearly 
your estimate of Harry's character accords with 
mine ; and not less pleased to think that my in- 
quiries should have in some degree stimulated 
you to undertake and accomplish so great an un- 
dertaking as this volume. I could wish that the 
style had in some places been less ambitious. 

" On Wednesday next I shall w T rite to the 
speaker, and lay dow r n my M.P.-ship. No 
temptation that could have been offered would* 
have induced me to sacrifice the leisure and 
tranquillity of a studious and private life. Free 
from ambition I can not pretend to be, but what 
ambition I have is not of an ordinary kind : rank, 
and power, and office I would decline without a 
moment's hesitation, were they proffered for my 
acceptance ; and for riches, if I ever perceive 
the shadow of a wish for them, it is not for their 
own sake, but as they would facilitate my pursuits, 
and render locomotion less inconvenient. The 
world, thank" God ! has little hold on me. I 
would fain persuade myself that even the desire 
of posthumous fame is now only the hope of in- 
stilling sound opinions into others, and scatter- 
ing the seeds of good. All else I have outlived. 
I have suffered severely since we parted. Lit- 
tle, indeed, when I breakfasted w T ith you last, 
did I apprehend the affliction which was impend- 
ing over me, and w T hich had even then begun its 
course. But the w T ill of God be done ! My 
bodily health has not recovered the shock, nor 
will it speedily, I fear. I am, however, now in 
full activity of mind, and feel the perfect leisure 
which winter brings with it in this place as a re- 
lief and comfort. 

"I hope and trust you will find courage and 
health to go on till the end of Elizabeth's reign 
— in which I am sure you will make great dis- 
coveries. Remember me most kindly to your 
family, and believe me always, 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

The two following letters contain the sequel 
of my father's strange adventure respecting the 
representation of the borough of Downton : the 
second was apparently not written till some time 
after the circumstances to which it relates, but 
it will most appropriately be inserted here. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Friday, Dec. 8, 1826. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" Hear the second part of the history of my 
parliamentary affairs : 

" On Wednesday I received a note from Harry, 
saying that a plan had been formed for purchas- 
ing a qualification for me ; that Sir Robert In- 

soning which starts from a false postulate." — R. S. to H. 
T., April 8, 1829. 



448 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



/Etat. 53. 



glis had just communicated this to him, and was 
then gone to Lord R. to ask him to keep the 
borough open : that he (Harry ) doubted whether 
a sufficient subscription could be raised, but sup- 
posed that under these circumstances I should 
not refuse the seat, and desired my answer by 
return of post, that he might be authorized to 
say I would sit in Parliament if they gave me an 
estate of <£300 a year ! 

" I rubbed my eyes to ascertain that I was 
awake, and that this was no dream. I heard 
Cuthbert his Greek lesson, and read his Dutch 
one with him. I corrected a proof-sheet. And 
fhen, the matter having had time to digest, I 
■ wrote in reply as follows : 

" ' My dear H., 
" ' An estate of 66300 a year would be a very 
agreeable thing for me, Robert Lackland, and I 
would willingly change that name for it : the 
convenience, however, of having an estate is not 
the question which I am called upon to determ- 
ine. It is (supposing the arrangement possible 
— which I greatly doubt), whether I will enter 
into public life at an age when a wise man 
would begin to think of retiring from it ; wheth- 
er I will place myself in a situation for which 
neither my habits, nor talents, nor disposition are 
suited, and in which I feel and know it to be im- 
possible that I should fulfill the expectations of 
those who would raise the subscription. Others 
ought to believe me, and you will, when I de- 
clare that in any public assembly I should have 
no confidence in myself, no promptitude, none of 
that presence of mind, without which no man 
can produce any effect there. This ought to be 
believed, because I have them all when acting 
in my proper station and in my own way, and 
therefore can not be supposed to speak from 
timidity, nor with any affectation of humility. 
Sir Robert Inglis and his friends have the Prot- 
estant cause at heart, and imagine that I could 
serve it in Parliament. I have it at heart also 
— deeply at heart — and will serve it to the ut- 
most of my power, " so help me God I" But it 
is not by speaking in public that I can serve it. 
It is by bringing forth the knowledge which so 
large a part of my life has been passed in ac- 
quiring ; by exposing the real character and 
history of the Romish Church, systematically 
and irrefragably (which I can and will do) in 
books which will be read now and hereafter ; 
which must make a part, hereafter, of every his- 
torical library ; and which will live and act when 
I am gone. If I felt that I could make an impres- 
sion in Parliament, even then I would not give 
up future utility for present effect. I have too 
little ambition of one kind, and too much of an- 
other, to make the sacrifice. But I could make no 
impression there. I should only disappoint those 
who had contributed to place me there ; and in 
this point of view it is a matter of prudence, as 
well as in all others, of duty, to hold my first res- 
olution, and remain contentedly in that station 
of life to which it has pleased God to call me. 
If a seat in Parliament were made compatible 



with my circumstances, it would not be so with 
my inclinations, habits, and pursuits, and there- 
fore I must remain Robert Lackland. 

" ' You will not suppose that I despise d£300 a 
year, or should lightly refuse it. But I think 
you will feel, upon reflection, that I have decid- 
ed properly in refusing to sit in Parliament under 
any circumstances. R. S.' 

" To-day (Friday) Harry has received this 
letter from me, and I have received the follow- 
ing one from him : 

" ' My dear Robert, 

" { Lord R.'s answer to Sir Robert Inglis is 

nearly in the following words : " Mr. was 

returned upon public grounds solely, without pre- 
vious communication, or even acquaintance. It 
has since been seen under his handwriting that 
the situation was not to his taste, and did not 
accord with his habits of life." 

" ' I believe these are the very words of Lord 
R.'s answer to an excellent letter from Inglis. 
Thus ends your very singular adventure. If you 
could have got an estate by it, the story would 
have told better. As it is, the estimation in 
which you are held by many great and good 
men has been proved in the most satisfactory 
manner. Sir Robert did not tell me the names 
of those who had expressed their willingness to 
subscribe, nor with whom the scheme had orig- 
inated (not with himself), but he seemed san- 
guine of success. H. H. S.' 



God bless you ! 



R. S. 



To Sir R. H. Inglis, Bart. 

(Without date.) 
" My dear Sir Robert, 

"For some time I have been intending tc 
thank you for your very kind intentions and ex- 
ertions in my behalf, and to explain, more clearly 
than could be done in a hasty reply to my broth- 
er's letter, the motives upon which my decision 
in that matter was formed. The event has 
proved that it was fortunate, but I wish you to 
be satisfied that it was rightly made — I might 
say deliberately also ; for, though little expect- 
ing to be invited in such a manner, I have often 
said, and always felt, that no prospects of ambi- 
tion or advantage should induce me to enter into 
public life. 

" In replying to my brother, I spoke only of 
unfitness for Parliament, and disinclination for it, 
which were in themselves sufficient reasons. I 
did not speak of the separation from my family 
for four or five months in the year, which would 
have been necessary, nor of the probable effect 
upon my health, nor of the interruption of pur- 
suits which, from other causes, have been and 
are already too much interrupted. 

" If I had taken a seat in Parliament when it 
was at my option, the express condition was 
that of doing my duty there ; and of this a pret- 
ty regular attendance must have been an indis- 
pensable part. But early and regular hours are 



jEtat. 53. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



449 



necessary for my constitution, which is not strong, 
has always been accustomed to this, and has been 
shaken ; and though I have neither the habits 
nor the feelings of a valetudinarian, some man- 
agement is required to keep me as well as I am, 
and the loss of sleep is what I could not bear. 
Separate from my family I must have been dur- 
ing the session : this would have interfered with 
the education of my little boy, would have been 
some loss to my daughters, and would have still 
more depressed the spirits of my wife, which are 
constitutionally low, and have received shocks 
from which I fear there is little hope of their re- 
covering. The motives, therefore, must be very 
strong which could overpower these considera- 
tions : in these times I know of no public duties 
which could be strong enough; nor is there any 
thing on the score of private advantage which 
should lead me to change the whole system of 
my life. It is very possible that, being in Par- 
liament, I might have made my way into some 
minor office, which would have given me a good 
income : this is even likely, because I have friends 
who would have helped me when they saw me 
in a situation where I could help myself, and 
because my capability and fitness for such busi- 
ness might have been acknowledged. But in 
that case no leisure would have been left for my 
own pursuits, and all hope must have been given 
up of completing those projects, upon which and 
in preparing for which the greater part of my 
life has been employed. Thus I should have 
done worse than buried my talent ; I should have 
thrown it away. 

" That my way of life has been directed by 
a merciful Providence, I feel and verily believe. 
I have been saved from all ill consequences of 
error and temerity, and by a perilous course 
have been led into paths of pleasantness and 
peace — a sufficient indication that I ought to 
remain in them. Throughout this whole busi- 
ness I have never felt any temptation to depart 
from this conviction. I may be wrong in many 
things, but not in the quiet confidence with which 
I know that I am in my proper place. Invent 
portum ; spes et fortuna valete ; the only change 
to which I look forward is a possible migration 
to the south when my lease expires, if I should 
live so long. But there are so many obstacles 
in the way of this, that I may probably be spar- 
ed from what to me would be a very painful and 
unwilling removal. 

" This is an egotistic letter. I felt, however, 
that some such exposition was due to you, lest I 
should seem either to have acted unreasonably or 
to feel unthankfully. But be assured, in this whole 
odd episode of my life, there is nothing which I 
shall remember with more pleasure than the very 
kind and friendly part which you have taken in it. 
" Believe me, dear Sir Robert, 

" Yours very truly, R. S. 

" I must not forget that I have a favor to ask. 
An old friend, for whom I have a very high and 
Well-founded regard, is to be balloted for at the 
Athenaeum on the 9th of February. Kenyon is 
his name. Upon the list of members I see the 
Ff 



names of Mr. Dcaltry and Mr. H. ?. Thornton. 
Will you say to them that I should be greatly 
obliged by their votes on this occasion, and that 
they could not be bestowed upon a man better 
qualified in all respects for the admission which 
he is seeking ?" 

To the Rev. James White. 

"Keswick, Dec. 14, 1826. 
" My dear James, 

" You need not be assured that I am very 
glad accident should have enabled me to put you 
in the way of being usefully, though arduously 
employed,* and in a station where I hope you 
may make your own way to something better. 
To be sure nothing can be less agreeable than 
the description which you give both of your fold 
and your flock ; the only set-off against this is 
the reflection that, the worse the people are, the 
more good you may do them. When once it is 
known that you perform the service impressive- 
ly, like a man whose heart is in his work, you 
will not preach to empty benches. 

" If I preached to a wealthy congregation, my 
general aim would be to awaken them from that 
state of religious torpor which prosperity in- 
duces. I should, therefore, dwell upon the re- 
sponsibility which is attached to the good things 
of this world ; upon sins of omission, and the 
straitness of the gate. But to a congregation 
like yours, my general strain would be consola- 
tory ; forgiveness and mercy would be my favor- 
ite theme. In the former case it is necessary to 
rouse, if not to alarm ; in the latter, to encour- 
age and invite. In the former, to dwell upon the 
difficulty of attaining to salvation ; in the latter, 
upon its easy terms, and the relief which it of- 
fers to those who are heavy laden. 

" Concerning schools, no persorl can be more 
unfitted for advising you on that business (or, in- 
deed, on any other) than I am. But of this I am 
sure, that, in such a parish as yours, an infant 
school is the most useful and necessary estab- 
lishment that could be formed. The people of 
this country are not yet aware of the conse- 
quence of youthful depravity ; how widely it ex- 
tends, and how early it begins. In any attempts 
of this kind, you will have the mothers with you ; 
and, indeed, at all attempts at moral reforma- 
tion, the women are so immediately interested, 
that their good will is sure to attend upon any 
endeavors at bettering the condition of their chil- 
dren, or preserving their sons, brothers, husbands, 
and fathers from vice. Do not, however, aim at 
too much, and thereby exhaust yourself, even if 
you do not otherwise defeat your own purpose. 
Fill your church, and establish, as soon as you 
can, an infant school ; and as you feel what more 
is wanted, you will discover by what means to 
bring it about. 

" In your case, I would never touch upon con- 
troversial subjects, especially those which relate 
to Popery. The character of being a charita- 



* Mr. James White had been appointed to the incum- 
bency of Pt. George's, Manchester, through my father's 
recommendation. 



450 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 53. 



ble, earnest, and pious preacher will make its 
way among some of the Irish Romanists, and 
lead them further than they are aware of toward 
a perception of the difference between the relig- 
ion of the Gospel and the superstitions by which 
they are enthralled. But were you to touch 
upon the points of difference, it would serve only 
to put their priests upon the alert, and make 
them watch over their flock more strictly. I 
would pursue a different course at Dublin, be- 
cause the two parties are in hostile array there, 
and the weapons of controversy must be used. 

" But your task seems to me, in this respect, 
a pleasanter one. If I judge rightly of the cir- 
cumstances in which you are placed, your call 
is to proclaim good tidings, and preach the 
promises of the Gospel. Those who are in mis- 
ery — I had almost said, in the vices to which 
misery too often leads — have little need of its 
threats. 

" But enough of this. I have no acquaint- 
ance in Manchester to whom I can introduce 
you ; but, going there in what may be called a 
public character, you will soon find acquaint- 
ance, and I have no doubt friends. There is this 
advantage in large cities (and a great one it is), 
that you are sure of finding some persons there 
with whom it is both pleasant and profitable to 
associate. 

" Believe me, my dear James, 

" Always yours, with sincere regard, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 24, 1826. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I will undertake the arrangement of the Gar- 
rick Papers very willingly for the lucre of gain, 
and not for the love of the subject ; for the sake 
of being well paid, and not for the sake of being 
well talked of. But I will do it for lucre, for 
goodly remuneration, and 'most sweet guerdon,' 
which you know is better. 

" It will take me more time to do this than it 
would any other person, for this simple reason 
— that I should take more pains about it ; not in 
the composition, but in making myself thorough- 
ly acquainted with all the literary points on which 
it would be necessary to touch. On the other 
hand, my general acquaintance with English lit- 
erature is such, that there is no point upon which 
I have not some stock of knowledge at command. 
Less than a thousand guineas the booksellers 
ought not to think of offering, nor I of taking 5 
and if there be a chance of getting more, let it 
be intimated that I rate my name and services 
as they ought to be rated. There's a magnan- 
imous sentence ! And with that sentence I leave 
the subject to work in the proper quarter, and 
to sleep with me till I hear of it again. Observe 
that I suppose the Life to be included in the two 
volumes, not to form one by itself. 

" Tuesday, 26th. 
: If Colburne could see my table at this time, 
he would think my studies were not the most ap- 



propriate for the task which he wishes me to un- 
dertake. Here is a volume of Jackson's Works 
(folio) — in my judgment the most valuable of all 
our English divines ; there is a Portuguese poem, 
in twenty books, upon the Virgin Mary. Here 
is the English translation of Father Paul's His- 
tory of the Council of Trent. Here is a Latin 
folio upon the Divi Tutelares of Popish Christen- 
dom, by the Jesuit Macedo, who had so much to 
do with Queen Christina's conversion. Here is 
a volume of Venema's Hist. Eccl. Institutiones. 
Here is the Report upon Emigration, and there 
is a thick, dumpy, and almost cubical small 
quarto, containing some 1400 closely-printed 
pages in Latin — De Miraculis Mortuorum, by 
an old German physician, who was moriturus 
himself when he composed the work. Miracula 
here are to be understood in the sense of phe- 
nomena. The book is exceedingly curious, and 
would furnish the Master of the Rolls with much 
matter both of amusement and cogitation, if it 
should ever fall in his way. I will therefore add 
that the author's name is Garmannus, and the 
date of the book 1709. Here is a volume of the 
Acta Sanctorum on another table, and one of 
Baronius on the floor. 

" From this apparatus you will conclude that 
I have a second volume of Vindici3e in hand. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Jan. 24, 1827. 
" My dear H. T., 

" * * * You do not tell me that 
you are better, which is what I most wish to 
hear. If a wish could bring you and your father 
here, you should see these mountains as they are 
now, in the full glory of snow, and clouds, and 
sunshine. 

"I have a melancholy letter from Leyden. 
Mrs. Bilderdijk has been for fifteen weeks con- 
fined to her chamber, and mostly to her bed, and 
it is not intimated that she is recovering. B. 
himself speaks of his own health and faculties as 
sensibly impairing day by day. The only hope- 
ful sign is the warmth and animation with which 
he writes. I wish I could go to see him this 
year; but that is not possible, and therefore I 
can hardly hope to meet him again in this world. 
I am now reading his fragment of the Deluge, 
and shall go through the rest of his works, in full 
intention of making them known, sooner or later, 
and, with your help, to the English readers. 

"My old acquaintance (those, I mean, who 
were elders when I was a young map) are drop- 
ping on all sides. One very remarkable one is 
just gone to his rest after a pilgrimage of four- 
score years. Edward Williams, the Welsh bard, 
whom, under his Welsh name of Iolo,* some 
lines in Madoc were intended to describe and 



" There went with me 
Iolo, old Iolo, he who knows 
The virtues of all herbs of mount or vale, 
Or greenwood shade, or quiet brooklet's bed ; 
Whatever lore of science or of song 
Sages and bards of old have handed down." 

Madoc in Wales, viii. 



/Ex at. 53. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



451 



gratify- He was the most eccentric man I ever 
knew, in whose eccentricity there was no affec- 
tation, and in whose conduct there was nothing 
morally wrong. Poor fellow ! with a wild head 
and a warm heart, he had the simplicity of a 
child and the tenderness of a woman, and more 
knowledge of the traditions and antiquities of his 
own country than it is to be feared will ever be 
possessed by any one after him. I could tell you 
some odd anecdotes of him which ought not to 
be lost. 

"God bless you! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

« Keswick, Jan. 31, 1827. 
" My dear H. T., 

"I inclose to you a letter of thanks, which 
you will have the goodness to let your man leave 
at the United Service Club. Captain Mangles 
was thrown in my way here by mere chance 
last summer as the stage-coach companion of 
, a Quaker of a new description from Phila- 
delphia, who brought letters to me. The Quak- 
er was ambitious of being what Shakspeare 
tells us the Prince of Darkness is ; so he wore 
black, and drank healths, and was superfine in 
his manners, and had with him the greatest cu- 
riosity of its kind that I have ever seen — a Quak- 
er album, in which the spirit had moved all his 
Quaker acquaintance to bestow the highest eu- 
logiums upon the happy owner, and to pray for 
his spiritual welfare. But the gem of the book 
was a composition by his royal highness the Duke 
of Sussex. 

" The Quaker did not know the name of his 
traveling companion, but from his account I 
knew who he must be, and accordingly made the 
Quaker introduce him here. And the end of 
this is, that Captain Mangles has sent me a copy 
of his travels, which were printed for private 
distribution, and of which he could not lay his 
hands on a copy till now. * * # # 

" I am now going to the Emigration paper, 
and I have taken up Oliver Newman, where I 
shall be in medias res ; a little way further, and 
then it will become an object to complete it. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 21, 1827. 
11 1 know not how I have lost sight of you so 
long, nor whether this may find you at Florence, 
nor what may have befallen you in the interval 
since we have communicated. No such afflic- 
tion, I hope, as has befallen me, in the loss of 
my youngest daughter. Seven months have 
elapsed since we suffered this bereavement. She 
was the flower of my family — and a lovelier 
flower this earth never produced. It was long 
before I could recover heart for any thing, and 
sometimes I fear that my spirits will never again 
be what they have been. My wife's, I have but 
too much cause to apprehend, have received a 
' shock from which they will not recover. Yet we 
have much left for which to be thankful ; and, 
above all, I am thankful for that settled and 



quiet faith which makes me look on to the end 
of my journey as a point of hope. 

" My friend Kenyon talks of going to Italy 
this year, and if he goes, I shall get him to carry 
my last book. 

"Last summer, like the one preceding, I trav- 
eled for my health. On the first occasion I came 
back with erysipelas (the effect of an accident), 
which undid the good that had been done ; and 
the shock which awaited my return the second 
time in like manner counteracted the benefit I 
had found. 

" Holland is to me a very interesting country. 
Except Amsterdam, which outstinks Lisbon, I 
like every thing in it. There is a greater ap- 
pearance of domestic comfort and decent wealth, 
and less appearance of vice, poverty, and wretch- 
edness, than in any other part of Europe that" I 
have seen, and I verily believe than in any other 
part of the world. In prospect there is enough 
to sadden one, for the bright days of Holland are 
gone by, and there seems no likelihood — scarce- 
ly, indeed, a possibility — that they ever should 
return. Decay is felt there, but it is not appar- 
ent, and you must inquire and look for it before 
you perceive that it is going on. But the Dutch 
merchants are not like the English, who so gen- 
erally live up to the full measure of their pros- 
perity. In their best times they have been fru- 
gal ; and they are veiy generally, at this time, 
living upon the interest of old capital, great part 
of which is vested in the English funds. 

" You will not wonder when you call to mind 
in how many things the two nations resemble 
each other, that Dutch poetry should in its char- 
acter of thought and feeling resemble English, 
much more than the English resembles that of 
any other nation, ancient or modern. Their 
poets have been as numerous, in proportion to 
the country, as their painters, and not a few of 
them as skillful in their art. One has two things 
to get over in the language, its ugliness and its 
difficulty : I wish I could overcome the latter as 
well as I have got over the first. 

"While I am writing the post has brought 
news that Lord Liverpool has had an apoplectic 
stroke, which is likely to be fatal, but which cer- 
tainly incapacitates him from ever taking any 
further part in public affairs. How often do I 
wish that you were in England. The curious 
state of things in this country can hardly be un- 
derstood, even by an Englishman, at a distance ; 
the strange complexity and contrariety of inter- 
ests, the strange coalitions, the ferment of opin- 
ions, and the causes which are at work to bring 
about greater changes in the constitution of so- 
ciety than even the last half century has pro- 
duced. No guess can as yet be formed as to the 
effect that this accident will produce upon the 
administration. Canning's health is broken, and, 
in my judgment, it would be fortunate for his 
reputation if this cause should prevent him from 
taking possession of the premiership. Every one 
had confidence in Lord Liverpool ; there are none 
who will have confidence in him ; with all his 
brilliancy of talent, with all his personal good 



452 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 53 



qualities (and they are such that he is liked 
wherever he is known), he must ever be dis- 
trusted as a statesman. New scenes are open- 
ing upon us, new men will come forward, and 
some of the old ones be seen in new characters ; 
but for statesmen, such as they are and long have 
been in England, there will always be an abund- 
ant supply. What can be expected as long as 
St. Pitt and St. Fox have their red letter days in 
the political calendar? 

"I would give a great deal to enjoy three 
such days as those which I passed at Como now 
ten years ago. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

« Keswick, April 12, 1827. 
" My dear H. T., 

" If the Utilitarians would reason and write 
like you, they would no longer deserve to be 
called Futilitarians. But the metapoliticians 
have dealt with their branch of policy as the 
metaphysicians have with their branch of phi- 
losophy — they have muddied and mystified it. 

"It is not the habit of my mind to despise nor 
to undervalue the sort of knowledge which I do 
not possess, but I know enough of political econ- 
omy to have perceived in the father of the Brit- 
ish school (Adam Smith) that the wealth of na- 
tions is every thing in that school, and the mo- 
rality and happiness of nations nothing ; and in 
the other writers which have fallen in my way, 
I have found their knowledge so little, and their 
presumption so great, as to excite in me a great- 
er degree of contempt than I usually feel for any 
thing in the shape of a book. 

" To all that you say in its general import I 
agree ; but when you tell me that a tax of <£l 000 
per week laid upon capitalists would have the 
sure effect of throwing 1000 weekly laborers out 
of employ, it appears to me that you suppose a 
connection between cause and effect, as certain 
as those in chemical and mechanical combina- 
tions, and overlook the infinite number of modi- 
fying and disturbing circumstances which often 
in chemical, and more often in political experi- 
ments, occasion some wholly unexpected result. 

"I shall very soon methodize some of my 
views, tending to this proposition, that the prime 
object of our policy should be to provide for the 
well-being and employment of the people. 
Whatever lessens wages and throws men out of 
employ is so far an evil. There may be evil 
that leads to good, and good that leads to evil, 
and both may be instanced in the effects of ma- 
chinery. If you like to see my speculations as 
they go through the press, let Murray direct the 
proofs of my Colloquies to you, and I will per- 
pend any comments that you may make upon 
their, contents. * * # * * 
aid *i<^ a Y#,been asked to write for the Foreign 
QfiSfHfiift #ft4 replied, as willingly as for John 
Murray,-, # tj^^^me price. An attempt was 
then^fr^^.j^jwl^e^^me into giving them an 
"SMfo fe-jMHhfiPfti 1 98Hfeg r at ten guineas a 
sheet.; pr, if ttyaj; jaije^the.n Jhey would screw 



up their price to d£50 for the article. I answer 
ed, not in the style of Jupiter Tonans, but mort 
meo, that I wrote such things for lucre, and foi 
nothing else, and that, if they had screwed their 
price to the sticking point, I certainly should 
not lower mine to meet it. * * This 
brought an apology for tradesman-like dealing, 
and a hope that I would be pleased to accept 
the c^lOO. To which I condescended, saying 
that the manner of dealing belonging to the race 
was to be looked upon in the individuals as a 
sort of original sin. 

" The Royal Society of Literature have voted 
me a gold medal, and asked me to come and 
receive it. I thank them for the medal, but de- 
cline the journey. * * * * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 23, 1827. 
" My dear H. T., 

No inference concerning Ireland can be drawn 
from the state of Canada, where we have con- 
tinued the system which we found there, and 
where I am inclined to think there is a better 
condition of society than is likely to be found in 
the Upper Province. Look at the evidence con- 
cerning Maynooth College, and you will see that 
it has produced and could produce nothing but 
evil. 

" In Scotland the general condition of the 
clergy is above the standard in England. In 
villages and remote places, indeed, the manse is 
generally the best house, perhaps the only good 
one, and appears like a mansion in comparison 
with the dwellings about it. Still the Kirk has 
been injured by spoliation, and the manner in 
which Episcopacy was betrayed there at the 
Revolution is one of the stains upon that portion 
of our history. It would have been better for 
the Scotch if a proportion of their clergy had 
been drawn from the higher ranks. There 
would have been less bigotry in the Kirk, and 
more learning, of which there has been a lack. 
I doubt whether the Kirk has produced half a 
dozen works worthy of preservation. Sure I am 
that I could name a score of English divines, any 
one of whose writings would weigh down in 
sterling worth all that has ever come from the 
Kirk of Scotland since Episcopacy was abolish- 
ed, for Leighton was of their Episcopal Church. 

" The prizes of our Church draw into it unfit 
men ; yet it is a small part of the prizes which 
falls to their share ; and I think that, in propor- 
tion, more unworthy clergy will be found in the 
middle and lower than in the higher ranks of the 
Church. The evil (an evil certainly there is) is 
corrigible by public opinion. You will see that 
I have touched upon it. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 23, 1827. 
" My dear R., 
" Among all the ups and downs whic 1 * you 



jEtat. 53. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



453 



have witnessed in this country in the course of 
five-and-twenty years, you have never, I think, 
seen things more in what lawyers call hotch- 
potch than they are at present. Who is right 
and who wrong I have little means of knowing, 
and as little curiosity to know. But I think 
Canning an unsafe minister, and doubt whether 
any administration which he can form can stand, 
with such strong interests and strong feelings as 
will be arrayed against it. 

" The prospect is discouraging enough both 
at home and abroad. I can not but apprehend 
that we have got ourselves into a situation in 
Portugal from which it will not be easy to with- 
draw without some loss of reputation. Every 
one who knows the Portuguese must know that 
they are neither in a humor nor in a state to re- 
ceive a new Constitution ; and if Don Miguel 
likes a journey to Madrid better than a voyage 
to Brazil, we shall find ourselves fooled by 
France, laughed at by Spain, and on no desira- 
ble terms with Portugal. 

" Then at home we have to contend with the 
effects of the liberal system in trade, with the 
march of intellect, and the consequences of the 
manufacturing system. The new ministiy will 
not sleep upon roses. Canning, I think, will 
not last long, whether he maintains his ascend- 
ency or not. At the time of Lord Londonder- 
ry's death, his friends, I know, thought that his 
health would not stand the wear and tear of 
public business, if it should be of a harassing 
kind ; and, therefore, they rather wished he had 
gone to India at that time. 

u I mean to take my family to Harrogate 
about the latter end of next month for three or 
four weeks. The place is ugly ; but there are 
interesting objects to be seen, and if my woman- 
kind are the better for the waters and the ex- 
cursion, I shall be content to drink stinking water 
instead of the ordinary wine on the other side of 
the Channel. ####*# 

11 God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 5, 1827. 
" My dear Friend, 
" * * * * Machiavelli has 
shown you why Mitford (had there been no 
French Revolution) would have sided with the 
tyrants instead of the democracies of Greece in 
his history. Read the history of any despotism, 
and your feelings become republican ; read that 
of any republic, and you become monarchical. 
The happiest age of the world, as far as its hap- 
piness depends upon earthly governments, was 
that of the Antonines, and the reign of Augus- 
tus before it ; and we all know to what these 
reigns led, not accidentally, but by the sure ef- 
fects of such a system. As far as relates to 
government and religion, this country is the most 
favored under heaven ; not only above all others 
at this time, but above all others of any time. 
But our prosperity was hardly won, and is not 
two centuries old. The Venetian was the most 
durible of European governments, and an in- 



fernal one it was, though it was the object of ad- 
miration to the Liberals of the Great Rebellion. 
" The great works of the Egyptians, Greeks, 
Romans, and Spanish Moors were not erected in 
barbarous ages, but in times of very high civil- 
ization. Taxation, probably, was not far short 
of its present amount ; the Moors had a tenth of 
all produce and rents, and wars cost the govern- 
ment nothing, so that there was revenue to spare. 
God bless you ! 

"Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, May 5, 1827. 
" My dear Neville, 

" I do not see how these ministerial changes 
can affect my brother Tom's future prospects. 

* * * My means have always been 
precarious. My books are less productive than 
they were ten years ago ; very materially so, as 
Longman could tell } r ou. Their novelty is gone 
by, and, with all the reputation which I have 
fairly won, I have never been a fashionable, still 
less a popular author. At the end of the first 
twelve month's sale my profits upon the Tale of 
Paraguay fell short of eighty pounds. I have, 
God be thanked, been able to make a moderate 
provision for my family, but not by any thing 
that I have laid by ; solely by my life insurance, 
my books, copy-rights, and papers. In other re- 
spects I am in a worse situation than I was ten 
or fifteen years ago. My poems had then a 
much greater sale, and I stood upon better 
ground in the Quarterly Review. * # 

* * * * I am writing a paper 
at present for the first number of a Foreign 
Quarterly ; possibly it is the last that I ma}- ever 
write for a review. There was an engagement 
which might have enabled me at once to have 
come to this resolution, but the last year's fail- 
ure compelled the publisher to recede from it. 
I do not, however, expect any difficulty in re- 
newing it elsewhere, and have no fear that that 
Providence which has hitherto made the labor of 
the day sufficient for its support, will withdraw 
from me its continued blessing. # * # 
I have always done for my brother Tom all I 
could, and not seldom to my own embarrassment 
in so doing. * # ' # 

" The question about National Education you 
will see discussed in my Colloquies, when they 
are completed. Here is the gist of the ques- 
tion. The human mind is like the earth, which 
never lies idle. You have a piece of garden 
ground. Neglect it, and it will be covered with 
weeds, useless to yourself and noxious to your 
neighbors. To lay it out in flowers and shrub- 
bery is what you do not want. Cultivate it, 
then, for common fruits and culinary plants. So 
with poor children. Why should they be made 
worse servants, worse laborers, worse mechanics, 
for being taught their Bible, their Christian du- 
ties, and the elements of useful knowledge ? I 
am no friend of the London University, nor to 
Mechanics' Institutes. There is a purpose in ail 



454 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 53. 



these things of excluding religion, and preparing 
the way for the overthrow of the Church. But 
God will confound their devices; and my prin- 
ciple is, that where a religious foundation is laid, 
the more education the better. Will you have 
the lower class Christians or brutes ? * # 
" God bless you, my dear friend ! 

"Yours affectionately, R. S." 

The great question concerning National Ed- 
ucation has made rapid strides since these letters 
were written ; and it is more than ever neces- 
sary that all who value the Christian character 
of the nation should strenuously exert themselves, 
both in promoting religious education and in pre- 
venting an irreligious one. There are several 
highly interesting letters in the second volume 
of Dr. Arnold's Life, showing that he laid down 
principles almost identically the same as that 
•itated here, and resigned his fellowship of the 
London University because its constitution " did 
not satisfy the_ great principle that Christianity 
should be the base of all public education in the 
country." 

Dr. Arnold's mode of working out this theory 
would have been different to that which my fa- 
ther would have advocated ; but it is very worthy 
of remark, that even he, whose views of " Church 
principles" were so very peculiar, and so far re- 
moved from those commonly held by " Church- 
men," acknowledged and insisted upon it. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

visit to harrogate album verses lord 

colchester constitutional bashfulness 

the prospect of another life the only 

solid foundation for happiness proposes 

to collect his political essays mr. can- 
ning home politics projected life of 

wolfe ground of his opinions mr. may 

mr. cottle mr. king intercourse 

with mr. wordsworth's family — the quar- 
terly REVIEW DESIRABLENESS OF PUTTING 

AN END TO IMPRISONMENT FOR SMALL DEBTS 
DISAGREEABLE DUTIES REQUIRED FROM PUB- 
LIC OFFICERS ANCIENT STATUTES UNDER- 
TAKES TO EDIT THE VERSES OF AN OLD SERV- 
ANT BISHOP HEBER DIFFICULTIES OF A 

REMOVAL THE PENINSULAR WAR ENGAGES 

TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE KEEPSAKE URGES 

MR. BEDFORD TO VISIT KESWICK GOES TO 

LONDON SITS TO SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE AND 

SIR F. CHANTREY TRANSLATION OF DAVILA 

NOT LIKELY TO SUCCEED HIS UNCLe's DEATH 

choice of a few standard english works 

— his son's studies — Jackson's sermons — 

life of nelson declining sale of his 

works visit from lieut. mawe interest 

in mr. may's affairs remarks on the an- 
nuals new theory of the weather 

literary employments intended visit to 

THE ISLE OF MAN. 1827-1828. 

My father had now for some years found that 



a summer journey was absolutely neoessary for 
his health, especially for the purpose of warding 
off, or at least breaking the violence of, the " hay 
asthma;" a complaint which, by its regular pe- 
riodical visitations, seemed to have rooted itself 
in his system, and threatened to undermine his 
constitution. 

His greatest delight and most complete relax- 
ation was, as we have seen, a foreign excursion ; 
but, finding that several of his household requir- 
ed some change of air, he determined to take 
them to Harrogate, where he had the additional 
inducement of being joined by Mr. Wordsworth 
and some of his family. 

From thence he writes in somewhat low spirits 
respecting a distressing infirmity which had now 
afflicted him for many years, and latterly had 
rendered all walking exercise extremely painful, 
and from which he had not at that time any 
hopes of being relieved. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Harrogate, June 10, 1827. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
'•## ### # * 

At my age there can be no expectation that time 
will remove any bodily infirmity. The prob- 
ability is, that I shall, ere long, be totally unable 
to walk ; and to look for any chance of good for- 
tune that would set me upon wheels, would be 
something like looking for a miracle. I am 
thankful, therefore, that my disposition and sed- 
entary habits will render the confinement which 
appears to await me a less evil than it would be 
to most other persons. The latter years of our 
earthly existence can be but few at the most, 
and evil at the best ; but he who is grateful for 
the past, and has his hopes in futurity, may very 
well be patient under any present privations, and 
any afflictions of which the end is in view. 

" There is enough in this neighborhood to re- 
pay me for a short tarriance here, even with the 
discomforts which, especially in my case, are felt 
always in an absence from home. As yet I have 
only seen William Herbert's garden, where there 
is a splendid display of exotics ; the grounds at 
Plumpton, where the rocks very much resemble 
the scenery of Fontainebleau ; the cave where 
Eugene Aram buried the body of Daniel Clarke : 
the hermitage carved in the rock at Knares- 
borough; and the dropping well, which, in my 
childhood, I longed to see, as one of the wonders 
of England. Knaresborough is very finely situ- 
ated, and I should spend some of my mornings in 
exploring all the points of view about it if I were 
able to move about with ease. I wish you were 
here ; the place itself is pleasanter than I had 
expected to find it. We are on a common, with 
a fine, dry, elastic air ; so different from that of 
Keswick, that the difference is perceptible in 
breathing it, and a wide horizon, which in its 
evening skies affords something to compensate 
for the scenery we have left. The air would, I 
verily believe, give you new life, and among the 
variety of springs there is choice of all kinds for 
you. # # # % # # 



Mtat. 53. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



455 



"So much for Harrogate. Now for a word 
or two concerning my own pursuits. You will 
or may, if you please, see a paper of mine upon 
the Moorish History of Spain in the first number 
of the Foreign Quarterly, when it is published. 
The Foreign Quarterly pays me £100 for my 
paper, but I do not calculate upon doing any 
thing more for it. There are hardly readers 
enough who care for foreign literature to support 
a journal exclusively devoted to it, certainly not 
enough to make it a very lucrative speculation ; 
and unless it were so, it could not afford to pay 
me as I am accustomed to be paid. 

" A lady here, whom we never saw, nor ever 
before heard of, sent her album for Wordsworth 
and myself to write in, with no other prelimina- 
ries than desiring the physician here, Dr. Jaques, 
to ask leave for her ! When the book came, it 
proved to be full of pious effusions from all the 
most noted Calvinist preachers and missionaries. 
As some of these worthies had written in it texts 
in Hebrew, Chinese, and Arabic. I wrote in 
Greek, ' If we say that we have no sin,' &c, 
and I did not write in it these lines, which the 
tempting occasion suggested: 

" What ? will-we, nill-we, are we thrust 
Among the Calvinistics — 
The covenanted sons of schism, 

Rebellion's pugilistics. 
Needs must we then ourselves array 

Against these 6tate tormentors ; 
Hurrah for Church and King, we say, 
And down with the Dissenters. 

" Think how it would have astonished the fair 
owner to have opened her album, and found these 
verses in it, signed by R. S. and W. W. 

"It will be charity to write to me while I am 
here, where, for want of books, I spell the news- 
paper. God bless you! It. S." 

To John Hickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 30, 1827. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" I am out of humor with myself respecting 
Lord Colchester,* as if from shyness on my part 
there had been a want of due attention to him. 
He called on his arrival to thank me for having 
made all arrangements for his movement in this 
neighborhood, and came just as I had a party 
assembling for dinner ; and having that party, I 
did not, of course, ask him for the evening, which 
otherwise I should have done. The next day I 
went to his inn a little after seven in the even- 
Jig, meaning, if he had not. been wearied with 
the round which he had taken, to have asked 
him to drink tea in a pleasanter room than the 
inn affords. But he proved to be at dinner, for 
which reason I merely left my card ; and then, 
because his rank stood in the way, and made me 
fearful of appearing to press myself upon him, I 
did not write a note to invite him up, which I 
should have done had he been Mr. Abbott. The 
next day brought me a very obliging note from 
him, after his departure. He has had from us 
good directions and commissariat services, but 

* Mr. Rickman had written to tell him that Lord Col- 
chester was going to the Lakes, and intended calling upon 
him, and requesting him to give him some information as 
to the best mode of seeing the country. 



not that personal attention which I wished to 
have paid him. 

" In this way, through a constitutional bash- 
fulness, which the publicity of authorship has 
not overcome, and through the sort of left-hand- 
ed management (I do not mean sinister) which 
that bashfulness occasions, I have repeatedly ap- 
peared neglectful of others', and have really 
been so of my own interests. Upon the score 
of such neglect, no man living has more cause 
for reproach than I have ; but it passes off with 
only a transitory sense of inward shame, occur 
ring more or less painfully when occasion calls 
to mind some particular sin of omission. 

"I believe, my dear R., that most men, by 
the time they have reached our age, are ready, 
whatever their pursuits may have been, to agree 
with Solomon, that they end in vanity. If they 
are not mere clods, muck-worms, they come to 
this conclusion — wealth, reputation, power, are 
alike unsatisfactory when they are attained, alike 
insufficient to content the heart of man, which is 
ever discontented till it has found its rest. This 
it finds in the prospect of immortality, in the 
anticipation of a state where there shall be no 
change, except such as is implied in perpetual 
progression. When we have learned to look 
forward with that hope, then we look back upon 
the past without regret, and are able to bear the 
present, however heavy and painful sometimes 
may be its pressure. There is no other support 
for a broken spirit — no other balm for a wound- 
ed heart. 

" You have overworked yourself, which I have 
ever been afraid of doing. The wonder is that 
you have not suffered more severely and irreme- 
diably ; and that, while so working, you should 
have yet been able to lay in that knowledge of 
other kinds which renders you (as I have found 
you during well-nigh thirty years) the most in- 
structive of all companions. Ant-like, you have 
toiled during the summer, and have stored your 
nest : my summer work leaves me as little pre- 
pared for winter as the grasshopper : but this is 
rather my fortune than my fault, and therefore 
no matter of self-reproach. 

" What you have to do is to extricate your- 
self from all unnecessary and ungrateful busi- 
ness, and give the time which you may thus gain 
to more healthful and genial pursuits — books, to 
which inclination would lead you, and, above all, 
traveling. I wish you could have gone with 
Henry Taylor and his lather — a man whom you 
would especially like ; still more do I wish you 
would come here and take a course of mount- 
aineering — upon which I should very gladly 
enter, and which would be to my bodily benefit. 
And then we might talk at leisure and at will 
over the things of this world and the next. 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, August 15, 1827. 
"My dear Rickman, 
" I am about to reprint in a separate form 






456 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 54. 



such of my stray papers as are worth collecting 
from the Quarterly Review, &c, beginning with 
two volumes of Essays, Moral and Political. 
For this I have the double motive of hoping to 
gain something by the publication,* and wishing 
to leave them in a corrected state. Shall I print 
with them your remarks upon the economical 
reformers in the Edinburgh Annual Register of 
1810, and your paper upon the Poor Laws? 
Certainly not if you have any intention of col- 
lecting your own papers, which I wish you 
would do. But if you have no such intention, or 
contemplate it at an indefinite distance, then it 
would be well that so much good matter should 
be placed where it would be in the way of be- 
ing read ; and there I should like it to be as 
some testimony and memorial of an intimacy 
which has now for thirty years contributed 
much to my happiness, and, in no slight degree, 
to my intellectual progress. In this case I will 
take care to notice that the credit of these pa- 
pers is not due to me, either specifying whose 
they are, or leaving that unexplained, as you 
may like best. 

" Your foresight concerning poor Mr. Canning 
has been sadly realized. Sony I am for him, as 
every one must be who had any knowledge of 
the better part of his character. But I know 
that his death is not to be regretted, either for 
his own sake or that of the country, for he had 
filled his pillow with thorns, and could never 
again have laid down his head in peace. I do 
not disturb mine with speculating what changes 
may or may not follow : nor, in truth, with any 
anxieties about them. Perhaps it may be de- 
sirable that the Whigs should be allowed rope 
enough, and left to plunge deeper and deeper in 
the slough of their Irish difficulties. They can 
never satisfy the Macs and the great O's with- 
out conceding every thing which those gentle- 
men please to demand, and that can not be done 
without bringing on a civil w T ar. 

" I am about to write a Life of General 
Wolfe, t which will be prefixed to his letters. 
The letters will disappoint every one. Can you 
tell me or direct me to any thing that may as- 
sist me in it ? There is the taking of Loisbourg, 
and the campaign in which he fell. The rest 
must be made up by showing the miserable state 
of the army ; his merits as a disciplinarian, be- 
ing in those days very great ; my memorabilia 
concerning Canada, abundance of which are 
marked in books which I read long since, and 
by whatever other garnish I can recollect. My 
pay for the task- work is to be 300 guineas. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Sept. 13, 1327. 
11 My dear H. T., 
" I am sorry to hear that cares have been 



* This hope was not realized; they never paid their 
expenses ! 

t This intention wa-' never carried into effect, it being 
found impossible to pi 'cure sufficient materials. 



knocking at your door ; they must have gone out 
of their way, methinks, to call there. I thought 
that you had no thorns either in your sides oi 
your pillow. Tidings after an absence of a few 
weeks afford, indeed, at all times, matter for un- 
easy apprehension ; and if you and I had this to 
learn, the two journeys which we have taken 
together would have taught it us. 

" I found a great want of you (as they say in 
this country) during your absence. One likes to 
have one's friends in a local habitation, where at 
any time they may be found ; to be out of reach 
is too like being out of the world. It often came 
into my thoughts that, if H. T. were in London, 
I should have written to him upon such and such 
occasions, and quite as often that I should have 
had some brief notices of the strange turns of the 
wheel. 

"You distrust opinions, you tell me, when you 
perceive a strong tenor of feeling in the writer 
who maintains them. The distrust is reasona- 
ble, and is especially to be borne in mind in 
reading history. My opinions are (thank God !) 
connected with strong feelings concerning them, 
but not such as can either disturb my temper or 
cloud my discernment, much less pervert what 
I will venture to call the natural equity of my 
mind. I proceed upon these postulates : 1 . That 
revealed religion is true ; 2. That the connec- 
tion between Church and State is necessary; 3. 
That the Church of England is the best eccle- 
siastical establishment which exists at present, or 
has yet existed ; 4. That both Church and State 
require great amendments ; 5. That both are in 
great danger ; and, 6. That a revolution would 
destroy the happiness of one generation, and 
leave things at last worse than it found them. 

" If our institutions are worth preserving, we 
can not be attached to them too strongly, re- 
membering always that the only way to preserve 
them is by keeping them in good repair. The 
two duties upon which I insist are those of con- 
servation and improvement. We must improve 
our institutions if we would preserve them ; but 
if any go to work upon the foundations, down 
must come the building. 

" How is it possible to reflect upon the his- 
tory of former times without inquiring what have 
been the good and evil consequences of the 
course which things have taken at the age which 
you are considering ? It is, surely, no useless 
speculation to inquire whether good results 
which have been dearly purchased might not 
have been obtained at less cost. If I were to 
build a house, I should consult my neighbor, 
who might tell me how I might go to work 
more advantageously than he had done. What 
might have been is a profitable subject for specu- 
lation, because it may be found useful for what 
yet may be. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, Sept. 15, 1827. 
" My dear Friend, 
" * * * I can very well enter 



AiTAT. 54. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



457 



into the melancholy part of your feelings upon 
this transplantation to a strange city, though that 
city is to me the place in the world, as far as 
mere place can go, where I should feel myself 
most at home. Where is your bank, and where 
your dwelling-house ? Tell me, that I may see 
them in my mind's eye when I think of you. I 
never thought to have seen Bristol again ; but, 
now that you are there, I may find in my heart 
to revisit it, and show you the houses where my 
childhood and youth were passed. 

" You ought to become acquainted with my 
old friend Joseph Cottle, the best-hearted of 
men, with whom my biographical letters will 
one day have much to do. It would give him 
great pleasure to see any one with whom he 
could talk about me. Make an hour's leisure 
some day and call upon him, and announce your- 
self to him and his sisters as my friend. You 
will see a notable portrait of me before my name 
was shorn, and become acquainted with one who 
has a larger portion of original goodness than falls 
to the lot of most men. 

" I would have you know King, the surgeon, 
also, with whom I lived in great intimacy, and 
for whom I have a great and sincere regard. His 
wife is sister to Miss Edge worth. A more re- 
markable man is rarely to be found, and his pro- 
fessional skijl is very great. 

" These are the only friends in Bristol who 
are left to me, and perhaps I can say nothing that 
will recommend them more to you than when I 
add that they are both warmly attached to me. 

" Now for my household and personal con- 
cerns. The Harrogate expedition answered its 
purpose in some degree for us all. * * 
Your god-daughter has been living a most active 
life between this place and Rydal Mount, with 
which a constant interchange of visits has been 
going on since our return, not to speak of occa- 
sional meetings half way ; and for a mountain 
excursion with the Bishop of Chester, who went 
up Saddleback with us last week. My hay 
asthma was not prevented by the journey, but it 
was shortened. I escaped with a visit of one 
month instead of a visitation of three, and am 
willing to think that the last two years, by cut- 
ting the disease short, have weakened its habit 
and shaken its hold. The Harrogate waters 
have also materially benefited my digestion, so 
that, on the whole, though far from a sound man, 
I am in better condition than for some time past. 

" The Quarterly Review and I have made up 
our differences, and my paper, which had been 
unceremoniously postponed since January last, 
leads the van in the new number. I learn from 
John Coleridge that his mind is made up in fa- 
vor of what is called Catholic Emancipation, 
and therefore I am very glad the Review is in 
other hands; for, if it had taken that side, I 
should certainly have withdrawn from it, and 
have done every thing in my power to support a 
journal upon my own principles, which as cer- 
tainly would have been started; and which, in 
fact, has been prevented from starting by my re- 
r uf al to conduct it, on the ground that the Quar- 



terly Review will keep its course. I am re- 
viewing Hallam's Constitutional History for the 
Christmas number, and have engaged to review 
Barantes's History of the Dukes of Burgundy for 
the Foreign Quarterly. Gillies, a nephew of 
the historian, is the projector of this, and edits it 
conjointly with a Mr. Frazer, whom I know only 
by letter. Scott writes in it. * * * 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To John Hickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 18, 1827. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" # # * Your scheme for put- 

ting an end to previous imprisonment for all mi- 
nor offenses has always seemed to me one of the 
most practicable and useful suggestions that has 
ever been offered for preventing much evil and 
saving much expense. And I can not but hope 
it will be carried into effect, in the way of which 
good it will at least be put by bringing it again 
forward. 

" Wordsworth, in his capacity of Stamp Dis- 
tributor, received a circular lately requiring him 
to employ persons to purchase soda powders 
when sold without a stamp, and then lay an in- 
formation against the venders. It seems as if 
they were resolved so to reduce the emolument 
in the public services, and connect such services 
with them, that no one with the habits and feel- 
ings of a gentleman shall enter or continue in it. 

"Mr. N. breakfasted with me, and we talked 
of you and Mr. Telford. He maintained what 
seemed to me a most untenable assertion, that 
pauperism has decreased since the Restoration, 
and says the returns prove this. Now it is cer- 
tain that the poor-laws were not so misapplied 
as to breed paupers till within our own times ; 
nor did the manufacturers in those days increase 
and multiply in whole districts. 

"In looking through the statutes of Henry 
VII., I have found that an abatement or allow- 
ance, as it is called, of ' <$£6000 in every fifteenth 
and tenth (i. <?., upon the two), was made in re- 
lief, comfort, and discharge of the poor towns, 
cities, and burghs in the realm, wasted, desolate, 
and destroyed, or over greatly impoverished, or 
else to such fifteenth or tenth over greatly charg- 
ed.' This allowance to be divided according to 
former example. I will hunt this subject back, 
and endeavor to ascertain whether a deduction 
was made from the impost on the money distrib- 
uted in relief. 

" The statutes, I clearly see, have not yet 
been read as you have taught me to read. 
Though I have only examined this reign, sever- 
al curious inferences have appeared which I be- 
lieve others have neglected to make. I find a 
disposition in the older laws to keep the lower 
classes in castes, making the child follow his 
father's calling, and a law allowing no one to be 
apprenticed in any town, unless the parents had 
lands or rent to the amount of c£20 a year. The 
laws opposed the strong desire of bettering their 
condition, which the laboring people manifested, 



458 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 54. 



and the only liberty allowed was of breeding 
their children to learning. Henry VII. repealed 
the restrictions upon apprenticeship, upon the 
petition of the Norwich people, but for that city 
only, going to work experimentally in his laws. 
. " I learn, too, that the cross-bow would have 
superseded the bow and arrow, even if fire-arms 
had not been introduced, and that there was a 
great anxiety to keep that weapon from the peo- 
ple. The higher orders had an obvious interest 
in continuing the use of those weapons which 
were least effective against armor ; and the cross- 
bow, like the musket, was a leveler a weak 
hand could discharge ; it required as little prac- 
tice as a gun, and generally went with surer aim 
than the arrow, perhaps with greater force. 

"H. T. tells me that Huskisson's health can 
never stand the fatigue of his Parliamentary busi- 
ness. Do not you overwork youi-self, however 
much it may be the taste of ministers and post- 
horses to be so sacrificed. 

" God bless you ! R. S. » 

During the few weeks my father passed at 
Harrogate in the early part of the summer, he 
received an application from a poet in humble 
life, John Jones by name, to peruse and give his 
opinion of some poems. He was struck with 
the simple-hearted frankness of the writer, and 
with the feeling and natural piety displayed in 
his verses, and he replied to him in such a man- 
ner as to give encouragement to a further com- 
munication of his productions ; and finally he un- 
dertook to edit a small volume of poems, prefa- 
cing it by a biographical sketch of the lives of un- 
educated poets. 

As in many other cases, his good nature in 
this one drew on him much more expenditure of 
time and trouble than he at first anticipated ; but 
he thought himself well repaid by the perfect 
happiness he had been the means of affording 
Jones, and by his warm gratitude, and also by 
having been enabled to put him in possession of 
a sum of money which might assist in procuring 
comforts for his latter years. Some further par- 
ticulars concerning him will be found in the fol- 
lowing letters. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Oct. 31, 1827. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" * * * Thank you for the in- 
terest you take in my scheme for serving honest 
John Jones. There is no one point, Grosvenor, 
in which you and I accord more entirely than in 
our feelings concerning servants, and our behav- 
ior toward them. The savings' bank may do 
for this class all, or almost all, that you desire, 
S there be but religious education to give them 
an early sense of duty, which I think it will be 
more easy to give than to bring about the desir- 
ed amendment in the behavior of their superiors. 
To amend that, there must be a thorough reform 
in our schools, public and private, which should 
cut up the tyranny of the bovs over their juniors 
by the roots. 



" You have seen exactly in the true light 
what my views and motives are with regard to 
Jones. I want to read a wholesome lecture in 
this age of Mechanics' Institutes and of Univers- 
ity College. I want to show how much moral 
and intellectual improvement is within the reach 
of those who are made more our inferiors than 
there is any necessity that they should be, to 
show that they have minds to be enlarged, and 
feelings to be gratified, as well as souls to be 
saved, which is the only admission that some 
persons are willing to make, and that grudging- 
ly enough ; and if I can, by so doing, put a hund- 
red pounds into Jones's pocket (which, if a few 
persons will bestir themselves for me, there is 
every likelihood of doing,) I shall have the satis- 
faction of giving him a great deal of happiness 
for a time, and of rendering him some substan- 
tial benefit also. ***** 

"Did you see my paper upon the Spanish 
Moors in the Foreign Quarterly ? I have anoth- 
er to write for one of the journals into which it 
has split, upon M. de Barantes's History of the 
Dues de Bourgogne. This and a paper upon 
the Emigration Report for the Quarterly Re- 
■view will be taken in hand immediately on my 
return. Lope de Vega will arrive about the 
15th, and I look for a noble importation from 
Brussels before Christmas, consisting of the books 
which I purchased there last year, and others 
of which a list was left with Verbeyst, the best 
of booksellers, who gives me, when I deal with 
him, as good Rhenish as my ' dear heart' could 
desire, and better strong beer than ever hero 
drank in Valhalla out of the skull of his enemy. 

^ ^P ^ | TT 7? 

"We are fitting up an additional room for 
books, and if you do not next year come to see 
me in my glory among them, why you will com- 
mit a sin of omission for which you will not for- 
give yourself when it is no longer to be repaired. 

" God bless you ! R. S " 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

« Keswick, Not. 16, 1827. 
" My dear Madam, 

" Mr. Charles Hodson may, perhaps, have told 
you that I was likely to bring forward the rhymes 
of an old servant for publication by subscription, 
and that, in that case, it was my intention to so- 
licit your assistance in procuring names for my 
list. 

" The man's name is John Jones — it could 
not be a more unpoetical one, but he could not 
help it — the Muses have forgiven him for it, 
and so I hope will you. He lives with Mr. 
Bruere of Kukby Hall, near Catterick, and has 
served the family faithfully for twenty years. 
Mr. Otter (the biographer of Dr. Clark) assures 
me of this. Jones is just of my age, in his fifty- 
fourth year. If I can get a tolerably good list of 
subscribers, I will offer the list and the book to 
Murray, and get what I can for it. The price 
may be from 7s. 6d. to 10s. If we have any 
good success, something may be obtained whioh 
would assist him in the decline of life 



/Etat. 54. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



459 



" Do not suppose that I present him to notice 
as a heaven-born genius, and that I have found 
another Bloomfield. There is enough to show 
that Nature had given him the eye, and the ear, 
and the heart of a poet ; and this is sufficient for 
my purpose ; quite so to render any reader satis- 
fied that he has bestowed his bounty well in sub- 
scribing to the volume. The good sense and 
good feeling of the man are worth more than his 
genius ; and my intention is to take the oppor- 
tunity for showing how much intellectual enjoy- 
ment, and moral improvement in consequence, 
is within the reach of persons in the very hum- 
blest ways of life ; and this moral cultivation, in- 
stead of unfitting them for their station, tends to 
make them perform their duties more diligently 
and more cheerfully ; and this I mean to oppose 
to the modern march of intellect, directed as that 
is with the worst intentions and to the worst 
ends. This will be the subject of my introduc- 
tion, with some remarks upon the poetry of un- 
educated men. Jones tells his own story, and 
I am sure you will be pleased with it and his 
manner of telling it, and with the simplicity and 
good sense of his letters. 

" Reginald Heber's Journal (his East Indian 
one) will very soon be published. There was a 
man whom the world could very ill spare ; but 
his works and his example will live after him. 
Alas ! the works of the wicked survive them 
also ; but the example of their lives too often is 
forgotten. My household desire their kindest re- 
membrances to you and Mr. Hodson, to whom I 
beg mine also. We were some of us much the 
better for the Harrogate waters, and, indeed, I 
myself continue to feel the benefit which I de- 
rived from them. 

" Believe me, my dear madam, 

"Yours, with sincere regard, 

" Robert Southey." 

My father's residence at Keswick placed him 
so much out of the world, that his friends nat- 
urally often endeavored to persuade him to move 
nearer London, not only because they wished to 
have more frequent opportunities of seeing him, 
but also because they thought a less remote part 
of the country would be better in many respects, 
both for himself and his family. 

But the time was now past when such a change 
was practicable. He was, as it were, fast anchor- 
ed by his large library ; and this, with other 
causes, combined to keep him to the end in his 
mountain home. 

In the following letter he refers to a possible 
motive for removal. What this was does not 
appear, but from other letters I conjecture it to 
nave been the chance of one of his daughters 
settling in the south. 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 22, 1827. 
My dear H. T., 
11 My lease expires in the spring of 1831. So 
.ong, if I should live so long, I shall certainly re- 



main where I am, and, indeed, at this time the 
house is undergoing some alterations to render 
it more habitable in its worst parts, and to afford 
more accommodation for my books, the last car- 
go from Verbeyst's being on the way. The ob- 
stacles to a removal afterward are so great on 
the score of inclination, inconvenience, and ex- 
pense, that, among all possible chances, I see 
but one which will overcome them. * * 
Supposing the motives to exist, and the obsta- 
cles to be surmountable, Bath is the place on 
which I should fix. I should like my old age to 
be passed in the scenes of my childhood, and if 
I am not to sleep the lepov vkvov with my chil- 
dren here, I should wish to be gathered to my 
fathers. 

" I hardly think you would be sorry if I pro- 
duced another such volume of controversy as the 
Vindiciae, of whifh historical and philosophical 
disquisition would be the meat, and controversy 
only the seasoning ; for the form of a second 
volume is what I should choose, having, in fact, 
begun one sixteen months ago, and made abund- 
ant notes for it. 

"It is very certain that, when two sets of cut- 
throats played their favorite game against each 
other during the Peninsular War, my wishes 
were always with the Spanish party, though 
they might have been just as great ruffians as 
the other. But, surely, I have neither dissem- 
bled nor extenuated the cruelties of the Span- 
iards ; and it is upon the leaders of the French 
army that my reproach falls, who had their full 
share in Bonaparte's guilt. I have not relied 
rashly upon Spanish and Portuguese authorities, 
but the scale on which I have related events in 
which the British army had no share is not what 

likes. # # # * I take my 

side, and that warmly, but my desire is to be 
just, and so far strictly impartial. Now when 
I add that in proceeding with my third volume I 
shall bear your observations in mind, you will 
not do me the injustice to suppose that they 
needed, or could need, any thing like an apol- 
ogy- 

" It would have been well for me if I had al- 
ways had friends as able and as willing to stand 
forward in my defense as you are. But I have had 
back-friends instead, as well as enemies. They 
have done me some injury, as far as regards the 
sale of my books ; other harm it has been out of 
their power to do. My character is not mis- 
taken by those who know me ; and for the world 
at large (the world ! that little portion of it, I 
mean, which concerns itself with such things), 
it may safely be left to the sure decision of time. 
Under more favorable circumstances I might 
have accomplished more and better things. But 
when the grave-digger has put me to bed, and 
covered me up, it will not be long before it will 
be perceived and acknowledged that there are 
few who have done so much. * * * 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, 

"R. S." 



460 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 54 



To Mian Cunningham, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 24, 1828. 
" My dear Allan Cunningham, 

"■I will do any thing for you 5* but I wish you 
had been fifteen days earlier in your applica- 
tion ; for just so long ago young Reynolds (son of 
the dramatist) called here, and, introducing him- 
self by a letter, then introduced Charles Heath. 
Charles Heath proceeded expeditiously to busi- 
ness, presented me with a ' Keepsake' from his 
pocket, said that he had been into Scotland for 
the express purpose of securing Sir Walter's 
aid, that he had succeeded, that he now came to 
ask for mine, and should be happy to give me 
fifty guineas for any thing with which I would 
supply him. Money — money, you know, makes 
the mare go — and what, after all, is Pegasus 
but a piece of horse-flesh ? I sold him, at that 
price, a pig in a poke ; a roaster would have 
contented him : ' perhaps it might prove a pork- 
er,' I said; improvident fellow as I was not to 
foresee that it would grow to the size of a bacon 
pig before it came into his hands ! I sold him a 
ballad-poem entitled ' All for Love, or a Sinner 
well Saved,' of which one-and-twenty stanzas 
were then written. I have added fifty since, 
and am only half way through the story. It is a 
very striking one, and he means to have an en- 
graving made from it. First come, first served, 
is a necessary rule in life ; but if I could have 
foreseen that you would come afterward, the 
rule should have been set aside ; he might have 
had something else, and the bacon pig should 
have been yours. 

" Heath said that Sharpe was about to start a 
similar work of the same size and upon the same 
scale of expense : this, I take it for granted, is 
yours ; and he seemed to expect that these larg- 
er Annuals would destroy the dwarf plants. The 
Amulet will probably survive, because it has 
chosen a walk of its own, and a safe one. The 
Bijou is likely to fall, as Lord Goderich's ad- 
ministration did, for want of cordiality among 
the members concerned in it. Alaric will hold 
out like a Goth. Ackerman understands the art 
of selling his wares, and has, in that respect, an 
advantage over most of his rivals. Friendship's 
Offering is perhaps in the worst way. But these 
matters concern not the present business, which 
is — what can I do for you ? One of two things. 

"I can finish for you an Ode upon a Grid- 
iron,! which is an imitation of Pindar, treating 
the subject as he treats his, heroically and myth- 
ologically, and representing both the manner and 
character of his poetry more closely than could 
be done in a composition of which the subject 
was serious. I should tell you that though I 
think very well of this myself, it is more likely 
to please a few persons very much than to be 
generally relished. 

" Or, I can write for you a life of John Fox 



* Mr. Cunningham at this time had accepted the editor- 
ship of Sharpe's forthcoming annual, called The Anni- 
versary. 

t This fragment, which has not been published before, 
will be found in the Appendix. 



the Martyrologist, which may, I think, be com- 
prised in five or six-and-twenty of your pages. 
This, however, you can not have in less than 
three months from this time. 

" Now, take your choice ; and, remember, that 
when you go into your own country, you are to 
make Keswick in your way, and halt with me. 
" Yours with sincere regard, 

" Robert Southey. 

"Heath has sold 15,000 of the Keepsake, 
and has bespoken 4000 yards of silk for bind- 
ing the next volume ! ! !" 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 30, 1828. 
"My dear Grosvenor, 

" There used to be a quicker interchange of 
letters between you and me when we were 
younger, and each, with less to think of, had a 
great deal more to say. 

" I think you will see me, God willing, about 
the third week in May ; but my way is not as 
yet quite clear, nor am I sure what stoppages 
it may be expedient to make upon the road. 
The only sure thing is, that I shall remain as 
short a time as possible in and about town, hav- 
ing to make a wide western circuit on the way 
home. I should take this circuit with much 
greater satisfaction if you would make a good, 
honest, hearty engagement to meet me at Kes- 
wick on my arrival there. The man Grosvenor 
ought to bear in mind that neither he, nor the 
man Southey, have any right to put off things 
from year to year, in reliance upon the contin- 
uance of life and ability ; that they are both on 
the high road to threescore, both in that stage of 
existence in which all flesh may fitlier be called 
hay than grass, because the blossom is over, and 
the freshness, and the verdure, and the strength 
are past. But let us meet while we can. Noth- 
ing would do more good both to Miss Page and 
you than to pass your autumn here, and noth- 
ing would do me more good than to have you 
here. 

" The paper upon Emigration in this last 
Quarterly Review is mine, or, rather, upon the 
causes which render a regulated emigration nec- 
essary. Our fabric of society, Grosvenor, is 
somewhat in the condition that the Brunswick 
Theater was before the cx-ash — too much weight 
suspended from the roof; and, to make things 
worse, we allow all sort of undermining, and are 
willing to let every thing be removed that was 
erected for securing the building. They talk, 
I see, of abolishing the Exchequer. I will for- 
give them if they do it in time to emancipate 
you ; yet I wish you to have the next step first, 
and then, Grosvenor, peradventure you may be 
the last auditor, and I the last laureate. Well, 
it will matter little to us when we are in the 
Ghost : you will not haunt Palace Yard, and ] 
shall not haunt the levee. 

" God bless you ! * * ■■ ' * * 

"R. S." 

In the last letter my father speaks of an in 



,Etat. 55. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



4G1 



fended visit to London. His object in this was 
Iwo-fold, and neither of them of a cheerful kind : 
the first, to see his uncle, Mr. Hill, for the last 
time, who, at the age of seventy-nine, was rapidly 
approaching his latter end ; the second, to place 
Himself under the surgeon's hands for the remov- 
al, if possible, of the infirmity I have before al- 
luded to. 

With respect to this latter intention, his care- 
ful consideration for the feelings of others was 
strongly shown. Knowing the weak state of my 
mother's spirits, and the natural anxiety which 
all his family would feel if they knew he was 
about to undergo a painful operation, and one 
not unattended with danger, he concealed alto- 
gether his purpose ; nor did they receive the 
slightest intimation of it until, with a trembling 
hand, from his bed he penned a few lines com- 
municating the safe and successful result. " God 
be thanked," he says, " I shall no longer bear 
about with me the sense of a wearying and har- 
assing infirmity # * # and, though you 
will not give me credit for being a good bearer 
of pain, because I neither like to have my fin- 
gers scorched by a hot plate, nor scarified by that 
abominable instrument called a pin, Mr. Cope- 
land will. * * Henry Taylor and Bed- 
ford have been the most constant of my visitors, 
but I have had inquiries out of number, and none 
among them more frequent than the Bishop of 
Limerick." 

Among his other London engagements after 
his recovery, he had to sit to Sir T. Lawrence, 
for Sir Robert Peel, and also to Sir Francis 
Chantrey, who was very desirous of executing a 
bust of him. The former of these was, on the 
whole, the most successful likeness of my father 
taken in later life ; at least it is generally con- 
sidered so. He used to speak of the process of 
sitting to Sir T. Lawrence as a very agreeable 
one ; as, the more easy and unembarrassed the 
conversation, the better for the painter, who also 
sometimes requested my father to read to him 
some of his poems, as affording opportunities of 
catching the various expressions of his counte- 
nance in the most natural manner, the blending 
of which into one harmonious whole is, I suppose, 
the greatest triumph of art. 

With Sir Francis Chantrey he was more inti- 
mate, and thither their mutual friend, Mr. Bed- 
ford, always accompanied him : and there, too, 
tf-as Allan Cunningham ; so the molding went on 
merrily, for Chantrey loved a good story, and the 
reader need not be told that Mr. Bedford would 
both give and take a joke. 

The sculptor, however, was not so successful 
as the painter ; and, though he made several at- 
tempts to improve the likeness by after-touches, 
he never regarded his task as satisfactorily ac- 
complished, though many persons were well sat- 
isfied with it ; indeed, although he promised my 
father a marble copy of it, he would never ful- 
fill his promise, always purposing to amend his 
work. 

After his death, I believe it was purchased by 
Sir R. Peel. 



To Mrs. Hodson. 



" Keswick, Aug. 14, 1828. 
" My dear Madam, 

" I wish there were but one ten thousand of 
those persons in England who talk about new 
books and buy them, whether they read, mark, 
and inwardly digest them or not, that felt half as 
much interest in any forthcoming or expected 
work of mine as you are pleased to express, and 
as I should be unjust, as well as ungrateful, if I 
did not give you credit for. Alas ! my third 
volume of the Peninsular War is far from com- 
plete — very far. It must be a close and hard 
winter's work that will make it ready for pub- 
lication in the spring. 

" My way to London toward the latter end of 
May was, I confess, through Ripon, but it was 
in the mail-coach, for I performed the whole 
journey without resting on the way. It was any 
thing but a pleasant one. I went to see an un- 
cle (my best friend) for the last time in this 
world ; his continuance, at the age of fourscore, 
in pain, infirmity, and earthly hopelessness, not 
being to be desired,* even though his deliver- 
ance must be, in a mere worldly view, a great 
misfortune to his family. He married in his six- 
tieth year, and has six children. I went, also, 
in the secret determination of undergoing a sur- 
gical operation, if it should be deemed expedient, 
for an infirmity which had long afflicted mc. 
Thank God ! it has succeeded, and I am once 
more a sound man, which I had not been for some 
twelve years. 

" If I am now not quite as able to skip over 
the mountains as I was when first my tent was 
pitched here, it will be owing only to the grad- 
ual effect of time, not to any disablement from a 
painful and dangerous cause. 

" No publisher, I am afraid, in this age, would 
venture to bring out a translation of Davila. 
The sale of books is grievously diminished with- 
in the last six or eight years (I speak feelingly) . 
To have any success, a book must be new — a 
single season antiquates it ; it must come from 
a fashionable name (nobility is now turned to a 
marketable account in this way) ; or it must be 
personal, if not slanderous ; but, if slanderous, 
then best of all. It is the general diminution of 
income consequent on the depreciation of agri- 
cultural produce, and the experiments in free 
trade which has affected the booksellers, new 
books being the first things which persons who 
feel it necessary they should retrench find they 
can do without. 

" And who, in this most ignorant age, reads 
Davila ? Most ignorant I call it relative to his- 
torical reading ; for, if our statesmen, so called 



' I would not, as I saw thee last, 
For a king's ransom have detain'd thee here, 
Bent, like the antique sculptor's limbless trunk, 
By chronic pain, yet with thine eye unquench'd, 
The ear undimm'd, the mind retentive still, 
The heart unchanged, the intellectual lamp 
Burning in its corporeal sepulcher. 
No ; not if human wishes had had power 
To have suspended Nature's constant work. 
Would they who loved thee have detain'd thee thus, 
Waiting for death." 

Dedication to Colloquies with Sir T. More. 



4f>2 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 55. 



by the courtesy of England, read Davila. and 
such historians as Davila, they could not com- 
mit such blunders as they have committed, are 
committing, and will commit ; nor should we at 
this time have had cause to apprehend changes, 
and consequent convulsions, from which we must 
look alone to Providence to preserve us. Were 
there more of sound knowledge, there would be 
more of sound principle and of sound feeling. 
If Davila were published, some two or three of 
the worthies who dug up and mutilated the re- 
mains of Hampden might, perhaps, if they were 
to know that it was the book which Hampden 
studied when he was preparing himself and the 
nation for a rebellion and subversion of the law- 
ful government, have thought it worth while to 
peruse it with the same sort of patriotic foresight. 

"I am writing some verses describing the 
whole gallery of my portraits for Allan Cunning- 
ham's annual volume. Such volumes are among 
the plagues of my life ; but Allan Cunningham 
is a right worthy man, and I owe him something 
for having carried a remonstrance from me to 
the editor of the Morning Chronicle, on occasion 
of some atrocious attacks upon me in that paper. 

" I have made an arrangement with Murray 
concerning John Jones's rhymes. He will pub- 
lish them, and give Jones the whole of his sub- 
scription copies ; they amount to little more than 
200 at present, but the list may be increased as 
much as we can. The verses will go to press 
as soon as Murray enables me to prepare the in- 
troduction by procuring for me the works of cer- 
tain low and untaught rhymers of whom I wish 
to speak — Taylor the Water Poet, Stephen Duck, 
&c. Believe me, yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 22, 1828. 
" My dear Friend, 

" Before this reaches you, you will have heard 
"that my dear uncle is relieved from the burden 
of age and infirmity which pressed upon him so 
heavily in his latter days. This day brought me 
the news of his deliverance, and it was the first 
that I had of his illness ; but I was prepared for 
it, knowing that the first breath of wind must 
shake the dry leaf from the tree. 

" It is somewhat remarkable, that either on 
the night before or after his decease (I am not 
certain which, but think it was the former) I was 
very much disturbed throughout the night in 
dreams concerning him. I seldom remember to 
have suffered so much in sleep, or to have wept 
more than I did then, thinking that I saw him, 
as I had last seen him, bent and suffering, help- 
lessly and hopelessly, and that he reproved, or 
rather reasoned with me for allowing myself to 
be so affected. This is perfectly explicable ; 
but it impressed me strongly at the time ; and 
if, in some of his latter hours, his thoughts were 
directed toward me (as they may have been), I 
could find a solution which would accord with 
my philosophy , though it may not be dreamed of 
•u that of otlvr men. 



"I have long looked for this event, and how 
ever important in one point of view the prolonga- 
tion of his life might appear, I could not, if wish- 
es or prayers could have done it, have stretched 
him upon the rack of this world longer. 

" There is some comfort in thinking that he 
now knows, if he never knew it before, how truly 
I loved and honored him. I often indulge the 
belief that toward our dead friends our hearts 
are open and our desires known. 

° God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Yours most affectionately, 

" R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 28, 1828. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

"You may get the whole of Sir Thomas 
Brown's works more easily, perhaps, than the 
Hydrotaphia in a single form. The folio is nei- 
ther scarce nor dear, and you will find it through- 
out a book to your heart's content. If I were 
confined to a score of English books, this, I think, 
would be one of them ; nay, probably it would 
be one if the selection were cut down to twelve. 
My library, if reduced to those bounds, would 
consist of Shakspeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and 
Milton; Lord Clarendon ; Jackson, Jeremy Tay- 
lor, and South ; Isaac Walton, Sidney's Arcadia, 
Fuller's Church History, and Sir Thos. Brown ; 
and what a wealthy and well-stored mind would 
that man have, what an inexhaustible reservoir, 
what a Bank of England to draw upon for prof- 
itable thoughts and delightful associations, who 
should have fed upon them ! 

" * * * I am glad you have passed 
six weeks pleasurably and profitably, though 
grudging a little that they were not spent at 
Keswick, where, among other things, I should 
like you to see the additional book-room that we 
have fitted up, and in which I am now writing, 
dividing my time between the two book-rooms 
by spells, so that both may be kept well aired. 
It would please you to see such a display of lit- 
erary wealth, which is at once the pride of my 
eye, and the joy of my heart, and the food of 
my mind ; indeed, more than metaphorically, 
meat, drink, and clothing for me and mine. I 
verily believe that no one in my station was ever 
so rich before, and I am very sure that no one 
in any station had ever a more thorough enjoy- 
ment of riches of any kind or in any way. It is 
more delightful for me to live with books than 
with men, even with all the relish that I have for 
such society as is worth having. 

"I broke off this morning (not being a post 
day) for the sake of walking to Lodore, to see 
the cataract in its glory, after heavy rain in a 
wet season. A grand sight it was, and a grand 
sound. The walk, however, has just induced 
enough of agreeable lassitude to disincline me 
for my usual evening's pen-work. 

" Your godson comes on well with his books, 
and, if you are disposed to make him a godfa- 
ther's gift, you may send him a Septuagint, that 



JE.TAT. 55. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



463 



being a book in which Michaelis advises that all 
who are intended for the theological profession 
should be grounded at school. Intentions, or 
even wishes, I hardly dare form concerning him ; 
but this, I am sure, is the best and happiest pro- 
fession which a wise man could choose for him- 
self, or desire for those who are dear to him. 



"God bless you! 



R. S. 



To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 8, 1828. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I do not wonder that neither you nor your 
friend are acquainted with the name of Jackson 
as a divine, and I believe the sight of his works 
would somewhat appal you, for they are in three 
thick folios. He was Master of Corpus (Oxford) 
and vicar of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the early 
part of Charles the First's reign, but his works 
were not published in a collective form till after 
the Restoration, when they were edited by Bar- 
nabas Oley, who was also the editor of George 
Herbert's remains. In our old divines there is 
generally something that you might wish were 
not there : less of this in Jackson, I think, than 
in any other, except South ; and more of what 
may truly be called divine philosophy than in any 
or all others. Possibly you might not have the 
same relish for Jackson that I have,, and yet I 
think you would find three or four pages per day 
a wholesome and pleasant diet. 

" If you have not got the sermons of my al- 
most-namesake, Robert South (who was, more- 
over, of Westminster), buy thou them forthwith, 
Grosvenor Charles Bedford ! for they will de- 
light the very cockles of thy heart. * * 

"I can not give full credit to your story* 
about the Life of Nelson. It is not likely that 
the American government, which is as parsimo- 
nious as Mr. Hume would wish ours to be, should 
incur the expense ; and if they had, it is very 
unlikely that I should not have heard of it from 
the Americans who find their way to me, or 
those American acquaintance who give them let- 
ters of introduction. If the fact were so, it 
should be put in the newspapers. But I dare 
say that, if Henry will cross-question his inform- 
ant, he will find that it has been asserted upon 
very insufficient grounds. As for our govern- 
ment doing any thing of this kind, they must 



* " I met a Mr. Brandreth at my brother's a few days 
ago, who has lately returned from the West Indies. He 
says the American government has printed an edition of 
your Life of Nelson, sufficiently numerous for a distribu- 
tion on fine paper to every officer, and on coarse paper to 
every man in their fleet. This is what should have been 
done here long ago, and would have been done if our 
statesmen had been any thing better than politicians, or 
considered the people of the country as any thing but 
mere machines, unendowed with feelings or motives of 
action. It ought to be in the chest of every seaman, from 
the admiral to the cabin-boy. But our rulers have long 
been in the habit of calculating the people only by arith- 
metical figures, and look upon them only in the mass, 
without taking human character into the account. ' We 
politicians, you know,' said the late Lord Londonderry 
once to a friei A of mine, ' have no feelings.' No, indeed, 
should have been the answer, nor do you reckon upon 
any in others."— G. C. B. to R. S., Dec, 1828. 



first be taught to believe that it is part of their 
duty to provide wholesome instruction for the 
people. This they will learn when they havG 
had sufficient cause to repent of their ignorance, 
and not till then. For myself, I am very far 
from complaining of government, to which, in- 
deed, I owe much more than to the public. You 
know what his majesty is pleased to allow me 
through your hands. Now from the said pub- 
lic my last year's proceeds were — for the Book 
of the Church and the Vindiciae, per John Mur- 
ray, nil; and for all the rest of my works in 
Longman's hands, about <£26. In this account, 
you know, the Peninsular War and the Life of 
Nelson are not included, being Murray's proper- 
ty. But the whole proceeds of my former labors 
were what I have stated them for the year end- 
ing at midsummer last, so that, if it were not for 
reviewing, it would be impossible for me to pay 
my current expenses. As some explanation, I 
should tell you that Roderic, and Thalaba, and 
Madoc are in new editions, which have not yet 
cleared themselves. They are doing this very 
slowly, except Roderic, from which, if it had 
been clear, I should have received d635. 

" There are many causes for this. The An- 
nuals are now the only books bought for pres- 
ents to young ladies, in which way poems for- 
merly had their chief vent. People ask for what 
is new ; and to these may be added, that of all 
the opponents of the great and growing party of 
Revolutionists, I am the one whom they hate the 
most, and of all the supporters of established 
things, the one whom the anti-Revolutionists like 
the least ; so that I fight for others against many, 
but stand alone myself. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 11, 1828. 
" My dear Friend, 

" If my long summer absence, and the contin- 
ual interruptions which followed it to the middle ♦ 
of October, had not brought most heavy arrears 
of business upon my hands, .you would have 
heard from me ere this. It seems my fate, like 
yours, to have more business as I advance in 
life, and less leisure for what I should take more 
delight in ; however, God be praised who gives 
me strength and ability to go on, and enables me 
to support what, even with the best and most 
careful economy, is necessarilv an expensive 
household. 

"Dec. 15. 

" I have been prevented from finishing this 
letter by the unexpected appearance of Lieut. 
Mawe, who has come from Peru down the Orel- 
lana, being the first Englishman who has ever 
descended that river. He has brought his man- 
uscript to me before it goes to the press. I had 
seen him at Chantrey's just on his arrival, and 
he is wishing now that my History of Brazil had 
fallen in his way before he began his expedition. 
You may suppose how interesting I find his con- 
versation and his journal. The account which 
he gives of Para is not favorable ; trade is de 



464 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



ZEtat. 55. 



clining for want of specie; the English and 
American merchants are obliged to take prod- 
uce in payment, and on that account price their 
goods, it is said, 30 per cent, above what they 
otherwise would do, and this makes them too 
dear for the market. Steam-boats, whenever 
they are introduced, will alter the condition of 
that country, and produce apparently a most 
beneficial effect. 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! and bring 
you through all those difficulties which you had 
so little reason to expect, and had done nothing 
to bring upon yourself. The inflictions of in- 
justice are, I suppose, the most difficult of all 
evils to bear with equanimity : evils which arise 
from our own faults we receive as their chastise- 
ment and our own deserts ; those which Heaven 
is pleased to inflict are borne as being its will. 
I hope and trust that there are better days in 
store for you. Alas ! how ill do times and sea- 
sons sometimes suit with our views and wishes. 
Had you been removed to Bristol four-and-twen- 
ty years sooner, I should never have been re- 
moved from it. 

"Once more, with kind remembrances from 
all here, 

"Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To Allan Cunningham, Esq. 

"Keswick, Dec. 21, 1823. 
" My dear Allan, 

" Having no less than seven females in family, 
you will not wonder that as yet I have seen lit- 
tle more than the prints in your book* and its 
table of contents. It is, I do not doubt, quite as 
good in typographical contents as any of its ri- 
vals. The truth is, that in this respect there can 
be little to choose between ; they are one and all 
of the same kind ; the same contributors are 
mostly to be found in all of them, and this must 
of necessity bring the merits of all pretty much 
to an average. I am not sure that it would be 
for your interest to monopolize three or four writ- 
ers, whose names happen to be high on the 
wheel of Fortune, if by so doing you should ex- 
clude some of those that are at present on the 
lower spokes. To me it seems the best policy 
that you should have many contributors, because 
every one would, from self-love, wish to promote 
the sale of the volume ; and, moreover, every 
writer is the center of some little circle, within 
which what he may write is read and admired. 
But the literary department, make what exer- 
tions you will, must be as inferior in its effect 
upon the sale to the pictorial one as it is in its 
cost. At the best, Allan, these Annuals are pic- 
ture-books for grown children. They are good 
things for the artists and engravers, and, there- 
fore, I am glad of their success. I shall be more 
glad if one of them can be made a good thing for 
you ; and I am very sure that you will make it 
as good as a thing of its kind can be made ; but, 
at the best, this is what it must be. 

"I have not seen the Keepsake yet, neither 

* The Anniversary 



have I heard from its editor. He has ' o'er- 
stepped the modesty of puffing' in his advertise- 
ments, and may very likely discover that he has 
paid young men of rank and fashion somewhat 
dearly for the sake of their names. You know 
upon what terms I stand with that concern. 

" You wish for prose from me. I write prose 
more willingly than verse from habit, and be- 
cause the hand of Time is on me ; but, then, I 
can not move without elbow room. Grave sub- 
jects which could be treated within your limits 
do not occur to me ; light ones I am sure will 
not ; playfulness comes from me more naturally 
in verse. I have one or two stories which may 
be versified for you, either as ballads or in some 
other form, and which will not be too long. 
Want of room, I am afraid, would apply equally 
to a life of John Fox, which would better suit 
the Quarterly Review, if Dibdin should bring 
out his projected edition. Sometimes I think the 
bust may afford me a subject ; but whether h 
would turn out song or sermon, I hardly know, 
perhaps both in one. 

" Your book is very beautiful. The vignettes 
are especially clever. Of the prints Sir Walter 
interests me most for its subject, Pic-a-Back per- 

j haps for its execution. It is the best design I 
ever saw of Richard Westall's. To make your 
book complete as exhibiting the art of the age, 

• I should like something from Martin and some- 

! thing from Cruikshank, otherwise I do not see 

; how it could be improved. 
" God bless you ! 

"Yours very truly, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 29, 1828. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" I have two things to tell you, each good in 
its kind — the first relating to the moon, the sec- 
ond to myself. 

" It is not likely that you should recollect a 
poor, harmless, honest old man, who used to de- 
liver the letters when you were at Keswick ; Jo- 
seph Littledale is his name, and, if you remem- 
ber him, it will be by a chronic, husky cough, 
which generally announced bis approach. Poor 
Littledale has this day explained the cause of 
our late rains, which have, prevailed for the last 
five weeks, by a theory which will probably be 
as new to you as it is to me. ' I have observed,' 
he says, ' that when the moon is turned upward, 
we have fine weather after it ; but if it is turned 
down, then we have a wet season ; and the rea- 
son I think is, that when it is turned down, it 
holds no water, like a basin, you know, and then 
down it all comes.' There, Grosvenor, it will 
be a long while before the march of intellect 
shall produce a theory as original as this, which 
I find, upon inquiry, to be the popular opinion 
here. 

" Next concerning myself. A relation of my 
friend Miss Bowles heard at a dinner-party lately 
that Mr. Southey had become a decided Meth- 
odist, and was about to make a full avowal of 



jEtat. 55. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



465 



his sentiments in a poem called the Sinner well 
Saved.* 'The title,' said the speaker, 'shows 
plainly what it is. But I have seen it ; I have 
had a peep at it at the publisher's, and such a 
rant ! !' * * * * 

"I am about to begin a paper upon Surtees's 
History of the County of Durham for the next 
Quarterly Review, a subject which requires no 
more labor than that of looking through the 
three folios, and arranging what matter of gen- 
eral interest they contain in an amusing form ; 
and this is comparatively easy work. Moreover, 
I am about a Life of Ignatius Loyola for the For- 
eign Review. My books having nearly come to 
a dead stand-still in their sale, it becomes neces- 
sary for me to raise my supplies by present la- 
bor, which, thank God ! I am at present very 
well able to do. I shall work hard to make pro- 
vision for a six weeks' holiday, commencing ear- 
ly in May, when I mean (if we all live and do 
well, and alas ! Grosvenor, how little is this to 
be depended upon !) to remove my women-kind 
to the Isle of Man for sea air and bathing if they 
like it. The island is worth seeing, and there 
is no place where we could get at so little ex- 
pense, or live so cheaply when there. We are 
but two stages from Whitehaven, and from thence 
there is a steam-packet. There I shall go over 
the whole island, and write verses when it rains. 

" Wednesday, 31. — * * * I did not 
know that there was a folio edition of South. 
Six octavo volumes of his sermons were publish- 
ed during his life, five more after his death, from 
his manuscripts which had not been corrected 
for the press. The Oxford edition comprises the 
whole in seven octavos. One sermon among the 
posthumous ones is remarkable, because it was 
evidently written (probably in his younger days) 
is a trial of skill, in imitation of Sir Thomas 
Brown. * * * 

" God bless you, my dear Grosvenor ! 

. "R. S." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

«rsonal appearance habits of daily life 

excursions his house and library 

eleemon growth of his opinions the 

catholic question controversy with 

mr. shannon ballads from romish le- 
gends renewed health and powers 

mr. wordsworth verbeyst, the brussels 

bookseller politics his health visit 

to netherhall literary employments 

the co-operative association dr. phill- 

potts some results of his colloquies 

— allan Cunningham's lives of the paint- 
ers ARTICLE IN THE QUARTERLY REVIEW 

UPON PORTUGAL PROSPECTS OF SOCIETY AT 

HOME MICHAEL T. SADLER IGNATIUS LOY- 
OLA CARLISLE HERAUD DESIRABLENESS 



* A Roman Catholic legend, taken from the " Acta Sanc- 
"Sorum," versified, and published in the collected edition 
ef his poems, under the title of "All for Love, or a Sinner 
Fell Saved." 

Go 



OF MEN IN LATER LIFE TAKING HOLY ORDERS 

THE COLLOQUIES CHURCH METHODISM 

MRS. OPIE MR. HORNBY INSTITUTION FOR 

TRAINING NURSES OPENED CAUSES OF ITS 

FAILURE MARRIAGE OF MISS COLERIDGE 

LITERARY EMPLOYMENTS MR. LANDOR MR. 

WORDSWORTH RECOMMENDATION OF BERKE- 
LEY'S MINUTE PHILOSOPHER VISIT TO MRS. 

HODSON AND COL. HOWARD. 1829. 

Having now arrived at that portion of my fa- 
ther's life which comes within the immediate 
sphere of my own recollections, I may be per- 
mitted to speak somewhat more familiarly than 
I have yet been enabled to do, both of himself 
personally and of the habits of his daily life. Be- 
ing the youngest of all his children, I had not the 
privilege of knowing him in his best and most 
joyous years, nor of remembering Greta Hall 
when the happiness of its circle was unbroken. 
Much labor and anxiety, and many sorrows, had 
passed over him ; and although his natural buoy- 
ancy of spirit had not departed, it was greatly 
subdued, and I chiefly remember its gradual 
diminution from year to year. 

In appearance he was certainly a very strik- 
ing looking person, and in early days he had by 
many been considered as almost the beau ideal 
of a poet. Mr. Cottle describes him at the age 
of twenty-two as "tall, dignified, possessing 
great suavity of manners, an eye piercing, a 
countenance full of genius, kindliness, and in- 
telligence ;" and he continues, " I had read so 
much of poetry, and sympathized so much with 
poets in all their eccentricities and vicissitudes, 
that to see before me the realization of a char- 
acter which in the abstract so much absorbed 
my regards, gave me a degree of satisfaction 
which it would be difficult to express." Eight- 
een years later Lord Byron calls him a prepos- 
sessing looking person, and, with his usual ad- 
mixture of satire, says, "To have his head and 
shoulders I would almost have written his Sap- 
phics;" and elsewhere he speaks of his appear- 
ance as "Epic," an expression which may be 
either a sneer or a compliment. 

His forehead was very broad ; his height was 
five feet eleven inches ; his complexion rather 
dark, the eyebrows large and arched, the eye 
well shaped and dark brown, the mouth some- 
what prominent, muscular, and very variously 
expressive, the chin small in proportion to the 
upper features of his face. He always, while 
in Keswick, wore a cap in his walks, and partly 
from habit, partly from the make of his head 
and shoulders, we never thought he looked well 
or like himself in a hat. He was of a very 
spare frame, but of great activity, and not show- 
ing any appearance of a weak constitution. 

My father's countenance, like his character, 
seems to have softened down from a certain 
wildncss of expression to a more sober and 
thoughtful cast ; and many thought him a hand- 
somer man in age than in youth ; his eye re- 
taining always its brilliancy, and his counte- 
nance its play of expression. 



460 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 55. 



The reader will remember his Republican in- 
dependency when an under-graduate at Oxford, 
in rebelling against the supremacy of the col- 
lege barber. Though he did not continue to 
let his hair hang down on his shoulders accord- 
ing to the whim of his youthful days, yet he 
always wore a greater quantity than is usual ; 
and once, on his arrival in town, Chantrey's first 
greetings to him were accompanied with an in- 
junction to go and get his hair cut. When I 
first remember it, it was turning from a rich 
brown to the steel shade, whence it rapidly be- 
came almost snowy white, losing none of its re- 
markable thickness, and clustering in abundant 
curls over his massive brow. 

For the following remarks on his general 
bearing and habits of conversation I am indebt- 
ed to a friend : 

" The characteristics of his manner, as of his 
appearance, were lightness and strength, an easy 
and happy composure as the accustomed mood, 
with much mobility at the same time, so that 
he could be readily excited into any degree of 
animation in discourse, speaking, if the subject 
moved him much, with extraordinary fire and 
force, though always in light, laconic sentences. 
When so moved, the fingers of his right hand 
often rested against his mouth and quivered 
through nervous susceptibility. But, excitable 
as he was in conversation, he was never angry 
or irritable ; nor can there be any greater mis- 
take concerning him than that into which some 
persons have fallen when they have inferred, 
from the fiery vehemence with which he could 
give utterance to moral anger in verse or prose, 
that he was personally ill-tempered or irascible. 
He was, in truth, a man whom it was hardly 
possible to quarrel with or offend personally and 
face to face ; and in his writings, even on pub- 
lic subjects in which his feelings were strongly 
engaged, he will be observed to have always 
dealt tenderly with those whom he had once 
seen and spoken to, unless, indeed, personally 
and grossly assailed by them. He said of him- 
self that he was tolerant of persons, though in- 
tolerant of opinions. But in oral intercourse the 
toleration of persons was so much the stronger, 
that the intolerance of opinions was not to be 
perceived ; and, indeed, it was only in regard to 
opinions of a pernicious moral tendency that it 
was ever felt. 

" He was averse from argumentation, and 
would commonly quit a subject when it was 
passing into that shape, with a quiet and good- 
humored indication of the view in which he 
rested. He talked most and with most interest 
about books and about public affairs ; less, in- 
deed hardly at all, about the characters and 
qualities of men in private life. In the society 
of strangers or of acquaintances, he seemed to 
take more interest in the subjects spoken of than 
in the persons present, his manner being that of 
natural courtesy and general benevolence with- 
out distinction of individuals. Had there been 
some tincture of social vanity in him, perhaps 
he would have been brought into closer relations 



with those whom he met in society ; but, though 
invariably kind and careful of their feelings, he 
was indifferent to the manner in which they re- 
garded him, or (as the phrase is) to his effect in 
society ; and they might, perhaps, be conscious 
• that the kindness they received was what flowed 
I naturally and inevitably to all, that they had 
' nothing to give in return which was of value to 
him, and that no individual relations were es- 
tablished. 

" In conversation with intimate friends he 
would sometimes express, half humorously, a 
cordial commendation of some production of" his 
own, knowing that with them he could afford 
it, and that to those who knew him well it was 
well known that there was no vanity in him. 
But such commendations, though light and hu- 
morous, were perfectly sincere ; for he both pos- 
sessed and cherished the power of finding enjoy- 
ment and satisfaction wherever it was to be 
found — in his own books, in the books of his 
friends, and in all books whatsoever that were 
not morally tainted or absolutely barren." 

His course of life was the most regular and 
simple possible, and, indeed, in his routine he va- 
ried but little from the sketch he gave of it in 
1806 (see ante, p. 199). When it is said that 
breakfast was at nine, after a little reading,* din- 
ner at four, tea at six, supper at half past nine, 
and the intervals filled up with reading or writ- 
ing, except that he regularly walked between 
two and four, and took a short sleep before tea, 
the outline of bis day during those long seasons 
when he was in full work will have been given. 
After supper, when the business of the day 
seemed to be over, though he generally took a 
book, he remained with his family, and was open 
to enter into conversation, to amuse and to be 
amused. It was on such times that the most 
pleasant fireside chattings and the most inter- 
esting stories came forth ; and, indeed, it was 
at such a time (though long before my day) that 
The Doctor was originated, as may be seen by 
the beginning of that work and the Preface to 
the new edition. Notwithstanding that the 
very mention of "my glass of punch," the one, 
temperate, never exceeded glass of punch, may 
be a stumbling-block to some of my readers, I 
am constrained, by the very love of the perfect 
picture which the first lines of The Doctor con- 
j vey of the conclusion of his evening, to tran- 
scribe them in this place. It was written but 
for a few, otherwise The Doctor would have 
been no secret at all ; but those few who knew 
him in his home will see his very look while 
they reperuse it, and will recall tr.3 well-known 
sound : 

" I was in the fourth night of the story of the 
Doctor and his horse, and had broken it off, not, 



* During the several years that he was partially em- 
ployed upon the Life of Dr. Bell, he devoted two hours 
before breakfast to it in the summer, and as much time 
as there was daylight for during the winter months, 
that it might not interfere with the usual occupations ot 
the day. In all this time, however, he made but little 
progress in it, partly from the nature of the materials, 
partly from the want of sufficient interest in the subject 



/£ pat. 55. 



ROBERT SOOTHE Y. 



467 



like Scheherazade, because it was time to get 
up, but because it was time to go to bed. It 
was at thirty-five minutes after ten o'clock on 
the 20th of July, in the year of our Lord 1813. 
I finished my glass of punch, tinkled the spoon 
against its sidfc, as if making music to my own 
meditations, and having fixed my eyes upon the 
Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me 
at the head of her own table, I said, ' It ought 
to be written in a book.' " 

This scene took place at the table of the 
Bhow Begum,* but it may easily be transferred 
to his ordinary room, where he sat after supper 
in one corner, with the fire on his left hand and 
a small table on his right, looking on at his 
family circle in front of him. 

I have said before, as indeed his own letters 
have abundantly shown, that he was a most 
thoroughly domestic man, in that his whole 
pleasure and happiness was centered in his 
home ; but yet, from the course of his pursuits, 
his family necessarily saw but little of him. He 
could not, however he might wish it, join the 
summer evening walk, or make one of the circle 
round the winter hearth, or even spare time for 
conversation after the family meals (except dur- 
ing the brief space I have just been speaking 
of). Every day, every hour had its allotted 
employment; always were there engagements 
to publishers imperatively requiring punctual 
fulfillment ; always the current expenses of a 
large household to take anxious thoughts for : 
he had no crops growing while he was idle. 
u My ways," he used to say, "are as broad as 
the king's high road, and my means lie in an 
ink-stand." 

Yet, notwithstanding the value which every 
moment of his time thus necessarily bore, unlike 
most literary men, he was never ruffled in the 
slightest degree by the interruptions of his fam- 
ily, even on the most trivial occasions ; the book 
or the pen was ever laid down with a smile, and 
he was ready to answer any question, or to en- 
ter with youthful readiness into any temporary 
topic of amusement or interest. 

In earlier years he spoke of himself as ill cal- 
culated for general society, from a habit of ut- 
tering single significant sentences, which, from 
being delivered without any qualifying clauses, 
bore more meaning upon their surface than he 
intended, and through which his real opinions 
and feeli'ngs were often misunderstood. This 
habit, as far as my own observation went, though 
it was sometimes apparent, he had materially 
checked in later life, and in large parties he was 
usually inclined to be silent, rarely joining in 
general conversation. But he was very differ- 
ent when with only one or two companions ; 
and to those strangers who came to him with 
letters of introduction, he was both extremely 
courteous in manner, and frank and pleasant in 
conversation, and to his intimates no one could 
have been more wholly unreserved, more dis- 



* Miss Barker, the Senhora of earlier days, who was 
living at that time in a house close to Greta Hall. (See 
ante, p. 318.) 



posed to give and receive pleasure, or more 
ready to pour forth his vast stores of information 
upon almost every subject. 

I might go on here, and enter more at length 
into details of his personal character, but the 
task is too difficult a one, and is perhaps, after 
all, better left unattempted. A most intimate 
and highly-valued friend of my father's, whom I 
wished to have supplied me with some passages 
on these points, remarks very justly, that "any 
portraiture of him, by the pen as by the pencil, 
will fall so far short both of the truth and the 
ideal which the readers of his poetry and his let- 
ters will have formed for themselves, that they 
would be worse than superfluous." And, in- 
deed, perhaps I have already said too much. I 
can not, however, resist quoting here some lines 
by the friend above alluded to, which describe 
admirably in brief my father's whole character : 

" Two friends 
Lent me a further light, whose equal hate 
On all unwholesome sentiment attends, 
Nor whom may genius charm where heart infirm attends. 

" In all things else contrarious were these two : 

The one a man upon whose laureled brow 

Gray hairs were growing ! glory ever new 

Shall circle him in after years as now ; 

For spent detraction may not disavow 

The world of knowledge with the wit combined, 

The elastic force no burden e'er could bow, 

The various talents and the single mind, 

Which give him moral power and mastery o'er mankind* 

" His sixty summers — what are they in truth ? 
By Providence peculiarly blest, 
With him the strong hilarity of youth 
Abides, despite gray hairs, a constant guest, 
His sun has veered a point toward the west, 
But light as dawn his heart is glowing yet — 
That heart the simplest, gentlest, kindliest, bless'd, 
Where truth and manly tenderness are met 
With faith and heavenward hope, the suns that never 
set"* 

What further I will venture to say relates 
chiefly to the external circumstances of his life 
at Keswick. 

His greatest relaxation was in a mountain 
excursion or a pic-nic by the side of one of the 
lakes, tarns, or streams ; and these parties, of 
which he was the life and soul, will long live in 
the recollections of those who shared them. An 
excellent pedestrian (thinking little of a walk of 
twenty-five miles when upward of sixty), he 
usually headed the " infantry" on these occa- 
sions, looking on those gentlemen as idle mor- 
tals who indulged in the luxury of a mountain 
pony ; feeling very differently in the bracing air 
of Cumberland to what he did in Spain in 1800, 
when he delighted in being "gloriously lazy," 
in "sitting sideways upon an ass," and having 
even a boy to "propel" the burro. (See ante, 
p. 135.) 

Upon first coming down to the Lakes he 
rather undervalued the pleasures of an al-fresco 
repast, preferring chairs and tables to the green- 
sward of the mountains, or the moss-grown 
masses of rock by the lake shore ; but these 
were probably the impressions of a cold, wet 
summer, and having soon learned thoroughly to 
appreciate these pleasures, he had his various 



Notes to Philip van Artevelde, by H^nry Taylor. 



468 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 55. 



chosen places, which he thought it a sort of duty 
annually to revisit. Of these I will name a few, 
as giving them, perhaps, an added interest to 
some future tourists. The summit of Skiddaw 
he regularly visited, often three or four times in 
a summer, but the view thence was not one he 
greatly admired. Sea-Fell and Helveilyn he 
ranked much higher, but on account of their 
distance did not often reach. Saddleback and 
Causey Pike, two mountains rarely ascended by 
tourists, were great favorites with him, and 
were the summits most frequently chosen for a 
grand expedition ; and the two tarns upon Sad- 
dleback, Threlkeld and Bowscale tarns, were 
among the spots he thought most remarkable 
for grand and lonely beauty. This, too, was 
ground rendered more than commonly interest- 
ing, by having been the scenes of the childhood 
and early life of Clifford the Shepherd Lord. 
The rocky streams of Borrowdale, high up be- 
yond Stonethwaite and Seathwaite, were also 
places often visited, especially one beautiful spot, 
where the river makes a sharp bend at the foot 
of Eagle Crag. The pass of Honistar Crag, 
leading from Buttermere to Borrowdale, fur- 
nished a longer excursion, which was occasion- 
ally taken with a sort of rustic pomp in the 
rough market carts of the country, before the 
cars which are now so generally used had be- 
come common, or been permitted by their own- 
ers to travel that worst of all roads. Occa- 
sionally there were grand meetings with Mr. 
Wordsworth, and his family and friends, at 
Leatheswater (or Thirlmere), a point about 
half way between Keswick and Rydal ; and 
here as many as fifty persons have sometimes 
met together from both sides of the country. 
These were days of great enjoyment, not to be 
forgotten. 

There was also an infinite variety of long 
walks, of which he could take advantage when 
opportunity served, without the preparation and 
trouble of a preconcerted expedition : several of 
these are alluded to in his Colloquies. The 
circuit formed by passing behind Barrow and 
Lodore to the vale of Watenlath, placed up high 
among the hills, with its own little lake and 
village, and the rugged path leading thence 
down to Borrowdale, was one of the walks he 
most admired. The beautiful vale of St. John's, 
with its " Castle Rock" and picturesquely placed 
little church, was another favorite walk; and 
there were a number of springs of unusual 
copiousness situated near what had been appar- 
ently a deserted, and now ruined village, where 
he used to take luncheon. The rocky bed of 
the little stream at the foot of Causey Pike was 
a spot he loved to rest at ; and the deep pools 
of the stream that flows down the adjoining 
valley of New Lands, 

" Whose pure and chrysolite waters 
Flow o'er a schistose bed," 

formed one of his favorite resorts for bathing. 

Yet these excursions, although for a few 
years he still continued to enjoy them, began in 
later life to wear to him something of a melan- 



choly aspect. So many friends were dead who 
had formerly shared them, and his own domestic 
losses were but too vividly called to mind with 
the remembrance of former days of enjoyment, 
the very grandeur of the scenery around many 
of the chosen places, and the unchanging feat- 
ures of the " everlasting hills," brought back 
forcibly sad memories, and these parties became 
in time so painful that it was with difficulty he 
could be prevailed upon to join in them. 

He concealed, indeed, as the reader has seen, 
beneath a reserved manner, a most acutely sens- 
itive mind, and a warmth and kindliness of 
feeling which was only understood by few, in- 
deed, perhaps, not thoroughly by any. He said, 
speaking of the death of his uncle, Mr. Hill, 
that one of the sources of consolation to him 
was the thought that perhaps the departed 
might then be conscious how truly he had loved 
and honored him ; and I believe the depth of his 
affection and the warmth of his friendship was 
known to none but himself. On one particular 
point I remember his often regretting his con- 
stitutional bashfulness and re'serve ; and that 
was, because, added to his retired life and the 
nature of his pursuits, it prevented him from 
knowing any thing of the persons among whom 
he lived. Long as he had resided at Keswick, 
I do not think there were twenty persons in the 
lower class whom he knew by sight ; and though 
this was in some measure owing to a slight de- 
gree of short-sightedness, which, contrary to 
what is usual, came on in later life, yet I have 
heard him often lament it as not being what he 
thought right; and after slightly returning the 
salutation of some passer-by, he would again 
mechanically lift his cap as he heard some well- 
known name in reply to his inquiries, and look 
back with regret that the greeting had not been 
more cordial. With those persons who were 
occasionally employed about the house he was 
most familiarly friendly, and these regarded him 
with a degree of affectionate reverence that 
could not be surpassed. 

It may perhaps be expected by some readers 
that a more accurate account of my father's in- 
come should be given than has yet appeared; 
but this is not an easy matter, from its extreme 
variableness, and this it was that constituted a 
continual source of uneasiness both to others 
and to himself, rarely as he acknowledged it. 
A common error has been to speak of him as 
one to whom literature has been a mine of 
wealth. That his political opponents should do 
this is not so strange ; but even Charles Lamb, 
who, if he had thought a little, wo aid hardly have 
written so rashly, says, in a letter to Bernard 
Barton, recently published, that ' : South ey has 
made a fortune by book drudgery." What sort of 
a "fortune" that was which never once permitted 
him to have one year's income beforehand, and 
compelled him almost always to forestall the profit 
of his new works, the reader may imagine. 

His only certain source of income* was his 






* I speak of a period prior to his receiving his last 
pension, which was granted in 1835. 



jEtat. 55. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



469 



pension, from which he received d£l45, and the 
laureateship, which was c£90 : the larger por- 
tion of these two sums, however, went to the 
payment of his life insurance, so that not more 
than c£l00 could be calculated upon as avail- 
able, and the Quarterly Review was therefore 
for many years his chief means of support. He 
received latterly <s£l00 for an article, and com- 
monly furnished one for each number. What 
more was needful had to be made up by his 
other works, which, as they were always pub- 
lished upon the terms of the publisher taking 
the risk and sharing the profits, produced him 
but little, considering the length of time they 
were often in preparation, and as he was con- 
stantly adding new purchases to his library, but 
little was to be reckoned upon this account. For 
the Peninsular War he received c£l000, but the 
copy-right remained the property of the pub- 
lisher. 

With regard to his mode of life, although it 
was as simple and inexpensive as possible, his 
expenditure was with difficulty kept within his 
income, though he had indeed a most faithful 
helpmate, who combined with a wise and care- 
ful economy a liberality equal to his own in any 
case of distress. One reason for this difficulty 
was, that considerable sums were, not now and 
then, but regularly, drawn from him by his less 
successful relatives. 

The house which for so many years was his 
residence at Keswick, though well situated both 
for convenience and for beauty of prospect, was 
unattractive in external appearance, and to most 
families would have been an undesirable resi- 
dence. Having originally been two houses, 
afterward thrown together, it consisted of a good 
many small rooms, connected by long passages, 
all of which, with great ingenuity, he made avail- 
able for holding books, with which, indeed, the 
house was lined from top to bottom. His own 
sitting-room, which was the largest in the house, 
was filled with the handsomest of them, arranged 
with much taste, according to his own fashion, 
with due regard to size, color, and condition : 
and he used to contemplate these, his carefully- 
accumulated and much-prized treasures, with 
even more pleasure and pride than the greatest 
connoisseur his finest specimens of the old mas- 
ters ; and justly, for they were both the neces- 
saries and the luxuries of life to him ; both the 
very instruments whereby he won, hardly enough, 
his daily bread, and the source of all his pleas- 
ures and recreations — the pride of his eyes and 
the joy of his heart. 

His Spanish and Portuguese collection, which 
at one time was one of the best, if not itself the 
best to be found in the possession of any private 
individual, was the most highly-prized portion 
of his library. It had been commenced by his 
uncle, Mr. Hill, long prior to my father's first 
visit to Lisbon ; and having originated in the 
love Mr. Hill himself bad for the literature of 
those countries, it was carried forward with 
more ardor when he found that his nephew's 
taste and abilities were likely to turn it to good 



account. It comprised a considerable number 
of manuscripts, some of them copied by Mr. Hill 
from rare MSS. in private and convent libra- 
ries. 

Many of these old books being in vellum or 
parchment bindings, he had taken much pains 
to render them ornamental portions of the fur 
niture of his shelves. His brother Thomas was 
skillful in calligraphy ; and by his assistance 
their backs were painted with some bright color, 
and upon it the title placed lengthwise in large 
gold letters of the old English type. Any one 
who had visited his library will remember the 
tastefully-arranged pyramids of these curious- 
looking books. 

Another fancy of his was to have all those 
books of lesser value, which had become ragged 
and dirty, covered, or rather bound, in colored 
cotton prints, for the sake of making them clean 
and respectable in their appearance, it being 
impossible to afford the cost of having so many 
put into better bindings. 

Of this task his daughters, aided by any fe- 
male friends who might be staying with them, 
were the performers ; and not fewer than from 
1200 to 1400 volumes were so bound by them 
at different times, filling completely one room, 
which he designated as the Cottonian library. 
With this work he was much interested and 
amused, as the ladies would often suit the pat- 
tern to the contents, clothing a Quaker work or 
a book of sermons in sober drab, poetry in some 
flowery design, and sometimes contriving a sly 
piece of satire at the contents of some well- 
known author by their choice of its covering. 
One considerable convenience attended this ec- 
centric mode of binding — the book became as 
well known by its dress as by its contents, and 
much more easily found. 

With respect to his mode of acquiring and 
arranging the contents of a book, it was some- 
what peculiar. He was as rapid a reader as 
could be conceived, having the power of per- 
ceiving by a glance down the page whether it 
contained any thing which he was likely to make 
use of — a slip of paper lay on his desk, and was 
used as a marker, and with a slight penciled S 
he would note the passage, put a reference on 
the paper, with some brief note of the subject, 
which he could transfer to his note-book, and in 
the course of a few hours he had classified and 
arranged every thing in the work which it was 
likely he would ever want. It was thus, with 
a remarkable memory (not so much for the facts 
or passages themselves, but for their existence 
and the authors that contained them), and with 
this kind of index both to it and them, that he 
had at hand a command of materials for what- 
ever subject he was employed upon, which has 
been truly said to be " unequaled." 

Many of the choicest passages he would trans- 
cribe himself at odds and ends of times, or em- 
ploy one of his. family to transcribe for him ; 
and these are the extracts which form his 
" Common-place Book," recently published : i>u: 
those of less importr-/ce he had thus within 



470 



LIFE AND CURRESPO^iJENCE OF 



Mr at. 65. 



reach in case he wished to avail himself of 
them. The quickness with which this was done 
was very remarkable. I have often known him 
receive a parcel of books one afternoon, and the 
next have found his mark throughout perhaps 
two or three different volumes; yet, if a work 
took his attention particularly, he was not rapid 
in its perusal ; and on some authors, such as 
the old divines, he " fed," as he expressed it, 
slowly and carefully, dwelling on the page, and 
♦aking in its contents deeply and deliberately, 
like an epicure with his " wine searching the 
subtle flavor." 

His library at his death consisted of about 
14,000 volumes; probably the largest number 
of books ever collected by a person of such lim- 
ited means. Among these he found most of the 
materials for all he did, and almost all he wished 
to do ; and though sometimes he lamented that 
his collection was not a larger one, it is prob- 
able that it was more to his advantage that it 
was in some degree limited. As it was, he col- 
lected an infinitely greater quantity of materials 
for every subject he was employed upon than 
ever he made use of, and his published Notes 
give some idea, though an inadequate one, of 
the vast stores he thus accumulated. 

On this subject he writes to his cousin, Her- 
bert Hill, at that time one of the librarians of 
the " Bodleian :" " When I was at the British 
Museum the other day, walking through the 
rooms with Carey, I felt that to have lived in 
that library, or in such a one, would have ren- 
dered me perfectly useless, even if it had not 
made me mad. The sight of such countless 
volumes made me feel how impossible it would 
be to pursue any subject through all the investi- 
gations into which it would lead me, and that 
therefore I should either lose myself in the vain 
pursuit, or give up in despair, and read for the 
future with no other object than that of immedi- 
ate gratification. This was an additional reason 
for being thankful for my own lot, aware as I 
am that I am always tempted to pursue a train 
of inquiry too far." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, JaD. 19, 1829. 
"My dear H. T., 
" You are right in your opinion of the last scene 
ill Eleemon,* but it can not be altered now, and 
I am not sure that it ever can, for the bond is 
there. When you read the original story, you 
will see how much it owes to the management 
r»f it; what was offensive I could remove, but 
there remained an essential part which I could 
neither dignify nor get rid of. All I could do 
was to prepare for treating it in part satirically, 
by concluding the interest in the penultimate 
canto, and making the reader aware that what 
remained was to be between the bishop and the 
arch lord chancellor. And after all, the poem , 
is only a sportive exercise of art, an extravagan- i 
za or capriccio to amuse myself and others. 

* This poem is entitled " All for Love, or a Sinner well 
CKved." 



" Dear H. T., however fast my thoughts may 
germinate and flower, my opinions have been of 
slow growth since I came to years of discretion, 
and since the age of forty they have undergone 
very little change ; but increase of knowledge 
has tended to confirm them. My friends— those 
whom I call so — have never been the persons 
who have flattered me ; if they had, they would 
not have held that place which they possess in 
my esteem. 

" The experiment of pauper colonies has been 
long enough in progress to satisfy such a man as 
Jacob of its success. Remember what a mat- 
ter-of-fact man he is : all the travels which have 
fallen in my way agree with him. 

" I require a first outlay, from the money ex- 
pended in work-house and poor-rates. Feed the 
pauper while he builds his cottage, fences his al- 
lotment, and digs his garden, as you feed him 
while he breaks stones or lives in idleness. You 
think of the plow, I of the spade ; you of fields, 
I of gardens ; you of corn land, I of grass land ; 
and I treat these measures, not as substitutes for 
emigration, but as co-operatives with it ; I want 
to increase potatoes and pigs as well as peasant- 
ry, who will increase whether pigs and potatoes 
do or do not. The land on which this is going 
on in Germany and Holland is worse than the 
worst of our wastes. The spade works wonders. 
God bless you ! R. Southey." 

To the Bev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, Jan. 20, 1829. 
" My deajr. Neville, 
" Among the other causes which have from 
day to days, and from days to weeks, and f»om 
weeks to months, put off the intention of writing 
to you, one has been the hope and expectation 
of hearing from you. Of you I heard an ugly 
story — that my head had fallen on yours;* in 
which accident I, as well as you, had a merci- 
ful escape, for if that bust had been your death, 
it would have left a life-long impression upon my 
spirits. 

" I am very much taken up with reviewing, 
without which, indeed, I should be in no com- 
fortable situation ; for the sale of my books in 
Longman's hands, where the old standers used 
to bring in about 6£200 a year, has fallen almost 
to nothing : at their present movement, indeed, 
they would not set my account with him even 
before seven years' end.« The Book of the 
Church, too, is at a dead stand-stiD ; and for the 
Vindiciae, that book never produced me so much 
as a single paper in the Quarterly Review. The 
Foreign Review enables me to keep pace with 
my expenditure ; but the necessity of so doing 
allows far too little time for works on which I 
might more worthily be employed. 

' : Though I am not sanguine, like my broth- 
er Tom, and have no dreams of good fortune 
coming to me on one of the four winds, I have, 

* A bust of my father, which Mr. Neville White pos- 
sessed, had fallen upon him, but, fortunately, without do 
ing serious injury. 



JEtat. 55. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



471 



God be praised, good health, good spirits, and 
good will to do whatever work is necessary to 
be done. Next month I trust you will receive 
a volume of poems, which I hope may have bet- 
ter fortune in Murray's hands than the Tale of 
Paraguay had in Longman's; for of that 1500 
copies have not sold, nor are likely to sell. My 
Colloquies, also, will follow it, if they are not 
ready quite as soon. These will be read here- 
after, whatever be their fortune now. I should 
tell you that Murray sent me an extra d£50 for 
my paper on the Roman Catholic Question.* 

" My last paper in the Foreign Review 1 was 
upon the Expulsion of the Moriscoes ; a subject 
chosen because it was well timed, showing what 
dependence may be placed upon the most solemn 
engagements of any Roman Catholic power. 
For the next I have promised a Life of Ignatius 
Loyola, and for the Quarterly Review a paper 
upon Surtees's History of Durham. In the forth- 
coming number I have an article upon Element- 
ary Education and the new King's College. 

# # # # # # # 

" Our best and kindest remembrances to all 
who are near and dear to you. Mine, in partic- 
ular, to your excellent mother. I can hardly 
hope to see her again on earth, but assuredly we 
shall meet hereafter, and in joy — in the land 
where all things are remembered. 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! 
"Yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Soutiiey." 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

"Keswick, Feb. 10, 1829. 
" My dear Madam, 

" If it were true that misfortunes never come 
singly, it would be a merciful dispensation of 
them. I at least should choose (if there were 
the power of choosing) to have my sorrows come 
thick and three-fold, and my pleasures one by 
one ; to drink of misery at a draught, however 
deep the bowl, but to sip of enjoyment, and taste 
its full flavor in every glass. The same post 
brought me the news from York,t and the king's 
speech, and I believe each would have weighed 
more heavily upon my spirits, had it come sep- 
arately, than both did together. Better a dis- 
turbed grief than a settled one. And, to confess 
the truth, the minster bore a larger part than the 
Constitution, not only in our fireside talk, but in 
my solitary feelings ; for the other evil is the 
more remediable one, and, moreover, Sir Robert 
Inglis had prepared me for it. 

" We have been betrayed by imbecility, pusil- 
lanimity, and irreligion. Our citadel would have 
been impregnable if it had been bravely defend- 
ed ; and these are times when it becomes a duty 
to perish rather than submit ; for 

* "You will have seen my paper upon the Catholic 
Question in the Quarterly Review — very deficient, as ev- 
ery thing must be which is written upon the spur of the 
moment. There is so much more to be said which was 
not said for want of room, that if I thought it would avail 
any thing, I would have a pamphlet readv for the meeting 
of Parliament."— R. S. to J. R., Nov. 1, 1828. 

I Of the burning of York Minster. 



" ' When the wicked have their day assign'd, 
Then they who suffer bravely save mankind. 1 



If we have not learned this from history, I know 
not what it can teach. 

"And now, you will ask, where do I look for 
comfort? Entirely to Providence. I should 
look to nothing but evil from the natural course 
of events, were they left to themselves ; but Al- 
mighty Providence directs them, and my heart 
is at rest in that faith. The base policy which 
has been pursued may possibly delay the relig- 
ious war in Ireland ; possibly the ulcer may be 
skinned over, and we may be called on to rejoice 
for the cure while the bones are becoming cari- 
ous. But there are great struggles which must 
be brought to an issue before we shall be truly 
at peace ; between Infidelity and Religion, and 
between Popery and Protestantism. The latter 
battle must be fought in Ireland, and I would 
have it fought now : two or three years ago 1 
would have prevented it. Fought it must be at 
last, and with great advantage to the enemy from 
the delay ; but the right cause will triumph at. 
last. 

" About three years ago I wrote a paper in the 
Quarterly Review on Britton's Cathedral Antiq- 
uities, and spoke then of the danger to which these 
edifices are always liable, in a manner that ought 
to entitle me, if I were but a little crazy, to set up 
for a prophet. God grant that other and more 
definite fore-feelings may not be in like manner 
confirmed. 

" Believe me, my dear madam, 

" Yours with sincere regard, 
• " Robert Southey." 

To Sir R. H. Inglis, Bart. 

" Keswick, Feb. 22, 1829. 
" My dear Friend, 

" You need not be assured that I most heartily 
wish you success at Oxford, and that, if I had a 
vote to give you, I would take a much longer 
journey than that from Keswick to Oxford for the 
satisfaction of giving it. So would Wordsworth, 
who was with me yesterday, and entirely accords 
with us in our views of this momentous subject. 

" Some old moralist has said that misfortunes 
are blessings in disguise ; and I am trying to per- 
suade myself that this turn of affairs, which, upon 
every principle of human prudence, is to be con- 
demned, may eventually verify the saying, and be 
directed by Providence to a happier end than could 
otherwise have been attained. We are now placed 
in somewhat like the same situation with regard to 
the Irish Catholics that we were thirty years ago 
to Bonaparte, and are yielding to them as we did 
to him at Amiens. Will the peace be concluded ? 
and if so, will it last quite as long ? 

" The feeling of the country is so decidedly 
Protestant, that I verily believe a man with Pitt's 
powers of elocution and Pitt's courage in the 
House of Commons might do as he did with the 
Coalition. Our pieces are lost, but we are strong 
in pawns, and wero there but one of them in a 
position to be queen'd, we should win the game. 
But this would now be at. the cost of a civil war ; 



472 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 55. 



and this it is that constitutes the gravamen of the 
charge against ministers. They took none of 
those measures which might have prevented this 
alternative ; they suffered the danger to grow up, 
knowingly, willfully, and I can not but add, treach- 
erously ; and now they make the extent of that 
danger their excuse for yielding to it. They 
have deceived their friends, and betrayed the 
Constitution. 

" Now any war is so dreadful a thing, that even 
\vhen it becomes (as it may) a duty to choose it 
as the least of two evils, a good man, in making 
such a choice, must bid farewell forever to all 
lightness of heart. There will be hours of mis- 
giving for him, let his mind be ever so strong ; 
and sleepless nights and miserable dreams, when 
the thorns in his pillow prevent him not from sleep- 
ing. This we shall be spared from. It is not 
our resistance to this pusillanimous surrender that 
will bring on the last appeal. It must be made 
at length, but under circumstances in which our 
consciousness will be that the course which we 
should have pursued from the beginning would 
have prevented it. 

" This is our position. Let us now look at 
that in which Mr. Peel and his colleagues have 
placed themselves. They have pledged them- 
selves to impose securities ; the more violent 
Catholics have declared that they will submit to 
none : and the Bishop of London (who said he 
should be satisfied with the minimum of security) 
has said in Parliament that he can devise none. 
And here Phillpotts, who, I dare say, was hon- 
estly upon the quest, is at fault. The difficulties 
here may again break off the treaty, and in such 
a manner that those Emancipators who think se- 
curities necessary must come round, in which 
case as much may be gained by an accession of 
strength as has been lost by this pitiful confession 
of weakness. I am inclined to think that these 
preliminary difficulties will not be got over. 

" But if the measure be passed, and the Prot- 
estant flag should be struck, and the enemy march 
in with flying colors, there may possibly be a sort 
of honey-moon session after the surrender. Then 
comes the second demand for despoiling the Irish 
Church, and the Catholic Association is renewed 
in greater strength, and upon much more formi- 
dable grounds. Meantime the Irish Protestants 
will lose heart, and great numbers will emigrate, 
flying while they can from the wrath to come. 
Grief enough, and cause enough of fear, there 
will be for us in all this ; but as to peace of mind, 
we should be in a Goshen of our own. And there 
is hope in the prospect ; for all pretext of civil 
rights is then at an end. It becomes a religious 
claim leading at once to a religious war. The 
infidel party may still adhere to the papists ; their 
other partisans can no longer do so. And I think, 
also, that France is not so likely to take part in 
a war upon papal grounds, as in one which would 
be represented as a liberal cause. 

" I know but one danger in the present state 
of things which might have shaken a constant 
mind ; that arising from the great proportion of 
Irish Catholics in the army. The Protestant 



strength of Ireland was enough to counterpoise 
it. But if the duke was affected by this danger, 
he will take means for lessening it before the cri- 
sis comes on. 

" These are my speculations, partaking per- 
haps of the sunshine of a hopeful and cheerful dis- 
position. Had I been intrusted with political 
power at this time, I would, upon the principle 
that we are to trust hi Providence, but act accord- 
ing to the clear perception of duty, have resisted 
this concession even to blood. In this I differ 
from Blanco White. I am sorry to see the part 
which he is taking ; but I am quite sure he has 
a single eye, and casts no sinister looks with it. 
" God speed you, my dear friend, not in this 
contest alone, but in every thing. I wish you 
success the more, because it will be creditable to 
the University — to the national character. The 

I mass of mankind, while we are what our institu- 

j tions make us, must be time-servers. (The old 
Adam in our nature is less active than the old 
Serpent in our system of society.) When they 

| shift with the wind, they only change professions, 
not principles, upon questions which they under- 

I stand imperfectly. But if I see a good majority 
of persons w T ho have preferment to look for, ei- 
ther in the Church or the Law, voting according 
to their former convictions, when tergiversation 
is the order of the day, it will be a hopeful symp- 

I torn, and serve in a small degree as a set-off 
against the mortification which individual cases 
of defection can not but occasion at this time. 
" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

My father's paper on the Catholic Question 
in the Quarterly Review appears to have met 
with ro}>-al approbation, for the king expressed a 
wish that it should be printed in a separate form 
for more general circulation. This, however, 
Mr. Murray, apparently having more regard to 
profit than loyalty, would not consent to, saying 
that those who wished to read the article might 
purchase the number which contained it. But 
as it found favor with many persons, as might be 
expected, it was extremely unpalatable to those 
who held views of an opposite nature ; and in a 
pamphlet upon the Roman Catholic claims by the 
Rev. Mr. Shannon, it was alluded to in very 
strong terms, and the writer further expressed 
his confident hopes that my father was not the 
| author, because there was a spirit in it so " ut- 
terly inhuman" toward Ireland and its Catholic 
I population, and because, when in his company 
' several times more than twenty years previously, 
| he " remembered well the enthusiasm of his feel- 
ings in speaking of the wrongs and sufferings of 
Ireland., and the energy of language in which he 
' expressed his ardent wishes for the restoration 
: of Catholic rights ;"# and he went on to say, 

* This passage was extracted in the Times newspaper 
! with this remark : " The article against the Irish Roman 
Catholics and their claims, which appeared in the last num- 
ber of the Quarterly Review, has generally been ascribed 
to the pen of Dr. Southey ; we are not in the secret on 
such matters, nor do we think it of any consequence to 
settle the authorship of such a piece of acrimonious decla- 
. mution ; but we allude to it for the purpose of introducing 



jEtat. 55. 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



473 



that "the generous warmth of indignant feeling 
may easily be supposed to abate in the cooler 

a note relative to the doctor from a convincing and able 
Address to the Clergy on behalf of the Roman Catholic 
Claims, just published by the Rev. Mr. Shannon, of Edin- 
burgh. As we take it for granted that the reverend gen- 
tleman is stating a fact, we must conclude, that if Dr. 
Southey be the author of the article in question, he has to 
add another inconsistency to that long list of tergiversa- 
tions and conflicting professions which have occurred in 
his transition from the Jacobin leveler of altars and 
thrones to the loyal and high-church poet laureate, of 
which he ought to be reminded every year by receiving 
a copy of Wat Tyler along with the annual butt of sack." 

In consequence of this, a long letter was addressed to 
the editor of the Times by Mr. Henry Taylor, some por- 
tions of which I subjoin here, as answering well both Mr. 
Shannon's charges and those of the Times' editor. 

" Mr. Shannon ha3 found in the article ' an inhuman 
spirit toward the Irish.' I have searched the article 
through, and I know not where in it Mr. Shannon could 
find a trace of such a spirit, or a pretext for his charge. 
At page 573, the writer speaks of the readiness with which 
the Irish would rebel for the sake of their religion. ' In 
that faith,' he says, ' they would be ready to inflict or to 
endure any thing, to deserve the heaviest punishment that 
outraged humanity might demand and offended justice 
exact, and to undergo it with a fortitude which, arising 
from deluded conscience, excites compassion even more 
than it commands respect.' If these are the feelings with 
which the writer would regard the Irish in rebellion, what 
are the measures by which he would keep them out of it ? 
■ The Emperor Acbar bore upon his signet this saying : 
" I never saw any one lost upon a straight road." This is 
a straight road — to restrain treason, to punish sedition, 1o 
disregard clamor, and by every possible means to better 
the condition of the Irish peasantry, who are not more 
miserably ignorant than they are miserably oppressed. 
Give them employment in public works, bring the bogs 
into cultivation, facilitate for those who desire it the means 
of emigration. Extend the poor laws to Ireland ; experi- 
ence may teach us to guard against their abuse — they are 
benevolent, they are necessary, they are just. * * * 
Better their condition thus — educate the people, execute 
justice, and maintain peace. * * * Let every 
thing be done that can relieve the poor— every thing that 
can improve their condition, physically, morally, intellect- 
Udlly, and religiously.' 

" As far as human feelings and not political opinions are 
in question, I know not by what spirit Mr. Shannon would 
desire this writer to have been actuated, nor do I know 
by what spirit any writer could have been actuated who 
could find ' an inhuman spirit' in this. 

" Surely Mr. Shannon might find it in his power to dif- 
fer from Mr. Southey (as I do) on the Catholic Question, 
without imputing to him malevolent feelings, corrupt mo- 
tives, and an advocacy of gross oppressions. The differ- 
ence is on a controvertible political question, to the advo- 
cates of which, on either side, injurious language is obvi- 
ously misapplied ; and at the same time that I am willing 
to give due credit to Mr. Shannon for his exertions in a 
cause to which I wish all success, I regret that he has been 
betrayed, in this instance, into a mode of proceeding which 
is no evidence of the abilities attributed to him, and which 
is, moreover, in more than one respect, rather inconsist- 
ent with the feelings of propriety which belong to his pro- 
fession, and, I have no doubt (political zeal apart), to him- 
self also. 

" Mr. Southey has been, at all times, an enemy to op- 
pression of all sorts. Mr. Shannon found him so in his 
conversations twenty-five years ago, and whether in his 
writings or in his discourse, to those who understand his 
views, he will never appear otherwise. True it is that at 
the present time Mr. Southey considers the nearest dan- 
gers of society to arise from a too rapid accession of power 
to the ill instructed. A man acting under this conviction 
will naturally apply himself with more solicitude to ex- 
hibit to the people the benefits which they derive from 
existing institutions, than to detect for them their griev- 
ances. But, as in this article (if it be his), so in all his 
other writings, he never stints the language of reprobation 
when there is real oppression to be written of. Men may 
differ from him as to the measures which may be applica- 
ble to our system of society ; but if they see him aright, 
they will see him, in spirit and in purpose, as sincere a 
lover of liberty, and as indignantly opposed to injustice, 
as ever he was in his boyhood, when he thought that he 
saw a short way out of the evils of society. 

" You, or the writer of your paragraph, have spoken of 
' the long list of his tergiversations.' In so speaking you 
have joined the common cry of those enemies of Mr. 



temperament of an advancing age ; but it is im- 
possible that the moral sense should undergo so 
complete a transformation, except from causes 
which are liable to suspicion." 

This misrepresentation of a private conversa- 
tion which had taken place so long ago, naturally 
surprised and annoyed exceedingly my father, 
and he wrote to Mr. Shannon on the first instant 
very courteously, saying that he had no doubt he 
had persuaded himself that the statement was 
correct, but that it was altogether inaccurate in 
every thing which would appear to him material ; 
and he concluded by saying that Mr. Shannon 
owed him a public acknowledgment for a public 
wrong. 

This, however, Mr. Shannon was not inclined 
to make : and as he persisted in maintaining that 
his impression of what my father's opinions had 
been was correct, and that he had not commit- 
ted any offense against the established usages of 
society in thus bringing forward his recollections 
of a private conversation, the correspondence as- 
sumed a somewhat angry tone. The following 
letter, w T hich concluded it, I insert here, as giv- 
ing pretty clearly a summary both of these cir- 
cumstances and of my father's opinions respect- 
ing Ireland. 

To the Rev. Richard Shannon. 

"Keswick, March 2, 1829. 
" Sir, — I thank you for your pamphlet ; but 
I find that the extract from it in The Times is 
faithfully given, and I repeat that you have of- 
fered me a personal wrong, as unprovoked as it 
is unwarrantable. You have egregiously mis- 
taken what my opinions were when we met. 
You have uncharitably misrepresented what they 
are now; and you have imputed to me suspicious 
motives for a change which has no other exist- 

Southey whom his political writings have raised up 
against him. The only fact which can be assumed as s 
foundation for such charges is, that Mr. Southey held re 
publican opinions in his very early youth, and that he 
changed them soon after he had arrived at man's estate. 
That he profited by the change is wholly false. And to 
suppose that any worldly considerations could have af- 
fected his opinions, or touched for a moment the sincerity 
of his mind, would seem to any one who knew him as ab 
surd as to suppose that Nelson wanted courage or that 
Sheridan wanted wife When, with the growth of his 
knowledge and understanding, his Utopian systems gave 
way, he attached himself to the Constitution of his coun- 
try — and here ' the long list of his tergiversations' comes 
to an end. 

"Mr. Southey is a public man, and you have a right to 
j animadvert on the opinions of his which are or have been 
before the public, whether they come out in a way which 
is usual, or by the means of gentlemen who shall conceive 
themselves to have mastered them in two or three private 
conversations at Mr. Southey's table, and to be enabled to 
expound them now. You must allow me, however, to 
express regret that an editor, whose paper owes, I think, 
a part of its weight to the use of some little discrimina- 
tion in the language of invective, should have suffered 
himself to join in a vulgar cry of inferior party writers, 
and to cast a reflection tor what he can scarcely think to 
be matter of reproach. For the distinguished individual 
in question, men of ability ought to have at least one sort 
of respect, and all who know him must have every possi- 
ble respect. I can not help thinking, therefore, that you 
would have better prefaced your extract from Mr. Shan- 
non's publication if you had admonished him (with all due 
acknowledgment of his merits and exertions) that he 
would do well, in making toward a just end, to be just od 
the way, and to pursue liberality with a liberal feeling. 
" I am, sir, your obedient servant, II. T." 



474 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



IEtat. 55. 



ence than in your own erroneous recollections 
and intemperate judgment. 

" If what you called the Catholic rights were 
touched upon in our table-talk, it is likely that a 
subject which was not at that time prominent 
would be lightly dismissed, willing as we both 
were to dwell rather upon points of agreement 
than of difference. I remember distinctly our 
difference concerning the union with England, 
and no other. Nor do I suppose that we differ 
now upon any thing else relating to Ireland, ex- 
cept upon the question whether concession to 
the Romanists is likely to remedy the evils of 
that poor country or to aggravate them. On 
that question it is well known to all my friends 
that my views have never undergone any altera- 
tion ; and they were formed and declared as ear- 
ly as the year 1801, when the question first came 
before me. For what possible motive could I 
have dissembled them to you? I have never 
expressed an opinion which I did not hold, nor 
held one which I feared to express — to maintain 
when I was persuaded that it was right, or to 
abandon if convinced that it was wrong. 

" With regard to the Quarterly Review, I nev- 
er will allow that any one has a right to call 
upon me individually respecting any composition 
(not of a personal character) which has not my 
name affixed to it. But I maintain every argu- 
ment which is urged in that paper ; I assent to 
every assertion which it contains ; I hold every 
opinion which is advanced there. Elsewhere I 
have published arguments, assertions, and opin- 
ions of the same kind, bearing upon the same 
conclusion. And whosoever charges me with 
inhumanity for this, or affirms that it is designed 
to render the Irish objects of horror and execra- 
tion, calumniates me. I have been used to mis- 
representation and calumny, but I did not expect 
them, sir, from you. 

" It is a fair course of argument to assert that 
the miseries of Ireland were not caused by the 
laws which exclude the Roman Catholics from 
legislative power, and to infer that they can not 
be remedied by the repeal of those laws ; and 
the question is, whether those premises can be 
proved by historical facts, and that inference es- 
tablished by just reasoning. You can not con- 
demn the British government more severely than 
I do for having suffered the great body of the 
Irish people to remain to this day in as barbar- 
ous a state as the Scotch and the Welsh were 
till they were civilized, the first by their Kirk, 
the second by the laws. That the Irish have 
been thus barbarous from the earliest times may 
be learned by their own annals ; that they are so 
still is proved at every assizes in that unhappy 
country, and almost in every newspaper. That 
they should be in this condition is the fault of 
their aristocracy, their landlords, and their priests, 
and the reproach of their rulers. But in what 
state of mind must that person be who accuses 
another of inhumanity, and holds him up as the 
enemy of the Irish nation, because he has assert- 
ed these truths ! 



" I could say more, sir, were it not vain to ad- 
dress one whose sense of the usages of society is 
so perverse that he deems it no breach of honor 
and hospitality to bring old table-talk before the 
public for the purpose of depreciating me ; whose 
prepossessions are so obstinate that rather than 
think it possible his own recollections, after more 
than twenty years, may have deceived him, he 
will believe me guilty of deliberate falsehood ; 
whose Christian charity is so little, that because 
I think the Protestant Church establishments in 
England and Ireland will be endangered by ad- 
mitting Roman Catholics into the Legislature, 
he imputes suspicious motives to me, and accus- 
es me of seeking to render the Irish people ob- 
jects of horror and execration ; and, finally, 
whose notions of moral feeling are so curiously 
compounded, that because these heinous charg- 
es are accompanied with some complimentary 
phrases to the injured person on the score of his 
talents, he is actually surprised that an indignant 
remonstrance should be expressed in a tone 
which he calls uncourteous ! Finding it, there- 
fore, in vain to expect from you a reparation of 
the wrong which you have offered, I shall take 
a near and fitting opportunity for publicly con- 
tradicting^ your statement, and repelling your 
injurious charges and calumniatory insinuations. 
"Robert Southey." 

My father's convictions upon the subject of 
the admission of Roman Catholics into the Leg- 
islature were most strongly rooted in his mind : 
he had, indeed, always held that all rights should 
be conceded to them, and all restrictions remov- 
ed in matters which had not a close relation to 
political power ; but to invest them with that 
power he considered as the most perilous exper- 
iment that could by possibility be tried in a Prot- 
estant country. Deeply read in Roman Catho- 
lic history, and probably more fully acquainted 
with the principles and practices of that Church, 
as set forth by her own writers, than most of his 
cotemporaries, he Could not divest himself of the 
idea that her sincere members must necessarily 
be actuated by the same spirit as of old. He 
felt that if he were of that faith his whole heart 
and soul would be bent upon the overthrow of 
the Protestant Church — that he would have 
striven to be a second Loyola ; and believing 
one of the moving principles of the Roman Cath- 
olic religion to be that the end justified the 
means, he did not see how any securities that 
might be taken from members of that persuasion 
could be strong enough to overcome what he 
considered ought to be a paramount duty on their 
part. 

Some of his friends, indeed, endeavored to per- 
suade him that Romanism would accommodate 
itself to the times if it were permitted to do so ; 
but he could not be convinced of this, and he con- 
sequently viewed the passing of the Roman Cath- 
olic Bill with very dark forebodings. 

* This was done by a few brief remarks in the Preface 
to the Colloquies with Sir Thomas More. 



jEtat. 55. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



475 



To George Ticknor, Esq. 

"Keswick, March 17, 1829. 
" My dear Sie, 

" Mere shame has for some time withheld me 
from writing, till I could tell you that my Collo- 
quies, which have so long been in the press, were 
on the way to you. They will be so by the time 
this letter is half seas over. I am expecting by 
every post the concluding proofs 5 and you will 
receive with them a little volume consisting of 
two poems,* from the subjects of which (both 
are Romish legends), and perhaps a little from 
the manner also, you might suppose the writer 
was rejuvenescent. Both were, indeed, intend- 
ed for some of our Annuals, which are now the 
mushrooms of literature ; but the first in its prog- 
ress far outgrew all reasonable limits for such a 
collection, and the latter was objected to because 
it. might prevent the annual from selling in Ro- 
man Catholic circles — an anecdote, this, which 
is but too characteristic of the times. 

" Rejuvenescent, however, in a more important 
sense of the word, thank God, I am. When your 
consignment arrived at Keswick last summer, I 
was in London, under Copeland the surgeon's 
hands. By an operation which some years ago 
was one of the most serious in surgery, but which 
he (more than any other person) has rendered as 
safe as any operation can be, I have been effect- 
ually relieved from an infirmity which had af- 
flicted me about twelve years, and which often 
rendered me incapable of walking half a mile. 
Now I am able to climb the mountains ; and as 
then I was never without a sense of infirmity 
when I moved, I never walk now without a con- 
sciousness of the blessing that it is to have been 
thus rendered sound. This sort of second spring 
prevents me from feeling the approach of age as 
I otherwise might do. Indeed, Time lays his 
hand on me gently : I require a glass only for dis- 
tant objects ; for work, my eyes serve me as 
well as ever they did ; and this is no slight bless- 
ing when most of my cotemporarics have taken 
to spectacles. 

" Nevertheless, I have mementoes enough in 
myself and in those around me. The infant 
whom you saw in his basket has now entered 
upon his eleventh year, and is making progress 
in Dutch and German as well as Greek and Lat- 
in. The youngest of my remaining daughters 
has ceased to be a girl. She who was the flow- 
er of them (and never was there a fairer flower) 
— you will remember her — is "in heaven; and 
were it not for the sure hope we have in look- 
ing forward, I could not bear to look back. 

" This year, I trust, will see good progress 
made in Oliver Newman, the poem being so far 
advanced that it becomes an object to take it earn- 
estly in hand and complete it. With us no poet- 
ry now obtains circulation except what is in the 
Annuals ; these are the only books which are 
purchased for presents, and the chief sale which 
poetry used to have was ®f this kind. Here, 
however, we are overrun with imitative talent 

* The titles of these were, " All for Love, or a Sinner 
well Saved," and " Thg Pilgrim to Compostella." 



in all the fine arts, especially in fine literature , 
and if it is not already the case with you, i' will 
very soon be so. I can see some good in this : 
in one or two generations, imitative talent will 
become so common that it will nol be mistaken, 
when it first manifests itself, for genius ; and it 
will then be cultivated rather as an embellish- 
ment for private life than with aspiring views of 
ambition. Much of that leveling is going on 
with us which no one can more heartily desire 
to promote than I do — that which is produced 
by raising the lower classes. Booksellers and 
printsellers find it worth while now to publish 
for a grade of customers which they deemed ten 
years ago beneath their consideration. Good 
must result from this in many ways ; and could 
we but hope or dream of any thing like long 
peace, we might dream of seeing England in a 
state of intellectual culture and internal prosper- 
ity such as no country has ever before attained. 
But all the elements of discord are at work ; and 
though I am one of the last men to despair, yet 
I have no hope of living to see the end of the 
troubles which must ere long break out — the 
fruits of this accursed Catholic Question, let it 
now take what course it may. 

" Wordsworth has had a most dangerous fall, 
headlong, from his own mount, but providential- 
ly received no serious injury. He is looking old, 
but vigorous as ever both in mind and body. 
Remember me to all my Boston friends, and pre- 
sent my thanks to Mr. Norton for his edition of 
Mrs. Hemans's poems, which reached me safely. 
I was very sorry that he found me here in a crowd, 
in consequence of which I saw much less of him 
and his very agreeable companions than we all 
wished to have done. 

" God bless you, my dear sir ! 

" Yours, with sincere regard, 

"ROBEET SOUTIIEY." 

My father had given commission for a con- 
siderable number of books to the great " biblio- 
pole" of Brussels, which were so long in mak- 
ing their appearance that Mr. Taylor had ex- 
pressed some opinions derogatory to his qual- 
ities as a good and punctual bookseller, which 
called forth the following amusing letter in his 
defense. 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" April 13, 1829. 

"My dear H. T., 

" I must not let you think ill of Verbeyst. He 
had sundry books to provide for me, some of 
which are not easily found ; for example, tho 
continuators of Baronius, a set of Sarins, and 
Colgar's very rare Lives of the Irish Saints, 
without which I could not review O'Connor's 
collection of the Res Hibernicarum Script. Last 
year, when ho had collected these, his wife fell 
ill and died. Bien des malheurs, he says, he has 
had since he saw me, and that they had left him 
in a lethargic state, from which he is only be- 
ginning to recover. * * * 

11 You must not think ill of Verbeyst : he has 



476 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 55. 



the best stock of books I ever met with, and at 
the lowest prices. * * No, H. T., if you 
had bought as many books of Verbeyst as I have, 
and had them in your eye (as they are now in 
mine), and had talked with him as much as I 
have done (and in as good French), and had 
drunk his Rhenish wine and his beer, which is 
not the best in the world, because there is, or 
was, as good at West Kennet, but than which 
there is not, never was, and never can be better 
— no, H. T., if you remembered the beer, the 
wine, and the man himself, as I do, you would 
not and could not entertain even the shadow of 
an ill or an angry thought toward Verbeyst. 
Think ill of our fathers which are in the Row, 
think ill of John Murray, think ill of Colburn, 
think ill of the whole race of bibliopoles except 
Verbeyst, who is always to be thought of with 
liking and respect. 

" A joyful day it will be when the books come, 
and he promises them by the first ship — perhaps 
it may be the second. But come they will at 
last, if wind and waters permit ; and, if all be 
well, when they arrive I shall not envy any 
man's happiness (were I given to envy) on that 
day. 

" I have told you of the Spaniard who always 
put on his spectacles when he was about to eat 
cherries, that they might look the bigger and 
more tempting. In like manner, I make the 
most of my enjoyments, and, though I do not 
cast my cares away, I pack them in as little 
compass as I can, carry them as conveniently as 
I can for myself, and never let them annoy oth- 
ers. God bless you ! R. S." 

The next letter is out of place as to date, but, 
I think, so peculiarly in it as to subject, that I 
may be excused the anachronism. 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Oct. 8, 1829. 
" My dear H. T., 

" I have been jumping for joy : Verbeyst has 
kept his word ; the bill of lading is in Long- 
man's hands, and by the time this reaches you I 
hope the vessel, with the books on board, may 
be in the river, and by this day month they will 
probably be here. Then shall I be happier than 
if his majesty King George the Fourth were to 
give orders that I should be clothed in purple, 
and sleep upon gold, and have a chain about my 
neck, and sit next him because of my wisdom, 
and be called his cousin. 

" Long live Verbeyst ! the best, though not 
the most expeditious of booksellers ; and may I, 
who am the most patient of customers, live long 
to deal with him. And may you and I live to 
go to the Low Countries again, that I may make 
Brussels in the way, and buy more of his books, 
and drink again of his Rhenish wine and of his 
strong beer, better than which Jacob von Arte- 
velde never had at his own table, of his own 
brewing — not even when he entertained King 
Edward and Queen Philippa at the christening. 
Would he have had such a son as Philip if he 



had been a water-drinker, or ever put swipes to 
his lips ? God bless you ! R. S." 

To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

"April 14, 1829. 

" The bookseller sent me the first volume of 
your unpublished series. Some things in it I 
wished away ; with very many more you know 
how truly I must be delighted. Lucullus and 
Caesar especially pleased me, as one of the most 
delightful of these conversations throughout. 

" You will not suppose that I am one of the sud- 
den converts to Catholic Emancipation. Those 
conversions have the ill effect of shaking all con- 
fidence in public men, and making more con- 
verts to parliamentary reform than ever could 
have been made by any other means. For my- 
self, I look on almost as quietly at these things 
from Keswick as you do from Florence, having 
done my duty in opposing what I believe to be 
a most dangerous measure, and comforting my- 
self with the belief that things will end better 
than if it had been in my power to have directed 
their course. I suppose the next movement of 
the Irish Catholics, when the next movement of 
the drama begins, will be put down by the Duke 
of Wellington with a high hand ; but the ghost 
of the Catholic Question will be far more diffi- 
cult to lay than the Question itself would have 
been : there will be a great emigration of Prot- 
estants from Ireland ; the struggle will be for 
Catholic domination there, and we shall have the 
war upon a religious ground, not upon a civil 
pretext. 

" We are likely to have Historians of the 
American War on both sides of the water. Ja- 
red Sparks, who is to publish Washington's Cor- 
respondence, came over to examine our state 
papers. In his search, and in that which took 
place in consequence of it, so much matter has 
been ferreted out that the government wishes to 
tell its own story, and my pulse was felt ; but I 
declined, upon the ground that others could per- 
form the task as well, and that I have other ob- 
jects which it was not likely that any other per- 
son would take up with the same good will, and 
equal stock in hand to begin with. 

" My health, thank God, is good, and the op- 
eration I underwent last June has restored me 
to the free use of my strength in walking, a mat- 
ter of no trifling importance for one who was 
born to go afoot all the days of his life. I can 
now once more climb the mountains, and have 
a pleasant companion in my little boy, now in 
his eleventh year. Whatever may be his after 
fortunes, he will have had a happy childhood, 
and, thus far, a happy boyhood. The change 
which my death would make in his happiness, 
and in that of others, is the only thing which 
casts a cloud over my prospect toward eternity. 
I wish I could see you and your children ; and 
I have a hope that this may yet be, though I 
know not when. 

" God bless you ! R S." 

On page 465 ny father speaks of an intended 



iETAT. 55. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



477 



visit to the Isle of Man in the following May, 
and all preparations were now made for this ex- 
cursion, which was, however, destined to be cut 
short by what seemed an untoward circum- 
stance, though it did not prove so in its results. 
On arriving at Whitehaven, we found some ac- 
cident had occurred to the machinery of the 
steam-vessel in which we were to have crossed, 
and, in consequence, it was determined that we 
should fix ourselves for a time at some water- 
ing-place on the coast. Chancing, however, on 
our road to call at Netherhall, the seat of my 
father's old friend and fellow-traveler, Mr. Sen- 
house, he found him just recovering from an ill- 
ness, and glad of the cheerful change my fa- 
ther's company afforded him ; and our morning 
call was prolonged, by his hospitable pressure, 
to a five weeks' visit. 

This led further to Mr. Senhouse being in- 
duced to remove with his family to Keswick for 
the latter part of the summer and the autumn, 
which he did for several successive years, and a 
great addition was thus made to the pleasant 
summer society there. Many were the morn- 
ing excursions and evening dances held in con- 
sequence ; and although my father was at no 
time a partaker of the latter, and occasionally 
looked grave at late hours, yet no one rejoiced 
more to see others enjoy themselves. 

These were the best days of Keswick in my 
recollection : there were always parties of Ox- 
ford and Cambridge students passing the long 
vacation there, and with the resident society and 
the frequent presence of visitors, for some years 
our season was a very gay and joyous one. My 
father's occupations, however, though suffering 
some necessary interruptions, slackened little 
because of the idleness around him. 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" June 20, 1829. 
"My dear H. T., 

"Here is a tit-bit of information to you re- 
specting publishers and public taste. One of 

's best novelists writes to me thus : ' You 

are not aware, perhaps, that my publisher em- 
ploys supervisors, who strike out any thing like 
dissertation, crying out ever for bustle and inci- 
dent, the more thickly clustered the better. Nov- 
el readers, say these gentry, are impatient of any 
thing else ; and they who have created this de- 
praved appetite must continue to minister to it.' 

" I have been amused by reading in the Atlas 
that I resemble Leigh Hunt very much both in 
my handwriting and character, both being ' ele- 
gant pragmatics. 1 A most queer fish, whose 
book and epistle will make you laugh when you 
come here next, calls me, in verse, ' a man of 
Helicon.' ' Elegant Pragmatic' I think pleases 
me better. 

"I am now working at the Peninsular War. 
Canga Arguelles has published a volume of re- 
marks upon the English histories of that war : 
it is, in the main, a jealous but just vindication 
of his countrymen against Napier. In my case 
he has denied one or two unimportant statements, 



for which my authorities are as good as his, and 
pointed out scarcely any mistake except that of 
paper money, for stamps, in a case where the 
people burned those of the intrusive government. 
I am not a little pleased to see that he has not 
discovered a single error of the slightest import- 
ance ; but I am justly displeased that, professed- 
ly writing to vindicate his countrymen against 
the injurious and calumniating representation of 
the English writers, he has not specially except- 
ed me from such an imputation, as he ought in 
honesty to have done. 

" I am also in the last part of a queer poem 
for Allan Cunningham. The hay-asthma keeps 
off and on with me, sometimes better, sometimes 
worse, sometimes wholly suspended, and never 
much to be complained of. As soon as my dis- 
patches are made up, I shall set off with it, in 
the intention of bathing in the Greta, unless a 
shower should prevent me. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



To Henry Taylor, Esq. 



"My dear H. T., 
# * # 



" July 8, 1829. 
# # # 



I have no wish to see the Examiner.* What 
there is there proceeds either from the Elegant 
Pragmatic himself, or from Hazlitt, both of whom 
hate me, but have a sort of intellectual conscience 
which makes them respect me in spite of them- 
selves. But it is evident that the constant hos- 
tility of newspapers and journals must act upon 
an author's reputation like continued rain upon 
grass which is intended to be cut for hay ; it beats 
it to the ground and ruins the harvest, though 
the root may remain unhurt. Booksellers, if they 
understood their own interest, ought to counter- 
act this. 

" As for my readiness to admit any exculpa- 
tion of the Spaniards, I shall not acknowledge 
any such bias till I see that any writer has more 
distinctly perceived their manifold errors, or more 
plainly stated them. 

" Lockhart has sent me Doddridge's Corre- 
spondence to review : a pleasant and easy sub- 
ject, though the first half volume, which is all I 
have read, is a most curious specimen of elabo- 
rate insipidity. From his youth Doddridge kept 
short-hand copies of all the letters which he 
wrote ! and the series begins in his nineteenth 
year, and any thing so vapid, so totally devoid 
of easy and natural playfulness, I could hardly 
have conceived. Withal, he was an excellently 
good man, and when I have read his works (to 
which I am an entire stranger at present, but I 
have sent to Lockhart for them), I may then per- 
ceive that he has deserved his reputation as a 
writer. At any rate, insipid materials may be 
made into a good dish by the help of suitablo 
seasoning and sauces, and I like to deal with no 
subjects so well as those which I can play with. 

* A review of the Colloquies had appeared in that paper, 
and Mr. Taylor had offered to send him the number flint 
contained it 



478 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 55. 



" Blackwood I have not seen. 

" I have the raw materials of more ballads 
ready to be worked out, and am about a prelude, 
which I think you will like, to the next. Allan 
offers «£35 per sheet, which is good pay for light 
and pleasant work, and I retain the right of re- 
printing hereafter. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 9, 1829. 
" My dear R., 
"Do you know any thing of an association 
which began at Brighton about two years ago, 
and which Gooch writes me word from thence 
' is prospering splendidly considering the paucity 
of its means.' It is a slip of Owenism grafted 
upon a sound common sense stock. ' The whole 
principle is (Gooch loquitur) for a number to join 
to form a common property by small weekly sub- 
scriptions, which, instead of being vested in sav- 
ings' banks or benefit societies, is vested in busi- 
ness. They have already got a shop, a mack- 
erel boat, and a garden of twenty-eight acres, 
all of which are prospering ; so that the com- 
mon property in capital accumulates in two ways, 
by the weeldy subscriptions and by the profits 
of trade. In conducting these trades they em- 
ploy their own members, and as they increase 
their trade they will employ more, till the whole 
number will be employed in the service : then 
the community will be complete, although scat- 
tered ; but they hope, ultimately, to live together 
on their own land in a kind of village, like the 
Beguines of Ghent. The practice is spreading 
among the working classes in various parts of 
the island, and seventy similar institutions have 
already been formed. The knowledge of it has 
been diffused by a weekly paper called the Co- 
operator, consisting of four pages, price one pen- 
ny: it sells upward of 12,000. I have drawn 
up (Gooch loquitur) an account of it for the Quar- 
terly ; but will the editor put it in ?' Brighton 
is near enough to one of your haunts for you to 
inquire further into this, if it strikes you as it 
does me at this distance and Gooch upon the spot. 

" God bless you ! R S." 

To the Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot. 

" Keswick, July 12, 1829. 
" My dear Lightfoot, 

" The very wish which you have expressed to 
me, that your sons should become acquainted 
with my kinsmen (who, though my first cousins, 
are of their generation, not of yours or mine), 
I had formed, and was thinking of expressing to 
you. I dearly love inherited attachments, and 
am never better pleased than when I see a like- 
lihood of their striking root. 

" Your bishop (Dr. Phillpotts) was at the head 
of the school when I entered it in its midway 
form, so there should be four or five years' dif- 
ference in our age. Of course I well remember 
him, because of his station ; but had he been in 
any other part of the school among the oi noXkoi, 



I should call him to mind as distinctly by his pro- 
file as he does me by my name, though I do not 
suppose that a single word was ever exchanged 
between us. 

" Whether the seed which I have scattered in 
my Colloquies will produce fruit in due season, 
I perhaps may not live to see ; but some of it 
appears to have taken root. Among the letters, 
pertinent and impertinent, which have reached 
me relating to it, there are two from strangers 
which show this. The one is from Sir Oswald 
Mosely, about the Church Methodists, entering 
into the views which I have expressed, and pro- 
posing to form an association for furthering their 
progress. Upon this subject I have declined giv- 
ing him any opinion till I shall have seen Sadler, 
the member for Newark, whom I have engaged to 
see at Lowther in the autumn, and who, I know, 
takes much interest in this attempt. The other 
relates to the scheme for directing the personal 
charity of females to hospitals rather than pris- 
ons ; to the sick rather than to the profligate. 
This is from Mr. Hornby, the Rector of Win- 
wick, who had before hinted at such a thing in a 
sermon preached upon the opening of the Liver- 
pool Infirmary, and who now offers his purse and 
his personal exertions to promote it. You will 
readily suppose that I am gratified by this. But 
I have neither time, nor inclination, nor talents 
to take upon myself any part in forming such so- 
cieties. If the voice of one crying in the mount- 
ains is heard, all that I am capable of doing is 
done. 

" One way in which I feel the effect of timp 
is that I neither walk so fast as formerly nor will 
ingly so far, and that I have sometimes a sense 
of weakness, which is, no doubt, as a memento 
that I shall presently be an old man. And yet 
I hope to have some pleasant days with you upon 
the lakes and the mountains yet. God bless you, 
my dear old friend ! 

" Yours most affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

To Allan Cunningham. 

"Keswick, July 23, 1829. 
" My dear Allan, 

" I have read your first volume, and with very 
great pleasure. You need not ask uny one how 
biography ought to be written. A man with a 
clear head, a good heart, and an honest under- 
standing will always write well ; it is owing 
either to a muddy head, an evil heart, or a so- 
phisticated intellect that men write badly, and 
sin either against reason, or goodness, or sin- 
cerity. 

" There may be secrets in painting, but there 
are none in style. When I have been asked the 
foolish question what a young man should do 
who wishes to acquire a good style, my answer 
has been that he should never think about it, but 
say what he has to say as perspicuously as he 
can, and as briefly as he can, and then the style 
will take care of itself. 

" Were you to leave nothing but these Lives, 



/Etat. 55. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



479 



you need not doubt of obtaining the remembrance 
which you court and desire. 

"I wish I could tell you any thing which.might 
be found useful in your succeeding volumes. I 
knew Barry, and have been admitted into his den 
in his worst (that is to say, his maddest) days, 
when he was employed upon his Pandora. He 
wore at that time an old coat of green baize, but 
from which time had taken all the green that in- 
crustations of paint and dirt had not covered. 
His wig was one which you might suppose he 
had borrowed from a scare-crow ; all round it 
there projected a fringe of his own gray hair. 
He lived alone, in a house which was never 
cleaned ; and he slept on a bedstead with no 
other furniture than a blanket nailed on the one 
side. I wanted him to visit me. ' No,' he said, 
1 he w T ould not go out by day, because he could 
not spare time from his great picture ; and if 
he went out in the evening, the Academicians 
would waylay him and murder him.' In this 
solitary, sullen life he continued till he fell ill, 
very probably for want of food sufficiently nour- 
ishing ; and after lying two or three days under 
his blanket, he had just strength enough left to 
crawl to his own door, open it, and lay himself 
down with a paper in his hand, on which he had 
written his wish to be carried to the house of Mr. 
Carlisle (Sir Anthony) in Soho Square. There 
he was taken care of; and the danger from w T hich 
he had thus escaped seems to have cured his 
mental hallucinations. He cast his slough after- 
ward ; appeared decently dressed and in his own 
gray hair, and mixed in such society as he liked. 
" I should have told you that, a little before 
his illness, he had with much persuasion been 
induced to pass a night at some person's house 
in the country. When he came down to break- 
fast the next morning, and was asked how he 
had rested, he said remarkably well ; he had not 
slept in sheets for many years, and really he 
thought it was a very comfortable thing. 

" He interlarded his conversation with oaths as 
expletives, but it was pleasant to converse w T ith 
him ; there was a frankness and animation about 
him which won good will as much as his vigor- 
ous intellect commanded respect. 

"There is a story of his having refused to 
paint, portraits, and saying, in answer to applica- 
tions, that there was a man in Leicester Square 
who did. But this he said was false, for that he 
would at any time have painted portraits, and 
have been glad to paint them. God bless you ! 
" Yours very truly, R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 6, 1829. 
"My dear H. T., 
" I have declined a proposal from Fraser to 
write a popular history of English literature, a- 
la-mode Murray's Family Library, in four vol- 
umes, because, in the first place, it can not be 
prudent to engage in schemes where, besides 
author and bookseller, there is a certain middle 
man, or undertaker, to have his portion of the 
profits ; secondly, because I hope to execute 



such a w T ork upon a fitting scale, and in a man- 
ner correspondent to the subject; and, lastly, 
because I will clean my hands of all existing en- 
gagements and projects before I admit even a 
thought of any thing new, except in the way of 
mere recreation. 

" Lockhart tells me my paper upon Portugal 
has had the rare fortune of pleasing all parties : 
I looked at it, therefore, to find out what there 
was wrong in it, but I could not discover. He 
asfts for a similar paper upon Spain, but can not 
have it, because much that is true of the one 
country is true of the other, and because I am 
not so thoroughly acquainted with the subject. 
Concerning Portugal no other foreigner can know 
so much; concerning Spain, many" may know 
more. 

"It is well for me that I like reviewing well 
enough to feel nothing irksome in the employ- 
ment ; but as life shortens on me, I can not help 
sometimes regretting that so large a share of the 
little which is left must continue so to be em- 
ployed till the last. 

" When are you coming? we talk of you and 
wish for you every day. 

"You think me easily pleased with people. 
Perhaps no one tolerates them more easily ; but 
I am not often contented, in the full sense of that 
term, any more with men than with books. In 
both I am thankful for the good that is mixed 
with ill ; but there are few of either which I like 
well enough to take my heart, and incorporate 
them, as it were, with it. 

" But I must go on with the Life of Loyola, 
so God bless you ! R. S." 

To Dr. Gooch. 

"Keswick, Aug. 8, 1829. 
" My dear Gooch, 

" If your letter had contained a pleasanter ac- 
count of your own convalescence, it would have 
been one of the most agreeable that I ever re- 
ceived. There is zeal enough in the world and 
good will enough to do all the work which is 
wanted, if they can but be rightly directed. It 
is neither a natural nor a fit state of things that 
there should be more zeal and activity on the 
wrong side than the right. 

" I believe, as you do, that great and perma- 
nent good may be effected by colonization, by 
cultivating waste lands, and by co-operative so- 
cieties. There will be difficulties in these latter, 
when the question arises where the limits of pri- 
vate property are to be fixed. In every Utopian 
romance which has fallen in my way, a despot- 
ism of laws, as strict as any military discipline, 
is always part of the scheme. 

" Such a man as is wanted in Parliament I 
think wc shall find in Sadler, whom I am to meet 
in the course of next month at Lowther. 1 have 
to talk about Church Methodism with him ; the 
first time I ever heard his name was in connec- 
tion with that subject, as being the person on 
whose countenance and support the prime mover 
(Mark Robinson, of Beverley) most counted. Sir 



430 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. b'x 



Oswald Mosely has been moved by my Collo- 
quies to consult me about the fitness of forming 
a lay association for promoting this scheme ; in 
my reply I deferred answering that question till 
1 should have conversed with Sadler. I will talk 
to him also about the co-operation and the poor. 
We have ground on which to fix our levers, and 
strong arms with which to work them. 

" As for the political economists, no words can 
express the thorough contempt which I feel for 
them. They discard all moral considerations 
from their philosophy, and in their practice they 
have no compassion for flesh and blood. 

"I am writing a life of Ignatius Loyola for 
the Christmas number of the Foreign Review. 
The last number has not reached me, and of its 
contributors I only know that an Edinburgh per- 
son, by name Carlisle, has written the most strik- 
ing ones upon German literature, and that the 
paper upon Klopstock is by a young man whom 
I introduced to it, whose name is Heraud — a man 
of extraordinary powers, and not less extraordi- 
nary industry and ardor ; he seems capable of 
learning any thing, except how to check his own 
exuberance in verse. 

" God bless you, my dear Gooch ! With 
hands fuller than I could wish them, and with a 
head fuller than my hands, and perhaps a heart 
fuller than my head, I must leave books and pa- 
pers to go pic-nic-ing upon the hills, where I 
wish you could be with us. 

"Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, Aug. 21, 1829. 
" My dear Neville, 

" I am very glad that you have got through 
your degrees, and in a way to satisfy yourself as 
well as others, which in your case (contrary to 
most other cases) was the more difficult thing. 
Set your heart now at rest with the certain knowl- 
edge that you have taken more pains to qualify 
yourself for your profession than most members 
of it who have entered it in the ordinary course 
of education for that purpose. One great evil 
of our Church is, that men are ordained at too 
early an age. How it could be otherwise I do 
not know in our state of society, but of this I am 
very sure, that at such an age it must be by rare 
circumstances that either the heart or under- 
standing are ripe for such a charge. 

" You will have perceived that in those Collo- 
quies I have been careful not to offend those 
whom I endeavored to impress, and that I have 
sometimes rather pointed at a wound than probed 
it. Prudence required this. Some effect the 
book is producing, for it has drawn on some cor- 
respondence respecting Sisters of Charity and 
Church Methodists, and will, in all likelihood, 
cost me in this way more time than I can well 
afford. 

" As for the sale of the book I know nothing, 
which no knowledge is proof sufficient that it has 
not as yet been great. Nor, indeed, is it likely 
to be But I am satisfied with mvself for hav- 



ing written it, and believe that in due lime it 
will bring forth fruit after its kind ; setting many 
persons to think, some, I should expect, to feel, 
and some few, I should hope, to act. 

" This has been hastily written amid much 
interruption ; and I must now conclude, with ouj 
best remembrances to your fireside (for I con- 
clude you have a fire), and my more especia': 
ones to your good mother, who, if we looked at 
things as we ought, should be considered now as 
one of the happiest of human beings, sure as she 
is of her reward, and near it. I thank God for 
many things, and for nothing more than that he 
has enabled me to look onward to death with de- 
sire rather than with dread. 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

In consequence of the subject of Female Hos- 
pital Nurses and Church Methodism having been 
touched upon in the " Colloquies, 1 ' my father had 
been led into a correspondence with the Rev. J. 
Hornby of Winwick, who took a lively and active 
interest in both these subjects. The following 
is the only letter of my father to Mr. Hornby 
which has been preserved. 

To the Rev. J. J. Hornby. 

"Keswick, Aug. 27, 1829. 
" Dear Sir, 

" It is long since any thing has given me so 
much pleasure as your letter. You have looked 
at the subject in all its hopeful bearings with the 
true spirit of Christian philosophy. 

" When I received the first communication 
concerning Church Methodism from Mark Rob- 
inson (in February, 1824), I thought it of suffi- 
cient importance to send a copy to the present 
primate, with whom I had personal acquaintance 
enough to authorize me in so doing. I did not 
let Robinson know this, because it would have 
been giving myself a false appearance of conse- 
quence in his eyes — would have been taking upon 
myself more than I had any right or reason to 
do ; and might also have raised vain expectations 
in him. In my letters to him, then and after- 
ward, I could do nothing more than express 
hearty wishes for the success of what appeared 
to me a most desirable attempt. 

" The answer which I received from Fulham 
was in these words. [See letter from the Bishop 
of London, ante, p. 421.] 

" It seemed to me at the time that the Bishop 
of London supposed these seceding Methodists 
to ask for more than they actually did ; that they 
required nothing like a formal treaty, but merely 
to have their offered services accepted and coun- 
tenanced. I thought, also, that there could be 
little danger in this case, from the description of 
clergy to which he alluded ; because, such among 
them as hold Calvinistic doctrines (and these are 
the only dangerous ones) would not be likely to 
co-operate with Wesleyan Methodists. 

" Robinson told me that Archdeacon Wrang- 

ham favored his views ; and he counted also, 

J through his means, upon the good wishes of the 



&TAT. 56. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



481 



Archbishop of York. He tried to effect a union 
with the Irish Church Methodists, and some of 
their preachers came over in consequence ; but 
this attempt failed. And I know nothing more 
of the connection which he was endeavoring to 
form. I read, indeed, sundry pamphlets, which 
related mainly to personal disputes, the sort of 
matter into which such things easily degenerate 5 
and I made inquiries concerning Robinson's 
character, which were satisfactorily answered. 
When I see Mr. Sadler I shall no doubt be able 
to obtain full information. 

" You and I are perfectly agreed in this, that 
without some such assistance from without, as 
well as strenuous exertions within, the Church 
Establishment of this kingdom can not hold its 
place. The Dissenting minister has his subor- 
dinate helpers every where, the clergyman acts 
alone. Would I could persuade myself that even 
with such assistance the overthrow of the Estab- 
lishment might be averted ! But no better 
means of strengthening it can now be devised, 
and no likelier ones of preparing the way for its 
eventual restoration, if, as I too surely fear, this 
generation should not pass away without see- 
ing it as prostrate as it was in the Great Rebell- 
ion. 

" You say that you would not ministerially co- 
operate in any plan of this kind which was dis- 
approved by those to whom ministerial deference 
and subordination are due. This, of course, I 
should have expected from you ; and, indeed, if 
the scheme were pursued upon any other prin- 
ciple, it could end only as Methodism has ended, 
in producing another schism. In the movers 
and promoters of such a scheme there is too much 
probability of meeting either with much zeal or 
too little — with fervent sincerity untempered by 
discretion, or with mere worldly wisdom — with 
wild enthusiasts, or with men who look to it only 
as a politic expedient for supporting a Church 
which it is their interest to uphold, which they 
plainly perceive to be in danger, and which they 
suppose to be even weaker than it is, because 
they are conscious that they themselves have none 
of the spirit whereby alone it can be preserved. 
I know not whether there is more danger from 
the hot head or the cold heart, but I know which 
is to be regarded with most dislike. No good 
work, however, upon any great scale, has ever 
b&sn undertaken in which fanatics and formalists 
have not thrust themselves forward to make and 
to mar. Both must be counted on ; and if the 
work go forward with a blessing upon its pur- 
pose, both will be made useful. 

" You would not concur in any plan the object 
of which was to create schism in the body of the 
Methodists, neither would I bestow a thought 
upon any such object. But Methodism is already 
torn by schisms ; the specific schism which a 
mere politic churchman. would have wished to 
bring about, has been made, and in that schism 
the only organized Methodists are to be found 
with whom we could co-operate, or who would 
eo-operate with us ; for the Revivalists and 
Ranters are out of the question ; and the Con- 
Hh 



ference have something to lose by such co-opei- 
ation, and nothing to gain by it. The Confer- 
ence would not give up its system of confession, 
even if it were to concede matters less demon- 
strably mischievous. It would not allow you t<> 
be rector in your own parish, nor the bishop to 
be bishop in his own diocese. Its ministers 
would stand upon their privileges, preach du- 
ring the hours of Church service, and adminis- 
ter the sacrament. Instead of assisting you to 
feed your flock, their aim would be to collect as 
many of your sheep as they could into their own 
fold. 

" But the Church Methodists, if they are true 
to their own professions, would be just such aux- 
iliaries as are wanted. The scheme, as relating 
to any single parish, should seem not to be diffi- 
cult with their help ; they would bring whatevci 
is good in the Wesley an discipline, rejecting its 
watch-nights and its confessions ; they would act 
as catechists when parents are unable to perform 
that duty in their own families ; and by their 
meetings and their local preachers, they would 
introduce and keep up devotional habits. Much 
may be done in this way. But for the work of 
startling the sinner and making the deaf hear, I 
think that in most places the aid of itinerant 
preachers will be wanted ; and when we come 
to itinerancy, we come upon the difficulties and 
some of the dangers of organizing, supporting, 
and governing such a class of men. Yet these 
are the men who can ' create a soul under the 
ribs of Death ;' these are the firemen who seem 
to be in their proper element when they are 
breathing amid flames and smoke ; whom prac- 
tice has rendered, as it were, fire proof, and who 
are thus enabled to snatch brands from the burn- 
ing. I know not whether any such men have as 
yet appeared among the Church Methodists ; but 
when work of this kind is to be done, the supply 
of laborers seldom fails of being equal to the de- 
mand. 

"In any parish where a society were once 
methodized, it might be possible to ingraft upon 
their discipline a plan of looking after the sick 
for the purpose of administering to their bodily 
necessities. Women might be found to take 
upon themselves, if not, like the Beguines, the 
charge of nursing, yet of assisting in, and in some 
degree superintending it, avoiding, however, any 
perilous exposure of themselves, and thereby their 
own families, to infection ; for by such exposure 
the probable evil that may be incurred exceeds 
the good that can possibly be done. 

" There is some hope also (though fainter) 
that Methodism, thus regulated and kept in sub- 
ordination, may be rendered useful in another 
way. The Co-operative societies are spreading 
and must spread. I believe that their principle 
will act upon the whole foundation of society with 
a force like that of crystallization ; and every so- 
ciety which is formed into a little community of 
its own will surely be withdrawn from the na« 
tional Church, unless by some such aid as that 
of Methodism it can be kept or brought within 
the pale. But this is a wide as well as most 



482 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



tEtat. 56. 



momentous subject. And it is time that I should 
conclude. Believe me, dear sir, yours, with sin- 
cere respect, Robert Southey." 

Mrs. Opie to R. Southey, Esq. 

" Tottenham, 6th mo. 8th, 1829. 
" My dear Friend, 

" I did not know till our yearly meeting was 
begun the obligation which thou hadst conferred 
on me, so little worthy of such an enviable dis- 
tinction as that of being noticed by thee. I will 
own to thee that my first emotion on reading thy 
animated and eloquent words* was one of un- 
controllable anguish, because the bitter recollec- 
tion instantly came over my mind that he whom 
they would most have pleased would never see 
them ; but happier feelings succeeded, attended 
by a strong sense of gratitude to thee. 

" On the important subject which thou hast 
thus brought before my consideration, I have not 
time even to give an opinion, as I am preparing 
to set off for Paris next fourth day (Wednesday) . 
* # # # I was in hopes of being able 
to read thy valuable and interesting book through 
before I wrote to thee, but I have scarcely had 
an hour of uninterrupted leisure since our yearly 
rpeeting closed, and have not read more than a 
third of the first volume. The introduction is 
exquisite, I think, and amusing enough to allure 
even common readers to their benefit. 

" I intend to turn my visit to Paris to the best 
account possible, and shall see their hospitals, 
prisons, &c. ;" and I hope to spend a month pleas- 
antly and profitably, though in that city of abom- 
inations — past, present, and to come. 

"It is twenty-seven years since I was there 
last ; what changes in nations, men, and things 
have taken place since that time ! And how 
many individuals whom we admired and respect- 
ed have gone to their long homes since 1802 ! 

" But there is One above ' who changeth not ;' 
and from this conviction I always derive conso- 
lation, when the sense of what I have lost presses 
heavily upon me. 

" Farewell ! with the best wishes for thy hap- 
piness, and that of thy interesting group, which 
I picture to myself in thy library, welcoming the 
wet and wandering guest, 

U I am thy affectionate and obliged, 

"A. Opie." 

To Mrs. Opie. 

"Keswick, Aug. 30, 1829. 
" My dear Mrs. Opie, 
" I should have replied to your letter imme- 
diately upon receiving it, if the answer could 
have reached you before your departure for Par- 
is, because I suspect from one part of that letter 
that the copy of my Colloquies which I requested 
Murray to send you as soon as they were pub- 
lished had not found its way to you. Should 
this be the case, 1 pray you cause inquiry to be 



* In the Colloquies, vol. ii., p. 230, my father had men- 
tioned, only not by name, Mrs. Fry and Mrs. Opie, as 
women prepared by charitable enthusiasm to take the lead 
iu establishing societies for improving hospitals, &c. 



made for it of his people. You might well won- 
der that having been moved to call upon you as 
I have there done, I should leave you to hear of 
it by chance. 

"Though far from any approach to Quaker- 
ism myself, I have always justified your transi- 
tion to it, thinking that under your circumstances 
the change was both a natural and a happy one. 
I should have been better pleased if you had not 
consented to corrupt the king's English, against 
which debasement, I think, your example, when 
you conformed in other things, might perhaps 
have produced some effect, pioud of such a pros- 
elyte as, however it may seem, the society must 
be ; not that this is a matter of any moment, ex- 
cept that I do not like to see you conform to any 
thing which is not reasonable and worthy of your- 
self. But the mere change to a state of religious 
feeling and a strict sect would not have induced 
me to address you so publicly and pointedly upon 
a subject which I have very much at heart, from 
a deep sense of its utility, if I had not heard an 
expression of yours relating to ' prison duties,' 
which I think (though highly meritorious in it- 
self) is not the best direction which heroic charity 
can take. But the words proved that that char- 
ity had taken possession of you, and that you 
were ready to follow wherever it might lead. 

" You and I have lived in an age of revolu- 
tions, and the greatest, as affecting this country, 
and ultimately the whole of Europe and of the 
Christian world, is yet to come. The evils of 
the manufacturing system and the misery of the 
poor are approaching a crisis, and unless some 
effectual remedies are speedily applied, the foun- 
dations of society will be overthrown. You will 
agree with me that moral and religious discipline 
must be one of those remedies, though we might 
differ concerning its form. But forms will not 
stand in the way between us here. Quakers 
and Moravians will co-operate in any great and 
good work with a single mind, where other sec- 
tarians have always a secondary motive lurking 
in all of them, and uppermost in many or in most. 

"7? TV tP tP TT tP tP 

" I see so distinctly the dangers which beset 
us, and the only means by which they are to be 
resisted, that if the objects which I have at heart 
could be promoted by my preaching in the fields 
and market-places, I would go forth and do so. 
But my power is in the ink-stand, and my place 
is here, where I will take every opportunity of 
enforcing upon such of the public as have ears to 
hear, truths necessary for their political salvation, 
did they look no further. 

" When I designated you so plainly in that Col- 
loquy, I wrote under the influence of strong feel- 
ing ; but I have ever since been calmly convinced 
that I neither spoke too strongly nor said too much. 
Amelia Opie, I know no person so qualified, and, 
let me say, so prepared, as you to take the lead 
in a great work of goodness ; and if you are of 
one mind with me in this, I verily believe it will 
be done. 

'• God bless you ! 

" Yours with sincere regard, R. S." 



jEtat. 56. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



483 



I place the next letter a little out of order in 
respect to date, as being a reply to the preced- 
ing one. 

Mrs. Opie to R. Sonthey, Esq. 

<• Norwich, 11th mo. 24th, 1829. 
" My dear Friend, 

u Illness and other circumstances over which 
I have seemed to have no power, have, ever since 
my return to Norwich, prevented my writing to 
thee, though I can say with truth that I have 
thought of thee every day, and pondered often 
over thy letter with grateful and increasing in- 
terest. 

" It reached me at Paris. I did not for a mo- 
ment think of answering it then, because I was 
wholly unacquainted with the societies to which 
it alludes, and could not obtain the necessary in- 
formation. But on my return to England I found 
Elizabeth Fry deep in thy book, and believing that 
she had already made a few steps at least in the 
career to which thou hast pointed in thy eloquent 
address to me. 

" I did not agree with her as to the expediency 
of the delay, but consented to accompany her on 
a visit to Dr. Gooch, the result of which he has 
probably communicated to thee. He gave us 
ample information relative to the co-operative 
societies, and last night the friend with whom I 
am staying read aloud an excellent article on 
that subject in the Quarterly, and I greatly ad- 
mire many of the plans on which the society act. 
I wish it was indispensable for every member to 
be a religious as well as a moral character. * 

" En attendant, let me know more of thy views 
in relation to Elizabeth Fry and myself. Thy 
letter was truly gratifying to me, but humbling 
also, as it led me to look into myself, and feel how 
little worthy I am of such an appeal, and how lit- 
tle able to answer it as it ought to be answered. 

" I left Paris (where I stayed four months and 
a fortnight at the house of a near and dear rela- 
tion) with a heart full of love and gratitude to- 
ward every person there, but also filled with pity, 
strong disapprobation, and alarm. Still, when I 
consider the efforts making by many pious and 
good persons to spread the knowledge of the 
truth as it is in Christ Jesus among them, I can 
answer the question, ' Can these bones live /' not 
only ' Thou knowest,' but that I think they will. 
Farewell ! 

" I am thy grateful and affectionate friend, 
"A. Opie." 

I do not find traces of any further correspond- 
ence with Mrs. Opie upon this subject ; several 
other letters, however, passed between my father 
and Mr. Hornby, chiefly upon the plan of educa- 
ting a better order of persons as nurses for the 
poor ; and, through the exertions of the latter, a 
beginning was made, which unfortunately was 
prevented by untoward circumstances from pro- 
ducing any permanent results. 

It appears that Mr. Hornby, in concert with 
Adam Hodgson, Esq., of Liverpool, undertook to 
set on foot an institution for this purpose as an 



experiment, and to maintain it for two years. 
They hired a house, engaged a matron, received 
a number of inmates, and had educated and sent 
out some few as nurses. Other individuals now 
became anxious to join them in the responsibility 
and superintendence ; and there not being a suf- 
ficient unity of purpose among all the managers, 
the scheme, which was prospering admirably, fell 
to the ground. As soon as it appeared that they 
were educating a valuable class of persons, it was 
sought to make them available to the upper classes 
as monthly nurses ; and this being an entire per- 
version of the original plan, Mr. Hornby and Mr. 
Hodgson withdrew at the end of the two years, 
and the whole scheme quickly fell to the ground. 
The autumn of the year was marked by a great 
change in the household at Greta Hall. From 
the time of my father's first settling at Keswick, 
where it will be remembered he found Mr. and 
Mrs. Coleridge residing, she and her only daugh- 
ter had formed part of the family circle, and now 
the latter was to change, not her name (for she 
was about to marry her cousin, the late Henry 
Nelson Coleridge), but her state and residence ; 
and Mrs. Coleridge was about to take up her per- 
manent residence with them. This, of course, 
was like the parting with a sister. 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, Sept 10, 1829. 
" My dear Friend, 
" * * # # * * * 

I will tell you Murray's opinion of the Colloquies. 
The sale, he says, would have been ten-fold great- 
er if religion and politics had been excluded from 
them ! The profits, I dare say, will be very lit- 
tle. 

******* 

" My third volume of the War is in the press, 
and my hand has been only taken from it for a 
short interval, that I might do the needful work 
of reviewing, by which alone does it seem prac- 
ticable for me to keep clear with the world. I 
have written for the London Review a short but 
very interesting account of Lucretia Davidson, 
an American poetess, killed, like Kirke White, by 
over-excitement, in her seventeenth year. It is 
a most affecting story. There have been three 
papers of mine in that work — in the first, second, 
and fifth numbers ; and, as they promise that 
there shall be no further delay in payment, I 
should not like to withdraw from it. * * 

" I might be paid at the same rate for Sharpe's 
London Magazine ; but, when that was converted 
into a magazine, it passed from the hands of Al- 
lan Cunningham into those of Theodore Hook and 
Dr. M'Gihn, with neither of whom did I wish to 
associate myself. 

******* 

" But I am looking forward with much satis- 
faction to next year, as setting me free from the 
Peninsular War, and thereby leaving me at lib- 
erty to commence printing the History of Portu- 
gal. I shall be able to live by reviewing, and 
yet win time enough from that employment to 
compose this history from *,he materials which 



484 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 56. 



have been so long in preparation, and to carry it 
through the press. And I shall get by it some- 
thing better than money : the profits, indeed, can 
not be so small as to disappoint me, or to make 
me in the slightest degree indisposed to the task. 

" The best news I can send you of myself must 
be something like an echo of your own letter — 
that I go on working steadily, with little to hope, 
but cheerfully, and in full belief that the situation 
in which I am placed is that which is best for me. 
Had I kept the path wherein I was placed, I 
might have been a bishop at this day — probably 
should have been ; and therefore I bless God even 
for having gone astray, since my aberrations have 
ended in leading me to a happier, a safer, and 
(all things considered) a more useful station. 

" If there be a later history of Bristol than Bar- 
rett's, it must be a better one ; there is no ear- 
lier. I do not know the spot which you call the 
Fairies' Parlor by that name ; but I could show 
you some haunts of mine upon those Downs, and 
in that neighborhood, which I know not whether 
I should have most pain or pleasure in revisiting. 
Henry Coleridge and his bride are now lodging 
in Keswick : her mother departs next week, and 
then we part, after six-and-twenty years' resi- 
dence under the same roof. All change is mourn- 
ful, and if I thought of myself only, I should wish 
to be in a world where there will be none. 

" I want to finish the biographical letter in 
my desk ; but you would pity me if you knew 
what I have in head, and in hand, and at heart, 
and saw the continual interruptions which cut up 
my time in large slices, or fritter it away. With- 
al, I have the blessing of being sound in body 
once more, and can ascend the mountains with 
something like the strength, and all the spirits of 
youth. I had more to say of projects, and of ap- 
proaching evils and dangers, of which we are 
likely to see the beginning, but not the end. I 
was born during the American Revolution, the 
French Revolution broke out just as I grew up, 
and my latter days will, in all likelihood, be dis- 
turbed by a third revolution, more terrible than 
either. God bless you, my dear friend ! 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 



To 



" Oct., 1829. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I have not seen Landor's second edition, 
though Colburn was desired to send it me. Your 
judgment of the book is quite in conformity with 
mine, if (as I suppose) you except a few dialogues 
from the general censure, one or two being (to 
my feeling) nearly perfect, What you have 
heard me say of his temper is the best and only 
explanation of his faults. Never did man repre- 
sent himself in his writings so much less gener- 
ous, less just, less compassionate, less noble in all 
respects than he really is. I certainly never knew 
any one of brighter genius or of kinder heart. 

" I am pleased, also, to find you expressing an 
opinion respecting Milton and Wordsworth which 
I have never'hesitated to deliver as my own when 



I was not likely to do harm. A greater poet than 
Wordsworth there never has been nor ever will 
be. I could point out some of his pieces which 
seem to me good for nothing, and not a few faulty 
passages, but I know of no poet in any language 
who has written so much that is good. 

" Now, -, I want you, and pray you to read 

Berkeley's Minute Philosopher ;* I want you to 
learn that the religious belief which Wordsworth 
and I hold, and which — I am sure you know in 
my case, and will not doubt in his — no earthly 
considerations would make us profess if we did 
not hold it, is as reasonable as it is desirable ; is 
in its historical grounds as demonstrable as any 
thing can be which rests upon human evidence ; 
and is, in its life and spirit, the only divine phi- 
losophy, the perfection of wisdom ; in which, and 
in which alone, the understanding and the heart 
can rest. 

w ^ w tt t? w ^? 



" God bless you 



R.S.' 



To Herbert Hill, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 29, 1829. 
" My dear Herbert, 

" Last year we were at this time looking for 
your arrival, and well pleased should we all be 
could we look for it now. I have been some- 
what of a rambler of late. Having paid a short, 
though long-deferred visit at Lowther toward the 
latter end of last month, I joined Henry Coleridge 
and Sarah at Penrith, on their way to London, at 
noon one day, and on the evening of the next they 
dropped me at Ripon. We saw Rokeby in the 
morning (a singularly beautiful place), where I 
called on Mr. Morritt, whom I had not seen for 
seventeen years ; and, on the way to Ripon, we 
saw Richmond. 

" My visit near Ripon was to Mrs. Hodson, 
known as a poetess by her maiden name of Mar- 
garet Holford. One day I dined at Studley, but 
it was so wet a day that it was impossible to go 
to the Abbey, or see the grounds there. Another 
day Mr. Hodson took me to Aldborough, where 
are many Roman antiquities, and to the place 
where Paulinus is said to have baptized some 
thousand Saxons in the River Swale. Another 



* To the same friend he writes at another time : " It is 
because your range of reading has lain little in that course 
that you suppose religious subjects have rarely been treat- 
ed in a philosophical spirit. I believe you have cast an 
eye of wonder upon the three folios of Thomas Jackson's 
works, and that it would be hopeless to ask you to look 
into them for the philosophy and the strength of faith, and 
the warmth of sincere religious belief with which they 
abound. I do not recommend you to Dr. Clark as a phil- 
osophical writer, because I have never yet had an oppor- 
tunity of reading him myself; but I believe you will find 
head-work to your heart's content there. But I again rec- 
ommend you to Berkeley's Minute Philosopher and to 
Philip Skelton's work. 

" But he did not arrive at his belief by philosophical rea 
soning ; this was not the foundation, but the buttress. Be- 
lief should be first inculcated as an early prejudice— that 
is, as a duty ; then confirmed by historical evidence and 
philosophical views. Whether the seed thus sown and 
thus cultivated shall bring forth in due season its proper 
fruit, depends upon God's mercy. Butler, I believe, was 
a very pious man, though the bent of his mind was toward 
philosophical inquiry ; but you may find among our divines 
men of every imaginable variety of disposition and genius 
coming to the same center of truth. The older I grow the 
more contentment I find in their writings " 



jEtat. 56. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



485 



day I was at Newby (Lord Grantham's), where 

there is a fine collection of statues. Lady 

had contrived to introduce herself to me in the 
morning by a move which it required a good deal 
of the effrontery of high life to effect. The most 
interesting person whom I saw during this ex- 
pedition was Mr. Danby, of Swinton Park, a man 
of very large fortune, and now very old. He 
gave me a book of his with the not very apt title 
of 'Ideas and Realities;' detached thoughts on 
various subjects. It is a book in which his neigh- 
bors could find nothing to amuse them, or which 
they thought it behooved them to admire ; but I 
have seldom seen a more amiable or a happier 
disposition portrayed than is there delineated. 

" This was a ten days' absence. I have since 
made a three days' visit to Colonel Howard at 
Levens, between Kendal and Milnthorpe, whom 
I knew by the name of Greville Upton when he 
was in college at Westminster, and had not seen 
since. He married an heiress, and took her 
name, taking with it four large estates, with a 
mansion upon each, in Westmoreland, Stafford- 
shire, Surrey, and Norfolk. Such fortune has not 
often been so bestowed upon one who has made 
so good use of it. Levens is an old house of 
Elizabeth's age, and fitted up as in that age, 
with carved chimney-pieces, oak wainscots, and 
one room is hung with gilt leather. The gar- 
dens are in the old fashion, and, perhaps, the best 
specimen now remaining of their kind. They 
are full of yew trees cut into all imaginable and 
unimaginable shapes. One of them is called Dr. 
Parr, from its likeness to his wig. A guest who 
dines there for the first time is initiated by a po- 
tent glass (called the Levens' constable) of a 
liquor named Morocco, the composition of which 
is a family secret. It is like good strong beer, 
with a mixture of currant wine. 

# ' # # # * * * 

" God bless * r ou, my dear Herbert ! R. S '' 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

tHE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES LITERARY EM- 
PLOYMENTS DEATH OF HIS BROTHER HENRY's 

WIFE EVILS OF OUR COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 

CURE FOR LUMBAGO GALIGNANl's EDITION 

OF HIS POEMS MILLER'S SERMONS BISHOP 

HACKET THE REFORM BILL DR. GOOCH's 

DEATH THE EVANGELICAL CLERGY LITER- 
ATURE OF DENMARK RENEWS THE LEASE OF 

HIS HOUSE ART OF COMPOSITION HONe's 

EVERY-DAY BOOK, ETC. POLITICS JOHN 

JONES MR. SADLER LITERARY EMPLOY- 
MENTS PAUPER COLONIES THE MARCH OF 

INTELLECT DENMARK LIFE OF BISHOP HE- 
BE*. STATE OF FRANCE MR. FLETCHER 

ELLIS THE MISSIONARY DR. BELL POLITICS. 

—1830. 

The co-operative societies, which have been 
already alluded to in several letters, seem to 



have taken great hold of my father's mind, doubt- 
less from their main principle assimilating to that 
upon which the Pantisocratic Utopia of his early 
youth was to have been founded, and he had per- 
suaded his unromantic friend Mr. Rickman to 
take a considerable interest in them, and to make 
the co-operative papers his companions in a jour- 
ney he was about to make in Scotland in the pre- 
vious autumn. From thence he writes, " I have a 
large and undefined notion of investigating society 
with this view. How many actually independent 
incomes, or how much income is requisite as a 
nucleus wherein to sustain a population depend- 
ent upon the expenditure of that income, and on 
the expenditure of each other ? I suspect that 
this involution is much more powerful and ex- 
tensive than is usually supposed, insomuch that 
a common payment for the creation of independ- 
ent gentry (idlers, if you please), pensioners and 
creditors of the public, is good instead of evil. 
The co-operative plan naturally prompts one to 
think of the circles, the repetition of patterns in 
paper hangings or carpets, whereof the whole 
papered room or carpet is made ; and by means 
of the little orbits of Descartes, I think I could 
depict society usefully by condescending (you 
know I am in Scotland) on particulars, and by 
a camera-obscura view of the bustle of man- 
kind." 

This set my father's imagination working won- 
derfully, and after quoting this passage in a let- 
ter to Mr. Henry Taylor, he says, " Here I think 
we have something like a foundation for political 
economy to rest upon, your existing systems 
being built either upon sand or bottomless mud. 
My head is full of thought upon this subject and 
of seminal notions, which in due time will work 
out a channel for themselves. They are so busy 
there that I could almost fancy my work is but 
to begin, and that all I have hitherto done has 
only been in the school of preparation. Take 
notice, H. T., that the clock has just struck eight, 
that I dined at four, and drank only four glasses 
of green gooseberry wine ; that after dinner I 
read some pages in Cudworth and the history of 
some half score Images of our Lady ; that.1 then 
took half an hour's nap, and afterward drank 
tea ; from which fact you are to conclude" that I 
write now in perfect sobriety, and with a healthy 
pulse that keeps time at its usual sober moderate 
rate." 

My father never had leisure to bring these 
notions into any thing like a definite form, and it 
is probable that, had he attempted to do so, one 
difficulty after another would have occurred, until 
he would have given up the matter in despair ; 
and it may be doubted whether any but an odd 
superstructure could be built upon such a foun- 
dation as Mr. Rickman's. 

The co-operative scheme itself was destined 
to disappoint its supporters ; for, as soon appear- 
ed from the language of these very persons who 
had commenced so moderately, the most danger- 
ous and socialistic opinions quickly began to gain 
ground among them, as appears from the follow- 
in<r letter. 



486 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 56. 



To John Rickman, Esq. 



" My dear R., 
« * # # # 



" Jan. 5, 1830. 



There was a meeting 
of co-operatvves in London in November, I think, 
the proceedings of which were printed in the 
News newspaper, and afterward in a separate 
form. The rankest leveling language was held 
and applauded there, and the effect was to fright- 
en one gentleman in this county, who, from 
Gooch's paper in the Quarterly Review, was dis- 
posed to encourage such a scheme in his own 
neighborhood. The best heads among them are 
very likely to take this wrong turn, and the 
worst mischief they will do by it, and the first 
also, will be to cut themselves off from the en- 
couragement which, if they keep within bounds, 
it is clearly the interest of the land-owners to 
afford them. The Brighton writer must not 
preach about the growing omnipotence of such 
societies, if he would have them succeed. But 
this was to be expected, and is the greatest ob- 
stacle in the way of a very obvious and great 
£ood. 

"I should like to see the inquiry which you 
suggested pursued as to the quantity of expendi- 
ture needful for keeping a community of some 
given number in well being, say five hundred 
persons. To know the rate of circulation and 
the quantity of the circulating medium would 
seem something like knowing that rate, &c, in 
the human body— a means, in some degree, of 
ascertaining when and how the system is disor- 
dered. But, in the social system, there is no 
danger of disease from overfulness. The circu- 
lation can neither be too free nor too fast. 

" I do not know who wrote the article on 
Home Colonies. They appear to me very de- 
sirable ; but I conceive a regular and also regu- 
lated system of emigration to be necessary, to do 
for us in peace more than can be done in war, 
by taking off the greater part of those who are 
restless at home, or who have no prospect of 
prosperity. I apprehend that in the Dutch poor 
colonies a great deal has been done by the best 
management of manures. The Dutch may have 
learned^ this from the Japanese. 

" God preserve us from a population such as 
is devouring Ireland and threatening to devour 
us ! Emigration must at last be resorted to, as 
the only preventive which can save us from this. 
Meantime we may improve one generation by 
setting them to cultivate bad land, and train their 
children for good colonists. I believe there is a 
great deal of cultivable waste land in the north 
of England, and that at Bagshot is of the very 
worst kind in the island. 

" The absolute necessity of discipline, and the 
outcry which would be raised against any exer- 
cise of it, are doubtless most serious difficulties 
in the way, yet I think superable ones, supposing 
the experiment to be wisely conducted, so that 
it might bear close, and full, and even hostile in- 
spection. 

" I am to review Ellis's book. Pomare was 
probably a state convert, like Clovis and some of 



our first Saxon kings ; yet not wholly so, for they 
were converted by politic missionaries, who, for 
the sake of such converts, made the new religion 
perfectly accommodating to all the practices 
which were tolerated by the old. 

" God bless you and yours with a new year 
which may be prosperous in all thing's ! 

"R. S." 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

"Keswick, Jan. 20, 1830. 
" My dear Mrs. Hodson, 

" My poor brother Henry is left with seven 
young children, happily so young that five of 
them will not feel their loss, another soon cease 
to feel it, and only the eldest feel it long and last- 
ingly ; for he (poor boy) has some malformation 
about the heart which must keep him always at 
home, and his understanding and affections have 
acquired strength and intensity as if in compen- 
sation for the incurable malady of his frame. I 
had known my sister-in-law from her infancy, 
and loved her dearly, both for her own sake and 
her mother's, who, take her for all in all, was the 
sweetest woman I have ever been acquainted 
with. Louisa herself was one of the violets of 
the world ; nothing could be gentler or kinder. 
She seemed never to think of herself, and was 
wholly devoted to her family. 

# # * # * # # 

"Norwich, Mrs. Opie tells me, is in a state of 
civil war ; and infidelity is said to prevail there 
extensively among the weavers. I believe very 
few people who are not serving under its banners 
are aware how widely it has spread among all 
ranks, and of the imminent danger that threat- 
ens us from that cause. I am busy upon the 
Peninsular War, and in finishing a life of John 
Bunyan for a handsonae edition of the Pilgrim's 
Progress, a task not of lucre, but of love. The 
moment it is done I must no longer delay the 
introduction of John Jones's verses. The Quar- 
terly Review has only a short paper of mine 
upon Captain Head's book. The after number 
will have one on Mawe's Journal, and I must 
forthwith begin for it an account of the mission 
to Tahiti, which, however, you may read to more 
advantage in my text-book, Ellis's Polynesian 
Researches. I have engaged to compose a vol- 
ume of Naval History, in biographical form, for 
the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, not for love, but for lu- 
cre, though it will be done lovingly when in 
hand. And thus my life passes ; little employ- 
ments elbowing worthier and greater undertak- 
ings and shouldering them aside, and the neces- 
sity for providing ways and means preventing me 
from executing half of what I could and would 
have done for other generations. And yet, how 
much better is this than pleading causes, feeling 
pulses, working in a public office, or being a 
bishop with all the secular cares which a* bish- 
opric brings with it, not to speak of its heavier 
responsibilities. 

" Believe me, my dear Mrs. Hodson, 
" Yours very truly, 

"Robert Southey." 



jEtat. 56. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



487 



To John Hickman, Esq. 

" Feb. 16, 1830. 
" My dear R., 

" The co-operatives* ought to be very much 
obliged to you, and would be so if it were not 
the most difficult thing in the world to make men 
understand their own true interest. 

" I suspect that in many things our forefathers 
were wiser than we are. Their guilds prevent- 
ed trades from being overstocked, and would 
have by that means prevented over-production, 
if there had been any danger of it. The greedy, 
grasping spirit of commercial and manufacturing 
ambition or avarice is the root of our evils. You 
are very right in saying that in all handicraft 
trades wages are enough to allow of a very mis- 
chievous application of what, if laid by, would 
form a fund for old age ; and I quite agree with 
you that tea and sugar must be at least as nu- 
tritious as beer, and in other respects greatly 
preferable to it. But there is a real and wide- 
spreading distress, and the mischief lies in the 
manufactories ; they must sell at the lowest pos- 
sible price ; the necessity of a great sale at a 
rate of small profit makes low wages a conse- 
quence ; when they have overstocked the mark- 
et (which, during their season of prosperity, they 
use all efforts for doing), hands must be turned 
off; and every return of this cold fit is more vi- 
olent than the former. 

" There is no distress among those handicrafts 
who produce what there is a constant home de- 
mand for. But if we will work up more wool 
and cotton than foreigners will or can purchase 
from us, the evils of the country must go on at a 
rate like compound interest. Other nations will 
manufacture for themselves (a certain quantity 
of manufacturing industry being necessary for 
the prosperity of a nation), and this, with the aid 
of tariffs, may bring us to our senses in time. 

" One tells me that there is likely to be a 
slight degree of consolidating pressure brought 
to bear upon the ministry; another, that they 
may very likely find themselves in a minority. 
I do not wish for a change of men, because I do 
not see what better men could do in their places. 
Eighteen months ago circumstances might have 
been directed to a wise statesman's will ; now 
they must take their course : but, come what 
will, I shall never lose heart or hope. 

" God bless you ! Our best remembrances to 
vour fireside. R- S." 

To Mian Cunningham. 

" Keswick, March 4, 1830. 
" My dear Allan, 
" Thank you for your second volume, f which, 
if I had not been more than usually pressed for 
time, I should have read throughout at a sitting 
immediately on its arrival, but of which I have 
read enough to know that it is very good. In- 



* Mr. Rickman had written a paper on the subject for 
insertion in the Brighton Co-operator, and which he had 
sent to my father for his suggestions and remarks. 

t Of The Lives of British Painters, &c, in Murray's 
Family Library. 



deed, I do not see how that part which I have 
read could have been better. 

"If your lumbago be severe, I can tell you 
that at Yarmouth cod-liver oil taken internally 
used to be considered as a specific for that com- 
plaint, but in what quantity taken I can not tell. 
It is a villainous complaint, as I know by some 
slight touches of it only ; but complaints that 
threaten no serious consequences sit lightly on 
us even when they are heaviest. The flesh feels 
them, but not the spirit ; and there it is we feel 
when those who are near and dear to us are suf- 
fering. Spring, I hope, will bring with it re- 
covery to your household. 

" I am put to the daily expense of two hours' 
walking to keep in order a liver which has a 
great inclination — as if the spirit of Reform had 
reached it — to try some new mode of action al- 
together inconsistent with the safety of the con- 
stitution. The remedy seems to answer well : 
and when the weather will allow me to take a 
book in my hand, it is not altogether lost time. 
I can read small print at the pace of three miles 
an hour ; and when I have read enough to chew 
the cud upon, then in goes the pocket volume, 
and I add a mile an hour to my speed. 

" Galignani has sent me his edition of all my 
poems, with his compliments. He has put Law- 
rence's name to the portrait, which is a worsen- 
ed copy of ' Fitzbust the Evangelical.' He has 
got a most circumstantial memoir, in which ev- 
ery circumstance that is not totally false is more 
or less inaccurate ; all Hazlitt's abuse of me is 
interwoven and mixed up with a hodge-podge 
of panegyric, which in its particulars is just as 
false. • Some rubbish which I had thrown over- 
board is raked up ; one poem given to me which 
is Crowe's, another which is Cottle's, and a third 
which is I forget by whom ; and one or two 
pieces are printed twice over. Withal, it is a 
goodly volume ; and will make my poems known 
on the Continent to the cost of their sale at home. 
I shall favor M. Galignani with a few lines, to 
be inserted in my epistle to you, whenever that 
is printed. Farewell, and believe me always 
" Yours with hearty regard, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 8, 1830 
"My dear H. T., 
" Lord John's budget is as much a master- 
piece in its way as Lord Althorpe's. It really 
seems as if the aristocracy of this country were 
to be destroyed, so marvelously are they de 
mented. 

" While London is intent upon these debates. 
I have been reading Miller's* Sermons, ( intend 



* The Rev. John Miller, of Worcester College, Oxford. 
Of these discourses, my father says to another correspond- 
ent, "Would to God that such sermons were oftener de- 
livered from our pulpits ! Bad sermons are among the 
many causes which have combined to weaken the Church 
of England ; they keep many from church, they send 
many to the meeting-house ; hurtful they can hardly fail 
to be if they are not profitable : and one of the ways by 
which incompetent ministers disparage and injure the Es- 
tablishment in which they have been ordiiiued, is by de- 






488 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 56. 



ed to show a sober application of scriptural prin- 
ciples to the realities of life.' Recommend them 
to your mother and Miss Fenwick, and to any of 
your friends who are not indisposed to read such 
books. I think you saw Miller here one even- 
ing, with a brother and sister. His sermons are 
unlike any others which I have ever read ; they 
are thoroughly Christian in their spirit, and phil- 
osophical ; comprehensible by the plainest un- 
derstanding, and as satisfactory to the judgment 
as they are to the feelings. 

" If I had leisure I could write a very curious 
essay, historical and critical, upon sermons. 

*Jt J£, Jt. Jt. ,U. •Afc 

"7V* •7V *7V* "7V" "TV TV" 

"I have been reading, too, for the first time, 
Lord Chesterfield's Letters, with a melancholy 
feeling that the one and only grace which he de- 
spised might have made him a wise and good 
man. 

" Bishop Hacket and I go on well after sup- 
per. His are comical sermons : half Roman 
Catholic in their conceits, full of learning which 
would be utterly unprofitable if it did not some- 
times call forth a shrewd remark, seasoned with 
piety, and having good strong sense mixed up 
with other ingredients, like plums in a pudding 
which has not too many of them. 

" I think you will have another change at the 
Colonial Office ere long. This ministry can not 
stand, if the aristocracy and monarchy are to be 
preserved. I believe they felt their weakness 
(how, indeed, could they fail to feel it after such 
a budget?), and therefore they went over to the 
Radicals at the eleventh hour, thinking so to find 
strength. Peel's is said to have been the best 
speech he ever made. I am curious to see how 

far ' the evil heart of fear' will carry upon 

this occasion. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" March 1 4. 

" My dear H. T., 

"Your views are darker than mine, though I 
see the danger clearly and look it fairly in the 
face. The bill will be thrown out, unless many 
members who are opposed to it absent them- 
selves from the division in cowardice ; and to 
some extent this no doubt will happen, as even 
public opinion inflicts no punishment upon moral 
cowardice, though when the poor body offends, 
it is punched with disgrace or with death. 

" What astonishes me is, that the Greys, Rus- 
sells, &c, do not look at the known character 
and certain motives of the men whose support 
they are actually courting at this time. 

# # # * # # # 

" I should like a law excluding from Parlia- 
ment all persons against whom a verdict has 



livering crude and worthless discourses, which chill devo- 
tion even where they do not offend and shock the under- 
standing. 

" These are, in the true sense of a word, which has been 
most lamentably misapplied — Evangelical. I do not know 
any discourses in which revealed truths and divine philos- 
ophy are brought home with such practical effect to all 
men. They have the rare merit of being at the same time 
thoroughly intelligible, thoroughly religious, and thor- 
oughly -discreet." 



been given for libels, public or private, adultery, 
or fraud of any kind, and all who, having been 
bankrupts, had not afterward paid their creditors 
in full. 

" I am reading the Doctrine de Saint Simon, 
preparatory to a paper upon that subject. The 
subject is very curious, and the book written with 
great ability. God bless you ! R. S " 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

" Keswick, March 16, 1830. 
; ' My dear Mrs. Hodson, 

" # # # * #1 # # 

I have lost in Dr. Gooch one of the men in the 
world for whom I had the greatest regard. He 
saved this country from having the plague im 
ported by a paper some years ago upon the sub- 
ject in the Quarterly Review. That paper upon 
Anatomy in the last number is his, and the forth- 
coming one I believe will contain one upon Mad- 
houses, the last subject that occupied him. Nev 
er was man more desirous of doing all in his 
power toward diminishing the sum of human 
misery. 

" The article on the Internal Situation of the 
Country is not mine, nor do I know whose it is. 
You may be sure that I shall not be found com- 
plimenting the present ministry, nor even ex- 
cusing them, further than by saying that they 
know not what they do. If I wish that they 
may keep their station, it is because I do not 
wish any other set of men so ill as to wish them 
in their place, and because I do not see any good 
which could be hoped for from such a change. 
Even the Swiss are looking with exultation for 
the downfall of British prosperity and power, 
which they believe to be fast approaching. But 
in this the enemies of England will be woefully 
deceived, whatever may happen to us at home. 

" I am inclined to think that the Church is in 
more danger from the so-called Evangelical 
party among its own clergy than it would be 
from lay-assistance. These clergy are now about 
to form a sort of union — in other words, a con- 
vocation of their own, that they may act as a 
body. They have had a Clerical breakfast in 
London. The two Noels, Stewart, who is broth- 
er-in-law to Owen of Lanark, and was here with 
him some years ago, and Daniel Wilson, were 
the chief movers. There have been two reports 
of the speeches in the Record newspaper, ^Lnd 
a Mr. M'Neil, who very sensibly objected to the 
whole scheme, had the whole meeting against 
him. 

" Like you, I both dislike and distrust those 
who call themselves professors. They are just 
what the Pharisees were before them ; but I 
want to embody in the service of the Church 
some of that honest enthusiasm which will oth- 
erwise be employed against it. I want field 
preachers while we have an ignorant and brutal 
population : there can be no other means of re- 
claiming them. They will not go to church — 
the preacher must go to them. 

"Have you seen the Last Days of Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy? I knew him intimately in bis 



Mtat. 56. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 



48J- 



best days : he would have been a happier and a 
greater man than he was if he had been less suc- 
cessful in his fortunes. No man was ever yet 
the better for living in what is called the world. 
God bless you ! 

"Yours truly, Robert Southey." 

To J. W. Warter, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 18, 1830. 
" My dear Warter, 

" You are going to a country* which has more 
in its history and its literature to recommend it 
than in its objects of art or nature. But to an 
Englishman it is a very interesting land, and the 
language of all others most akin to our own, and 
consequently easier than any other foreign one 
whatever. You will readily acquire it, and find 
the value of the acquisition, as an aid toward 
other Northern tongues, and an indispensable step 
toward a lexicographical knowledge of our own. 

" One subject will be very well worthy your 
inquiry there — the history of the Reformation, 
and the present state of the Church in Denmark 
and Sweden ; for in those countries the work 
was more effectually done than any where else, 
and therefore, it should seem, more wisely. The 
Romanists have never recovered strength there, 
nor have any sects acquired head enough to be 
troublesome. I have long (for my own satisfac- 
tion) been desirous of obtaining more informa- 
tion on this subject than I know where to find. 

" There is much sound learning in Denmark, 
though it may not be of that kind which is rated 
so much above its real worth in our English Uni- 
versities. Their two most distinguished poets 
are (Ehlenschlagen and Ingemann, If you will 
take over the Tale of Paraguay, and All for 
Love to them, these books may serve as an in- 
troduction, some civilities of this kind having 
heretofore passed between us : tell me, if you 
can make room for four such little volumes, 
where they may be sent for you. 

" For the climate's sake I shall be glad if you 
migrate to Naples. Such a migration is likely, 
because nothing can be more according to the 
wisdom of English diplomacy than that a min- 
ister who has made himself acquainted with 
Northern interests should be sent to a Southern 
court, where he has every thing to learn. But 
I hope you will lay your Danish and German 
foundations first. The Goths, who overthrew 
the Roman empire, were not superior in a great- 
er degree to the Romans whom they subdued, 
than the Northerns are now in literature to any 
thing that the South produces, or can produce as 
long as Italy is blasted by the Papal Upas. 

"• God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"April 15, 1830. 
" My dear H. T., 
" Our political evils I impute mainly to the 



* Mr. Warter was about to be ordained as chaplain to 
the British Embassy at Copenhagen. 



progress of every thing in the country, excep 
good morals and sound policy. 

" The specific evil which I ascribe to tto 
Catholic Relief Bill is, that it has destroyed thi 
principle of the Constitution : the Rcvolutioi 
made it (and at a heavy price) essentially Prot 
estant ; it may be any thing now. Parties an 
in consequence broken up, the process of dislo 
cation is going on, every thing is out of joint 
and by-and-by all will fall to pieces. 

" I am not well, but I am able to work, and 
shall walk, in old English phrase, 'for dear 
life ;' though life is not so dear to me but that I 
could very willingly lay it down, if its continu- 
ance were not more desirable for others than 
myself. One pleasant thing, however, is, that I 
yesterday made arrangements for renewing my 
lease of this house ; it expires in November next, 
six months earlier than I had thought ; which is 
so much the better for me, for, getting rid now 
of the little furniture which belongs to the land- 
lord, I take it from that time at a reduced rent 
for five years, extensible at my option to five 
more. This it was prudent to secure, though, 
in all likelihood, a smaller tenement will suffice 
for me before that time. 

" So I look upon myself as settled for life. 
Lack of employment I shall have none, for 
scarcely a week passes without some applica- 
tion to me. 

" Sir told my brother that I was a. for- 
tunate man : I have been, and am so, God be 
thanked, in almost every sense of the word, ex- 
cept that in which Sir G. is likely to under- 
stand it. 

"God bless you! R. S." 

To J. W. Warter, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 23, 1830. 
" My dear Warter, 

I went abroad for the first time at an early age, 
under circumstances not very dissimilar ; for a 
shorter absence, but with much worse prospects. 
My disposition, however, was always hopeful ; 
relying upon Providence, I could rely upon my- 
self; and I can truly say that no anxiety con- 
cerning my worldly fortunes ever cost me a 
sleepless night or an uncomfortable hour. When 
I had little I lived upon little, never spending 
when it was necessary to spare ; and hitherto, 
by God's blessing, my means have grown with 
my expenses. 

"My voyage was to Portugal, and you know 
how much it has influenced the direction of my 
studies. My uncle advised me at that time to 
turn my thoughts toward the history of that 
country, when he saw how eagerly I was in- 
quiring into its literature, and more especially 
its poetry. Then my mind was not ripe enough 
for historical pursuits ; but the advice was not 
without effect ; and when I went again to Portu- 
gal, after an absence of four years, I began to 
look for materials, and set to work. 

"I am glad that Burton recommended the ec- 
clesiastical history of Denmark and Sweden to 



490 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 56 



your attention. It is an interesting subject, and 
if you only sketched it in a paper for the Quar- 
terly or the British Critic, it might be of use to 
yon hereafter ; still more if you found pleasure 
enough in the pursuit to follow it into its details 
and make a volume. And this might lead you 
at length to meditate a history of the three Scan- 
dinavian kingdoms- — Norway, Sweden, and Den- 
mark — a singularly rich subject, having in its 
early periods an English interest ; a romantic 
one in its middle, and even later ages ; and a 
moral and political one, in a high degree, at last. 
" As for composition, it has no difficulties for 
one who will ' read, learn, mark, and inwardly 
digest' the materials upon which he is to work. 
I do not mean to say that it is easy to write well ; 
but of this I am sure, that most men would write 
much better if they did not take half the pains 
they do. For myself, I consider it no compli- 
ment when any one praises the simplicity of my 
prose writings ; they are written, indeed, with- 
out any other immediate object than that of ex- 
pressing what is to be said in the readiest and 
most perspicuous manner. But in the tran- 
script (if I make one), and always in the proof- 
sheet, every sentence is then weighed upon the 
ear, euphony becomes a second object, and am- 
biguities are removed. But of what is called 
style, not a thought enters my head at any time. 
Look to the matter, and the manner takes care 
of itself. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 



To Henry Taylor, Esq. 



May 3, 1830. 



his book is a most important one. He has tram- 
pled upon Malthus's theory, proving its absurd- 
ity and falsehood, and his own views of the law 
of population deduce from facts that it is what 
from feeling you would wish it to be. God bless 



you 



R. S." 



" My dear H. T., 

" Hone* might have thriven if he had gone 
on as badly as he begun. But he was meant for 
better things, and published, at a cost which 
could only be covered by a large popular sale, 
more curious things than these penny purchasers 
were prepared for ; so, in outmarching the march 
of intellect itself, he outran the constable at the 
same time. His old sins averted from him one set 
of customers, and his better mind indisposed oth- 
ers, who would have dealt with him for garbage 
and such offal as goes to the swine-trough of vul- 
gar taste. 

" Add to this that he has ten children, and his 
embarrassments are accounted for. It is too 
likely that they will at last break, not his spirit, 
but his constitution and his heart. 

" I hold with Wilmot Horton about emigra- 
tion, and think Sadler erroneous in his opinions 
upon the law of primogeniture ; but, in the main, 



* "By-the-by, I have bought Hone's Every-day Book 
and his TableBook, and am sorry I had not seen them 
before my Colloquies were printed, that I might have 
given him a hearty good word there. I have not seen 
any miscellaneous books that are so well worth having ; 
brimful of curious matter, and with an abundance of the 
very best wood-cuts. Poor fellow, he outwent the march 
of intellect ; and I believe his unwearied and almost un- 
paralleled industry has ended in bankruptcy. I shall take 
the first opportunity of noticing these books : perhaps it 
will be in Allan Cunningham's periodical."— To H. Tay- 
lor, Esq. 



To the Rev. Robert Montgomery. 

" Keswick, May 11, 1830. 
" Dear Sir, 

"I had yesterday the pleasure of receiving 
your poems. As the note which accompanied 
them bears date in January, you may have won- 
dered that they were not acknowledged sooner. 
Any single page of these volumes contains suffi- 
cient proof of ardor and power with which any 
thing may be done when they are disciplined. 
You are in the right path, with right principles 
to guide you, and good fortune, I trust, full in 
view. You have only to store your mind well 
(as you are storing it), and it will ripen of itself 
You mention an introductory letter from one of 
the very best of men ;=* I shall be glad if this 
implies that you have an intention of coming into 
these parts, when I should have great pleasure 
in becoming personally acquainted with you. 

" Believe me, dear sir, yours with sincere good 
will, Robert Southey." 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

" Keswick, May 15, 1830 
" My dear Mrs. Hodson, 

" The poor king, it is to be hoped, will be re- 
leased from his sufferings before this reaches you, 
if, indeed, he be not already at rest ; it was thought 
on Monday that he could not live four-and-twen- 
ty hours. God be merciful to him and to us ! 
He failed most woefully in his solemn and sworn 
duty on one great occasion, and we are feeling 
the effects of that moral cowardice on his part. 
The duke expected to remove all parliamentary 
difficulties by that base measure, instead of which 
he disgusted by it all those adherents on whom 
he might have relied as long as he had continued 
to act upon the principles which they sincerely 
held ; rendered all those despicable who veered 
to the left-about with him, and found himself as 
a minister weaker than either the Whigs whom 
he sought to propitiate, or the Brunswickers (as 
they are called), whom he has mortally offended. 

" William IV., it is believed, will continue the 
present ministers, but act toward them in such 
a way that they will soon find it necessary to 
resign. Then in come Lord Holland and the 
Whigs, in alliance with the flying squadron of 
political economists under Huskisson. Beyond 
this nothing can be foreseen, except change after 
change ; every successive change weakening the 
government, and, consequently, strengthening 
that power of public opinion which will lay all 
our institutions in the dust. Yet I neither de- 
spair nor despond, and you may be assured I 
will not be idle. 

" The Peninsular War is my main employment 

* The late Sharon Turner. 



jEtat. 56. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



491 



now. It is yet a long way from its completion, 
but in good steady progress. I have at this time 
a head and both hands full. John Jones's at- 
tempts in verse will make their appearance short- 
ly ; there is a long introduction — in fact, a chap- 
ter, of the history of English poetry, which ought 
to content those subscribers who will not feel the 
touches of nature which are in this poor man's 
verses, but will feel the rudeness and the faults. 
I have taken public leave of all such tasks, and 
declined all inspection of manuscripts, &c, in a 
way which will amuse you ; but I am very far 
from repenting of what I have done in this way 
and in this case : in this case, because I have 
rendered some little service, and afforded great 
delight, to a very worthy poor man. 

" In the next Quarterly Review I have papers 
upon Mawe's passage over the Andes, and the 
conversion of Tahiti, where, with all my admira- 
tion for the spirit in which the missionaries begin 
and prosecute their work, you will see that I am 
not blind to the consequences of Calvinistic Chris- 
tianity. This reminds me of Reginald Heber, 
upon whose portrait I have written a poem, which 
will appear in the forthcoming volume of his 
Letters. 

" With our united remembrances to Mr. Hod- 
son, always very truly yours, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" June 8, 1830. 
" My dear R., 

" In increase of population, would not the in- 
creased proportion of infants augment the per 
centage of mortality quite as much as the increase 
of youth would lessen it ? 

" And will not insufficient diet among the poor 
balance the effect of improved diet upon the gen- 
eral scale ? The lower classes were worse fed 
formerly, but, except in seasons of extreme dearth, 
I do not think there were any who died of slow 
starvation, which is now no uncommon death. 
This we know in this place, where poor rates, 
formerly low, have prodigiously increased. 

" Did I tell you that a semi-official offer of 
ground in the New Forest has been made, for 
the purpose of trying a pauper colony, if gov- 
ernment could have found an amateur philanthro- 
pist to undertake the management of it. The 
person fixed upon was a clergyman, an old school- 
fellow of mine ; not wanting in good will for do- 
ing his duty at any time, but not so far wanting 
in common prudence as to take upftn himself 
such a charge. 

" A great deal depends upon the issue of the 
present struggle in France. The pooplc will 
not be satisfied with a limited monarchy ; they 
must either be under a tyrannical democracy or 
an absolute king. If the crown should succeed, 
I should think it bad policy in this country to op- 
pose any schemes of French conquest on the 
Barbaiy shore ; there is room enough for ambi- 
tion there, but at such a cost that France, with 
such an issue open, would feel little inclination 
or strength for troubling the repose of Europe. 



" The march of intellect has had an odd effect 
upon Sharon Turner. He thinks past history is 
likely to attract so little attention in future, and 
carry with it so little interest, that he advised 
me to begin my series of British Biography with 
Sir William Temple ! A few steps more in the 
march, and we shall have to begin the history 
of philosophy with Jeremy Bentham, and the 
history of England with Joseph Hume, and the 
history of literature with the foundation of the 
London University. 

" God bless you ! R. S. 

C: I am working very steadily, and improving 
a most wet and wintery season by the fireside." 

To J. W. Warter, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 9, 1830. 
" My dear Warter, 

^ ^r ^ ^ ^ ^ ^F 

" Are there any remains at Shrewsbury of the 
Amphitheater which in Elizabeth's reign had 
been made there in an old quarry between the 
city walls and the Severn? Churchyard the 
poet (a Shrewsbury man) describes it as holding 
ten thousand spectators; the area served for 
bear-baiting, wrestling, &c, and on better occa- 
sions your school predecessors acted plays there ; 
certainly in a more classical theater than the 
Dormitory at Westminster. Sir Philip Sidney, 
and his friend and biographer Lord Brooke, en- 
tered that school on the same day ; and it was 
then in as high estimation as any public school 
in England. 

" Danish is so easy and straightforward a lan- 
guage that you may make yourself acquainted 
with it without study, while you are studying 
German, and enlarge your vocabulary thereby, 
without confounding your grammar. Danish 
seems to me the easiest language into which I 
have ever looked, not excepting Spanish and Port- 
uguese ; but German is as difficult as Greek, and 
the difficult) 7 is very much of the same kind. I 
am glad you are under the necessity of acquiring 
the one ; the other you can not help acquiring. 
Lamentable experience makes me know how 
much is lost by a monoglot traveler : that epithet, 
perhaps, is not exactly what should be applied 
to myself, who get on with a mingle-mangle of 
many languages, put together without regard to 
mood, tense, gender, number, or person ; but my 
ear is the very worst in the world at catching 
sounds, and I have therefore more difficulty in 
understanding others than in making them under 
stand me. 

" Do not think any thing which relates to the 
manners or appearance — the in- or out-of-door 
nature — of a foreign country unworthy of notic* 
ing in your journal or note-book. At your age 
I was satisfied with two or three lines of memo- 
randa, when the same objects would now give 
mo good matter for perhaps as many pages. I 
should like to know a great deal more of Den- 
mark than I can gather from books ; there is no 
later book than Lord Moleworth's that gives me 
any satisfaction, and in that there is very much 



492 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 58. 



wanting. Coxe is, as he always was, dry and 
dull, giving only the caput rnortuum of what 
information he had gathered, which was gener- 
ally from the most accessible authorities, when it 
did not consist of statistic details. Later trav- 
elers tell us a great deal more of Sweden. I 
want to know why Denmark is a poor country, 
the people being industrious, and the government 
neither oppressive nor wasteful. Two years ago, 
having occasion to make some inquiry concern- 
ing foreign funds, I thought Danish the safest, 
looking upon the government as safe, and the 
nation as honorable and honest, and not likely to 
be involved in wars or revolutions. But I was 
informed that it paid the interest of its debt with 
borrowed money, and, therefore, that it was not 
a safe stock in which to invest money. This 
came from a person more than ordinarily versed 
in such things ; but the stock has gradually risen 
ten per cent, since that time, and will be more 
likely to keep up than that of any other country, 
if there should be a convulsion in France, which 
God in his mercy avert. 

" We are in no slight danger here, unless the 
Whigs are alarmed in time at the progress of 
their own opinions. In this country there are 
symptoms of their being so. But it must be a 
strong sense of their own danger in the men of 
property that can save us from a popular parlia- 
mentary reform in the course of the next Parlia- 
ment, the direct consequence of which will be a 
new disposal of Church property, and an equi- 
table adjustment with the fund-holders, terms 
which in both cases will be soon found to mean 
spoliation. 

" Meantime it is a comfort to know that though 
man proposes, the disposal is ordered by a higher 
power. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 10, 1830. 
" My dear Henry Taylor, 

" I dare say it will generally be felt that Mrs. 
Heber's book does not support the pretensions 
which its title, and still more its appearance, 
seems to hold forth. The materials would have 
appeared to more advantage in a different ar- 
rangement. 

" There is certainly an air of book-making 
about the publication, which is not lessened by 
the funebrial verses that it contains. Mine might 
have accompanied the portrait, in which case they 
would have seemed to be appropriately intro- 
duced; in fact, they were composed with that 
design. But this book ought not to detract from 
his reputation, the estimate of which must be 
taken from those things which he prepared for 
the press, and from his exertions in India. He 
Was a man of great reading, and in his Bampton 
Lectures has treated a most important part of the 
Christian faith with great learning and ability. 
His other published sermons are such that I am 
not surprised my brother Henry should think him 
the most impressive preacher he ever heard. 

"As a poet he could not have supported the 



reputation which his Palestine obtained, for it 
was greatly above its deserts, and the character 
of the poem, moreover, was not hopeful ; it was 
too nicely fitted to the taste of the age. Poetry 
should have its lights and shades, like painting ; 
like music, its sink and swell, its relief and its 
repose. So far as the piece was intended for 
success in a competition for a prize, and for ef- 
fect in public recitation, it was certainly judi- 
ciously done to make every line tell upon the ear. 
But to all such poetry the motto under one of 
Quarle's Emblems may be applied, ' tinnit, in- 
ane est.'' 

" He had a hurried, nervous manner in private 
society, which covered much more ardor and 
feeling than you would have supposed him to 
possess. This I believe entirely disappeared 
when he was performing his functions ; at which 
time, I have been assured, he seemed totally re- 
gardless of every thing but the duty wherein he 
was engaged. 

" Few persons took so much interest in my 
writings, which may partly have arisen from the 
almost entire coincidence in our opinions and 
ways of thinking upon all momentous subjects, 
the Catholic Question alone excepted. Mrs. 
Heber told me that I had no little influence in 
directing his thoughts and desires toward India; 
and I have no doubt that some lines in Joan of 
Arc set him upon the scheme of his poem on the 
death of King Arthur. My personal acquaint- 
ance with him was but little, but we knew a 
great deal of each other through Charles Wynn. 

"I am fond of irregular rhymeless lyrics, a 
measure wherein I have had few to approve and 
still fewer to imitate me. The proof of the po- 
etry, however, is not like that of the pudding, in 
the taste of those who partake it. Thalaba might 
very probably have been popular had it been in 
rhyme. None of my lyrical pieces could have 
been so ; and methinks it makes little difference 
whether there be three or four to admire them, 
or five or six. 

" There are friendships of chance and friend- 
ships of choice, and it was of the former which I 
meant to speak ; they are the more numerous, 
and probably the more lasting, because, general- 
ly beginning earlier, they have time to strike 
root in us, and partake of the nature of a habit, 
as the latter may be said to do, in some degree, 
of a passion. For the same reason, you are not 
so likely to be deceived in them! One whom 
you have known from early boyhood may disap- 
point your hopes and expectations ; but you will 
seldom be deceived in your moral estimate of 
him ; if he was ingenuous and kind-hearted, he 
will continue so through life. A good apple- 
tree may be blighted or cankered in its growth 
but it will never produce crabs. 

" Ministers will delay the meeting of Parlia- 
ment as long as they can, just as schoolboys 
would prolong their holidays if they could. But 
they may be flattered or frightened into any 
thing, good, bad, or indifferent : no persons who 
ever filled that station before have been political- 



jEtat. 57. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



493 



ly so weak, and most pitiably conscious they are 
of their weakness. A promise to convoke it 
without delay may probably be extorted from 
them. ' Gentlemen' have other business than 
that of the nation to attend to in the month of 
September, and I do not expect thtm to meet till 
they have had a campaign against the pheasants 
as well as the partridges ; so I look to be in town 
somewhere in October. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To J. W. Warter, Esq. 

"Keswick, Aug. 25, 1830. 
" My dear Warter, 

" The late events in France have placed both 
that country and this, in some respects, in the 
same sort of relation to each other that they 
were in forty years ago, after the fall of the Bas- 
tile. where my distinct and full recollections of 
history begin. There they are in the honey- 
moon of their new revolution, and here they are 
applauded and admired by persons as rash as 
those who fraternized with the old French Revo- 
lutionists, and as ignorant. Their language now 
is more open and more violent, because they are 
much more numerous, and perfectly aware of 
their own power. Yet, on the whole. I am in- 
clined to think that the course of events is rather 
likely to retard our progress toward revolution 
than to accelerate it; a formal revolution I mean, 
the moral one having already been brought about. 

" The aristocracy are likely to be awakened 
to a sense of danger : in this country, indeed, I 
know that they are so, though they want either 
the courage or the honesty to make their public 
conduct agree with their private declarations. 
But this course of double dealing can not long 
be continued if Europe should be involved again 
in revolutionary wars, from which I hardly see 
how it can escape, for I can not think that the 
new King of the French will possess that throne 
in peace. 

" As to military means, we have never been 
so well prepared for war, and the excitement 
which it would bring with it, and the impulse 
which it would give to every branch of industry, 
would put an end at once to all the present dis- 
tress, whatever might be the eventual conse- 
quences of a war expenditure. 

" But enough of this subject, which occupies 
more of my thoughts than I could wish. 

" I have written a biographical paper for the 
Quarterly Review which will interest you much, 
if you have not already read the book from which 
it is composed. It is the Life of Oberlin, a pas- 
tor of the Ban de la Roche in the Vosges Mount- 
ains. I am upon the latter part of a reviewal 
of Dymond's Moral and Political Philosophy; 
and 1 have sent off a short paper upon the Negro- 
English New Testament, for printing which the 
Bible Society has been greatly inveighed against. 
The Testament is a great curiosity, and I think 
myself very fortunate in having obtained one. 
But I do not join in the outcry against the Bible 
Society ; in my judgment they are completely 



justified in having printed it, but every means 
for superseding it ought to be used, by teaching 
either Dutch or English in all the English schools. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, Aug. 27, 1830. 
" My dear Neville, 

" James Stanger gave me your message yes- 
terday evening, and thereby made me perceive 
that I must have been mistaken in supposing I 
had written to you immediately after Mr. Fletch- 
er's visit. I received from him the Religio Me- 
dici, which I was very glad to see ; and I now 
say to you, what I then said to him, that when 
the book is ready I will do the best in my power 
to serve it in the Quarterly Review. It will be 
a very beautiful edition of an author whom I value 
most highly. I was much pleased with Mr. 
Fletcher himself, and wish there were more book- 
sellers so well-principled and so well-disposed. 

" Since his appearance we have had much 
anxiety concerning Cuthbert ; first from a slight 
but decided attack of scarlet fever, and, before 
he had recovered his strength, from a much more 
serious bilious one, which alarmed us greatly, 
and left him exceedingly reduced. By God's 
mercy he has been spared to us, and is, I think, 
gaining strength now day by day. I endeavor 
to be thankful for this and for other mercies, 
and, without an endeavor, am always mindful of 
the uncertainty of human life ; without endeavor 
I say, because that feeling has become habitual. 

" Ellis, the missionary, whose book I reviewed 
in the last Quarterly Review, has been here, and 
we were very much pleased with him. I was 
gratified by hearing from Sir Robert Inglis, in a 
letter which I received yesterday, that he thought 
that reviewal of mine was likely to be of much 
use ; the circles in which he moves afford him 
opportunities of observing how the observations 
which I made upon the errors of the Missionaries, 
and the dangers consequent upon those errors, 
are received among persons who have some in- 
fluence in directing their proceedings. 

" This letter would have been finished and dis- 
patched yesterday if Dr. Bell had not unexpect- 
edly arrived on a flying visit, or, rather, on his 
way to Scotland. He is a marvelous person for 
his years, and yet I see a difference since he was 
here in 1828. 

" Edward, the eldest of my uncle's sons, is 
passing the long vacation with me, and has been 
joined here by the third brother, Erroll. I hope 
to have much comfort in these young relations, 
and have now more satisfaction than I can ex- 
press in manifesting toward them my love for 
their father. God bless you, my dear Neville ! 
" Yours most affectionately, R. S " 

To Mrs. Hod son. 

" Keswick, Sept. 10, 1830. 
" My dear Mrs. Hodson, 
" You might have had another reason for dis 



494 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



/Etat. 



believing the statement of my appearing as a 
witness in behalf of Mr. St. John Long, to wit, 
that I am not likely to put myself into the hands 
of a quack. Probably he has had a patient of 
the same name, and the news' reporters supposed 
it to be me. It was contradicted in the Times 
by my brother (I suppose), who perhaps thought 
it some derogation to his own doctorship as well 
as mine. 

"I am troubled at the course of events, yet I 
can find some considerations, which, if they do 
not allay my disquietude, have in them a grow- 
ing comfort. Had it been in my power to turn 
the balance between the contending principles 
of France — which were Liberalism and Jesuit- 
ism — I should have laid my hand with great mis- 
giving on either scale ; and if I had decided on 
that which was, for the time, the cause of order, 
and brought with it the least immediate evil, it 
would have been with no clear conviction or good 
will. The complete triumph of the old Bourbon 
system would be the re-establishment of such a 
religion and such a court as those of Louis XIV. 
and Louis XV. Charles X. did not desire such 
a court, neither did the dauphin his son, but they 
both deemed it their duty to do all that could be 
done by sovereign power for the holy Roman 
Catholic Church. 

"The royal family fully understood that a 
scheme for expelling them and putting the son 
of Philippe Egalite in their place had been car- 
rying on ever since the battle of Waterloo, but 
they were strangely mistaken with regard to 
their strength, and did not calculate on the means 
of resistance which had been prepared. Other- 
wise, they had troops on whom they could have 
perfectly relied, who could have been brought up, 
for they were within two days' march. 

"It is better as it is, for they had put them- 
selves glaringly in the wrong by the Ordinances, 
having been wholly in the right before. You 
might have been with them for mere political 
considerations (and those only temporary ones) 
if they had succeeded, but you could not have 
been with them in principle and in heart. But 
all three are now united in the Duke de Bor- 
deaux's cause. Oh, how blind of intellect and 
dead of heart must the Duke of Orleans be to 
have thrown away such an opportunity of secur- 
ing himself a good and glorious name ! Had he 
insisted upon that child's right, and the plain 
policy of maintaining it — had he acted for him 
as a faithful regent — he would have had, not the 
mere recognition of unwilling courts, nor the 
1 hey, fellow !' recognition of Cobbet and Co., 
but the sure support of all the European powers, 
and the grateful attachment of all the old Roy- 
alists, and of all Frenchmen who desire tranquil- 
lity ; and his name would have become as illus- 
trious as that of Washington. 

"Did you ever read the Abbe Terasson's Se- 
thos ? There this duke might have found a bet- 
ter model for himself tkan Fenelon exhibited for 
his pi pil in Telemachus. It is so fine a romance 
in part of its story, and in its conception of moral 
greatness, that I have always wondered how a 



Frenchman could have written it. But Louis 
Philippe is already tasting the bitter relish of that 
ambition which was sweet at the first draught. 
Take away from his party the adventitious sup- 
porters (who make use, or hope to make use of 
him as an instrument, one faction against anoth- 
er), and his party is the weakest in France : the 
Napoleonists are stronger; so are the Republic- 
ans ; so are the Loyalists. These last would be 
the most numerous if quiet voices were ever 
counted in clamorous times. The Republicans 
are the most active and the most daring, and 
therefore they are most likely to have their day 
of triumph. War then becomes inevitable, and 
the new king's best policy, as against both Re- 
publicans and Napoleonists, may be to keep a 
mischievous nation quiet at home by engaging 
in hostilities with his neighbors, and taking up 
the old scheme of fraternization and conquest. 
This is what I expect, and then huzza for an- 
other battle of Waterloo ! 

" Believe me, always yours very truly, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Sept. 11, 1830. 
"My dear R., 

" Parliamentary reform is no longer a doubt- 
ful matter ; in some shape or other it must come ; 
and, in fact, the present state of things gives us 
some of its worst effects, as seen in Yorkshire 
and Middlesex. The old ground of defense, there- 
fore, that the system works well, is no longer 
tenable ; indeed, I have long seen that what wise 
men ought to look to is to devise in what manner 
they may best construct a raft from the wreck 
of the old ship. I would have fought her to the 
water's edge rather than have run among the 
breakers in the vain hope of escaping the enemy's 
fire. 

" It has been said that the king meant by his 
own prerogative to issue writs for Birmingham, 
Manchester, and perhaps Leeds and Sheffield. 
I wish he would, because it is better this should 
be done as an act of grace than of yielding ; and 
it would be wholesome to exert the prerogatives 
in a way that would be popular. The qualifica- 
tion might be fixed at a reasonable standard, and 
then let the cry for universal suffrage take its 
course. 

" A curious circumstance has come to my 
knowledge, showing that the Liberals were ready 
to strike a blow before the Ordinances gave a 
good color to their cause. A Frenchman em- 
ployed in Child's banking-house in their foreign 
correspondence, at c£l70 a year, asked leave (be- 
fore the Ordinances were fixed) to go to Paris, 
and was refused ; he said he must go ; they said, 
if so, they must fill up his place. He then told 
them that he was one of the National Guard ; 
that he was bound, as such, by a secret oath, to 
repair to Paris whenever he might be summoned^ 
and wherever he might be, disregarding all oth- 
er objects : the summons had reached him, and 
go he must. He went accordingly, and would 
arrive just in time for the struggle. 



/Etat. 57. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



495 



" Has any thought been given at the Admi- 
ralty to the effect which steam navigation must 
produce upon naval war ? I fear we shall have 
*o make our experiments in actual war, and learn 
that as we did engineering in Spain. 

" By good fortune, our enemies are as igno- 
rant in it as ourselves. God bless you ! 

"R. S." 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

JOURNEY TO LONDON UNEASY LIFE THERE 

NATIONAL EDUCATION GOES INTO HAMPSHIRE 

AND TO THE WEST OF ENGLAND CORRESPOND- 
ENCE WITH LORD BROUGHAM RESPECTING THE 
ENCOURAGEMENT OF LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 

ADVICE AS TO THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 

MISS BOWLES JOANNA BAILLIE POLITICS 

NECESSITY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION THE 

OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH THE REFORM 

BILL PROSPECTS OF THE COUNTRY IVAN VE- 

GEEGHAN JOURNEY TO CHELTENHAM ON DR. 

BELL'S AFFAIRS SIR WALTER SCOTT MR. 

WORDSWORTH STRANGE NOTION OF ANASTA- 

SIUS HOPE MR. KENYON MR. POOLE GEN- 
ERAL PEACHEY HIS PROSPECTS NOT SO GOOD 

AS FORMERLY THE CHOLERA LITERARY EM- 
PLOYMENTS STATE OF FEELING IN THE COUN- 
TRY JOURNEY TO LIVERPOOL, MANCHESTER, 

ETC. IS INVITED TO STAND FOR A PROFESSOR- 
SHIP AT GLASGOW— REGRETS MR. MAY'S RE- 
MOVAL FROM BRISTOL RIOTS IN THAT CITY 

THE CHOLERA THE EXCHEQUER LIKELY TO 

BE ABOLISHED PUBLICATION OF HIS POLITICAL 

ESSAYS.— 1830-1831. 

Toward the end of the following month (Oc- 
tober) my father was on the move for London, 
whither he traveled slowly, having Mr. Henry 
Taylor for a companion, who had been passing 
a short time at Keswick. Their route lay by 
the great North Road, through York and Doncas- 
ter, at which latter place they amused themselves 
with fixing upon the identical house in which Dr. 
Daniel Dove had lived. While they were walk- 
ing round the town, an incident occurred, which 
is related in The Doctor. &c, and may not un- 
fitly be mentioned here : " The group inside a 
shaving shop (Saturday evening) led us to stop 
for a minute, and a portrait over the fire induced us 
to walk in and look at it. It was an unfinished 
picture, and would probably have been a good 
one had it been completed. Upon inquiring 
whose it was, the barber said it had been in his 
possession many years before he knew; some 
friend had given it him because he said his shop 
was the proper place for it, the gentleman look- 
ing, by his dress, as if he was just ready to be 
shaved, with an apron under his chin. One day, 
however, the portrait had attracted a passing 
stranger's notice, as it had done ours, and he rec- 
ognized it (as I did upon hearing this) for a por- 
trait of Garrick."* 



This visit to London was partly on business 
— as he found it desirable occasionally to confer 
personally with his publishers — and partly for 
the sake of being nearer to the scene of action 
in those stirring times. This was as well for the 
purpose of writing upon the state of the times in 
the Quarterly Review, as also because he was 
then planning a new series of Colloquies, on mor- 
al and political subjects, in which Mr. Rickman 
was to be the interlocutor. A considerable por- 
tion of the work was written in the course of the 
following year by these two parties, and even 
part of it set up in type ; but the plan of a joint 
composition did not answer, being, as might be 
supposed, very unfavorable to any thing like close 
reasoning and logical deduction, and from this 
and other causes it was never completed. 

The following letter to Dr. Bell shows how 
restless a life he was compelled to lead in London. 

To the Rev. A. Bell, D. D. 

" London, Nov. 25, 1830. 
" My dear Sir, 
' : I came home at twelve this morning,* that 
I might write to you fully by this post, and found 
on my table a hand-bill of such a nature that I 
deemed it my duty to lose no time in sending it 
to the Home Office : it invites a subscription for 
arming the people against the police. Before 
this could be done, in came a caller, then anoth- 
er ; and it is now three o'clock. Would that it 
were possible for me to convince you of what it 
is so desirable for you to be convinced of — nol 
merely that your system must make its way uni 
versally (for you have never doubted that), noi 
I that your own just claims will one day be uni 
j versally acknowledged (for this also you can nol 
doubt), but that such efforts as you now wear} 
• and vex yourself with making, and as you wis! 
i me to assist in, can not possibly promote the ex- 
I tension of the system. * * * 

" The best thing that I can do, after touching 
upon the necessity of national education in the 
Christmas number (of the Quarterly Review) , will 
be to prepare a paper upon the subject as early 
as possible ; a task the more necessary, because 
many persons, I perceive, are beginning to appre- 
hend that the progress of education among the 
lower classes has done more harm than good. It 
is, you know, not a matter of opinion with me, 
but of feeling and religious belief, that the great- 
er the diffusion of knowledge, the better will it 
be for mankind, provided that the foundation be 
built upon the rock, and that, above all things, 
the rising generation be instructed in their duties. 
I shall be well employed, therefore, in showing 
that where any harm has been done by educa- 
tion, it is because that education has been imper- 
fect, or because its proper object has been per- 
verted by untoward circumstances, and the pres- 
ent state of the nation is such that I shall be en- 
abled to do this with better hope. 

" I am entering far more into general society 
than in any of my former visits to London, for 



* To Mrs. Southey, Oct., 1830. 



From breakfasting out 



496 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



the purpose of seeing and hearing all within my 
reach. The Duchess of Kent sent for me to 
dinner on Wednesday last ; there was a large 
party, not one of whom I had ever seen before. 
With the duchess, who seems a very amiable 
person, I had a very little conversation, though 
quite as much as she could possibly bestow upon 
me ; but with Prince Leopold, the only person 
to whom I was introduced. I had a great deal. 
I see men who are going into office, and men 
who are going out, and I am familiar enough 
with some of them to congratulate the latter, 
and condole with and commiserate the former. 
I meet with men of all persuasions and all grades 
of opinion, and hear their hopes and their fears, 
and have opportunities (which I do not let slip) 
of seeing the mechanism of government, and ob- 
serving how the machine works. I was to have 
dined with the archbishop on Wednesday, when 
the duchess made me put off my engagement. 

TT ^ W ^ TT T? 

" My table is now covered with notes, pam- 
phlets, and piles of seditious papers. You may 
imagine how I long to be at home and at rest. 
To-day I dine with Mr. Croker, who is likely to 
be prominent in opposition. The duke will not; 
neither, by what I hear, will Sir R. Peel. But 
I do not think it possible that the present admin- 
istration can hold together long ; and Peel, who 
is now without an equal in the Commons, has 
only to wait patiently till he is made minister by 
common consent of the nation. 

"Farewell, my dear sir; and believe me al- 
ways sincerely and affectionately yours, 

" Robert Southey." 

My father was much gratified, on the occasion 
of this visit to the Duchess of Kent, by her bring- 
ing the Princess Victoria, then eleven years of 
age, to tell him she had lately read with pleasure 
his Life of Nelson. " With the archbishop," he 
says in another letter, " I dined afterward, Words- 
worth, Dr. Wordsworth, and Joshua Watson be- 
ing of the party. The Duke of Wellington sent 
me a card, but I could not accept the invitation. 
But the oddest thing which befell me was, that 
as I rose from my knee at the levee, my hand 
was unexpectedly caught hold of and shaken by 
Lord Brougham."* 

He continued in London until the end of De- 
cember, when he went down into Sussex with 
Mr. Rickman, and, after a few days, proceeded 
to his friend Miss Bowles, at Buckland, near Lym- 
ington, where he found perfect quiet and leisure 
to finish a paper for the ensuing number of the 
Quarterly Review. A few brief extracts from 
his account of his journey thither will show how 
observant a traveler he was, even over ground 
which most persons would find little to interest 
them in : "* * # Our road lay through 
Kingston, where Huntingdon the Sinner Saved 
commenced his manner of living by faith ; Esher, 
where Prince Leopold lives ; Cobham, where 
some whimsical nobleman used to keep a hermit 

* At that time lord chancellor. 



(he had three in succession in the course of one 
year) ; Guildford, where we had time to go into 
the prettiest alms-houses in the kingdom, a foun 
dation of Archbishop Abbot, into its chapel, 
where there are some rich painted windows and 
a good portrait of the founder ; and Godalming, 
where 1 saw the church in passing. * * 
At Chichester, one of the canons, Mr. Holland 
(who married Murray's sister), expected us. 
The Cathedral is a very interesting pile on many 
accounts, and much finer than books or common 
report had led me to expect. A bookseller 
showed me a letter of Cowper's and some MS. 
notes of his written in Johnson's Life of Milton. 
Chillingworth's grave is in the cloisters, near 
Mr. Holland's door. Dr. Chandler, the dean, 
came to us in the Cathedral library, where, 
among other rarities, is the oldest volume of 
English sermons by Bishop Fisher. Bernard 
Barton's brother also joined us there, to be in- 
troduced to me. After luncheon, Mr. Holland 
took me to see his Chichester poet, Charles Crock- 
er, a shoe-mender, a very industrious, happy, and 
meritorious man, who is perhaps the best exam- 
ple of the good that may be done by education 
to persons in his rank of life. His poems are of 
very considerable merit. Then we went on the 
city walls, and lastly into the bishop's palace, so 
that I saw all that could be shown me in Chiches- 
ter, a cheerful, pleasant city."* The next letter 
gives some account of his further movements. 

To the Rev. J. W. Warier. 

" Crediton, Jan. 12, 1831. 

" My dear Warter, 
" Here I arrived last night on my way home, 
and at the furthest point from it to which my 
circuit has extended ; and here, at last, I have 
some hours upon which no demand will be made. 
This is the first use of my first interval of leisure. 
How I have been distracted in London no one 
can fully understand, unless they have been livino- 
with me there ; and how I have been busied 
tooth and nail during eleven days after I left it 
and got to Miss Bowles's, near Lymington, you 
may judge when you know that in that time I 
wrote the concluding article of the Quarterly Re- 
view all but the first seven pages. 

"As to the state of the country, I am more 
hopeful than most persons. The change of min- 
istry was the best thing that could have occurred, 
because the Whigs must do what they would 
never have allowed the Tories to do ; they must 
unsay much of what they have said ; they must 
undo (as far as that is possible) much of what 
they have done. They are augmenting the ar- 
my, which they compelled their predecessors to 
reduce. They have called for a yeomanry force, 
which they made their predecessors disband. 
They are endeavoring to curb the license of the 
press. I think they must suspend the Habeas 
Corpus Act. I believe they must restore the 
one pound bills ; I expect that they will find it 



To Mrl. Soutl ey, Dec. 30, 1830. 



jEtat. 57. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



49: 



impossible not to go to war ; and I am sure that 
if the question of Parliamentary Reform should 
not be thrust aside by other events, it could not 
be brought forward so well by any other persons 
as by the Whigs in power. They have great 
stakes in the country, and they are now heartily 
afraid of the democracy which they have so long 
been flattering. They have raised the devil, and 
it is proper that they should have the task of 
laying him. But in this, all who think and feel 
as I do will lend them a cordial support ; not for 
their sakes, but for the sake of ourselves and of 
the nation. While the government is what it is, 
we must support it in whatever hands it may be. 
" We shall get through our difficulties, and 
the better if there be war to help us. The prop- 
erty of the country is yet strong enough to re- 
store order. And if we have a change in the 
form of representation grounding it on property, 
and nowhere on numbers, we may gain by such 
a change more than we should lose by it. Soon 
we shall have a stronger government, and some- 
thing like police in the country as well as in 
London. 

" I leave this place (whither I came only to 
spend three days with my old fellow-collegian 
Lightfoot) on Saturday morning for Taunton, 
there to see my Aunt Mary, the last of my fa- 
ther's generation ; a dear excellent old lady, in 
whom I see what I am indebted for to the 
Southey part of my blood. Monday I go to 
Bristol, where I have not been for twenty years. 
I mean once more to look at the scenes of my 
birth and childhood, and have so much love for 
the place that I have the serious intention of 
writing a poem, descriptive, historical, and des- 
ultory, in honor of my native city. 

" You may suppose how impatient I am to 
reach home, and resume once more the even 
tenor of my usual life. I bought a good many 
books in London, three or four consignments of 
which have arrived, and others are on the way. 
Some skill in packing will be required for ar- 
ranging them. Neither my head nor hands were 
ever so full as at this time, and I hope, with God's 
blessing, to get through a world of work. 

" And now, my dear Warter, God bless you ! 
" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

It would seem that my father felt considerable 
surprise at Lord Brougham's friendly greeting 
at the levee, partly because they had little or no 
personal acquaintance, having, I believe, only 
met once at Edinburgh in 1805 (see ante, p. 
195), and partly because they had been so strong- 
ly opposed in politics, neither having spared the 
other when occasion served. Time, however, 
had somewhat softened the political asperities of 
both, and the greeting was only the prelude to a 
friendly letter from his lordship, which reached 
my father while on his journey, but to which he 
had not leisure to reply until his return. I sub- 
join it here, with the answer, having Lord 
Brougham's kind permission to do so. 
Ii 



The Lord Chancellor Brougham and Vaux to 
R. Southey, Esq. 

" Althorp, Jan., 1831. 
" Dear Sir, 

" I was prevented by various interruptions 
from writing to you while I was at Brougham 
upon a subject which greatly interests me, and I 
therefore take the earliest opportunity of bringing 
it before you. 

" The government of this country have long 
been exposed, I fear justly, to the charge of neg- 
lecting science and letters. I feel it an impos- 
sible thing for me, whose life has been passed 
more or less in these pursuits, to allow this stain 
to rest upon any administration with which I am 
connected, and therefore that it is my duty, as 
far as in me lies, to turn the attention of the 
present government to the best means of encour- 
aging scientific and literary pursuits. With this 
view I have applied to the two men at the head 
of the physical and mathematical sciences, in my 
opinion, and I can not look into the department 
of literature without being met by your name. 
I may probably apply in like manner to one or 
two more men distinguished in the same field, but 
I have not as yet selected any such. My wish 
is to have the benefit of your unreserved opinion 
upon the questions : 

"1st. Whether or not Letters will gain by 
the more avowed and active encouragement of 
the government? 

"2d. In what way that encouragement can 
the most safely and beneficially be given them ? 

"Under the first head is to be considered, no 
doubt, the chances of doing harm as well as the 
prospect of doing good. Thus it seems obvious 
that there is one danger to be guarded against — 
the undue influence of government — capable of 
being perverted to political and party purposes. 
This includes the risk of jobs for unworthy per- 
sons, and the exclusion of men of merit. The 
applause of the public, it may be said, is a safe 
test and unbiased reward of merit ; not to be 
easily, at least not permanently, perverted to 
wrong ends. I throw out this as one considera- 
tion, showing that the case is not so clear of 
doubt as it at first may seem to be. 

" Under the second head several things pre- 
sent themselves for consideration. If the risk of 
abuse were not great, it is plain that pecuniary 
assistance would be the most desirable means of 
helping genius, because many a man of genius 
is forced out of the path of original inquiry and 
of refined taste by the necessities of his situation, 
and is obliged to spend his talents on labor little 
better than mechanical. But the difficulties of 
arranging such aid systematically are so great, 
and the risk of abuse so imminent, that I ques- 
tion if more can be done in this way than by lend- 
ing occasional assistance. 

" The encouragement of societies has been al- 
ready tried, not perhaps in the best way, but still 
a good deal has been thus attempted. These are 
susceptible of considerable improvement. A ju- 
dicious foundation of prizes is another mode de- 
serving consideration. 



498 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF M tat 57 



" The distribution of honors has been very par- 
tially tried, and many have proposed a more reg- 
ular admission of men of science and letters to 
rank, confined to their own lives in cases where 
hereditary honors might be burdensome to their 
families. An order of merit has been proposed 
by some. But as all novelties in such a matter 
(of opinion and public feeling) are to be shunned, 
one of the existing orders of knighthood, as the 
Guelphic, has been by others suggested as free 
from the objection. 

" I throw out these things more for the pur- 
pose of bringing your mind to the details of the 
matter than with the view of exhausting the sub- 
ject. 

" It will afford me great satisfaction to be fa- 
vored with your opinion upon the question as 
fully as your leisure may permit. I shall, of 
course, keep it entirely to myself. 

" It may very possibly turn out that, after all, 
nothing material can be accomplished ; but, at 
any rate, I can not allow this opportunity to pass 
without trying all means of accomplishing an ob- 
ject so desirable ; and my anxiety on this score 
must plead my excuse for troubling you with so 
long a letter. 

" I am, dear sir, your faithful servant, 

" Brougham." 

To the Lord Chancellor Brougham and Vaux. 
" Keswick, Feb. 1, 1831. 
" My Lord, 

" The letter which your lordship did me the 
honor of addressing to me at this place found me 
at Crediton, in the middle of last month, on a 
circuitous course homeward. It was not likely 
that deliberation would lead me to alter the no- 
tions which I have long entertained upon the 
subject that has, in this most unexpected man- 
ner, been brought before me ; but I should have 
deemed it disrespectful to have answered such a 
communication without allowing some days to 
intervene. The distance between Devonshire 
and Cumberland, a visit upon the way to my na- 
tive city, which I had not seen for twenty years, 
and the engagements arising upon my return 
home after an absence of unusual length, will 
explain, and I trust excuse, the subsequent de- 
lay. 

" Your first question is, whether Letters would 
gain by the more avowed and active encourage- 
ment of the government ? 

" There are literary works of national import- 
ance which can only be performed by co-opera- 
tive labor, and will never be undertaken by that 
spirit of trade which at present preponderates in 
literature. The formation of an English Etymo- 
logical Dictionary is one of those works ; others 
might be mentioned ; and in this way literature 
might gain much by receiving national encour- 
agement ; but government would gain a great 
deal more by bestowing it. Revolutionary gov- 
ernments understand this ; I should be glad if I 
;. ould believe that our legitimate one would learn 
It before it is too late. I am addressing one who 
is a statesman as well as a man of letters, and 



who is well aware that the time is come in which 
governments can no more stand without pens to 
support them than without bayonets. They must 
soon know, if they do not already know it, that 
the volunteers as well as the mercenaries of both 
professions, who are not already enlisted in this 
service, will enlist themselves against it ; and I 
am afraid they have a better hold upon the sol- 
dier than upon the penman, because the former 
has, in the spirit of his profession and in the sense 
of military honor, something which not unfre- 
quently supplies the want of any higher principle, 
and I know not that any substitute is to be found 
among the gentlemen of the press. 

" But neediness, my lord, makes men danger- 
ous members of society, quite as often as afflu- 
ence makes them worthless ones. I am of opin- 
ion that many persons who become bad subjects 
because they are necessitous, because ' the world 
is not their friend, nor the world's law,' might 
be kept virtuous (or, at least, withheld from mis- 
chief ) by being made happy, by early encourage- 
ment, by holding out to them a reasonable hope 
of obtaining, in good time, an honorable station 
and a competent income, as the reward of liter- 
ary pursuits, when followed with ability and dili- 
gence, and recommended by good conduct. 

"My lord, you are now on the Conservative 
side. Minor differences of opinion are infinitely 
insignificant at this time, when, in truth, there 
are but two parties in this kingdom — the Revo- 
lutionists and the Loyalists ; those who would de- 
stroy the Constitution, and those who would de- 
fend it. I can have no predilections for the pres- 
ent administratioa ; they have raised the devil, 
who is now raging through the land ; but, in their 
present position, it is their business to lay him if 
they can ; and so far as their measures may be di- 
rected to that end, I heartily say, God speed them t 
If schemes like yours, for the encouragement of 
letters, have never entered into their wishes, there 
can be no place for them at present in their in- 
tentions. Government can have no leisure now 
for attending to any thing but its own and our 
preservation ; and the time seems not far distant 
when the cares of war and expenditure will come 
upon it once more with their all-engrossing im- 
portance. But when Jsetter times shall arrive 
(whoever may live to see them), it will be wor- 
thy the consideration of any government wheth- 
er the institution of an Academy, with salaries 
for its members (in the nature of literary or lay 
benefices), might not be the means of retaining 
in its interests, as connected with their own, a 
certain number of influential men of letters, who 
should hold those benefices, and a much greater 
number of aspirants who would look to them in 
their turn. A yearly grant of <£\ 0,000 would 
endow ten such appointments of d£500 each for 
the elder class, and twenty-five of c£200 each for 
younger men ; these latter eligible of course, and 
preferably, but not necessarily, to be elected to 
the higher benefices as those fell vacant, and as 
they should have approved themselves. 

" The good proposed by this, as a political 
measure, is not that of retaining such persons to 



Mtat. 57. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



499 



act as pamphleteers and journalists, but that of 
preventing them from becoming such, in hostility 
to the established order of things ; and of giving 
men of letters, as a class, something to look for 
beyond the precarious gains of literature, there- 
by inducing in them a desire to support the ex- 
isting institutions of their country, on the stabil- 
ity of which their own welfare would depend. 

" Your lordship's second question — in what 
way the encouragement of government could 
most safely and beneficially be given — is, in the 
main, answered by what has been said upon the 
first. I do not enter into any details of the pro- 
posed institution, for that would be to think of 
fitting up a castle in the air. Nor is it worth 
while to examine how far such an institution 
might be perverted. Abuses there would be, as 
in the disposal of all preferments, civil, military, 
or ecclesiastical ; but there would be a more ob- 
vious check upon them ; and where they occur- 
red, they would be less injurious in their conse- 
quences than they are in the state, the army, and 
navy, or the Church. 

" With regard to prizes, methinks they are 
better left to schools and colleges. Honors are 
worth something to scientific men, because they 
are conferred upon such men in other countries ; 
at home there are precedents for them in New- 
ton and Davy, and the physicians and surgeons 
have them. In my judgment, men of letters are 
better without them, unless they are rich enough 
to bequeath to their family a good estate with the 
bloody hand, and sufficiently men of the world to 
think such distinctions appropriate. For myself, 
if we had a Guelphic order, I should choose to 
remain a Ghibelline. 

" I have written thus fully and frankly, not 
dreaming that your proposal is likely to be ma- 
tured and carried into effect, but in the spirit of 
good will, and as addressing one by whom there 
is no danger that I can be misunderstood. One 
thing alone I ask from the Legislature, and in 
the name of justice — that the injurious law of 
copyright should be repealed, and that the family 
of an author should not be deprived of their just 
and natural rights in his works when his perma- 
nent reputation is established. This I ask with 
the earnestness of a man who is conscious that 
he has labored for posterity. 

u T remain, my lord, yours, with due respect, 
" Robert Southey." 

To Herbert Hill, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 5, 1831. 
" My dear Herbert, 
" You may be perfectly at ease as to my an- 
ticipations of the changes which I might find at 
Crediton ; they had no relation to any thing but 
the knowledge that we must all of us either im- 
prove or worsen as we grow older, and that at no 
time is this more apparent than when we pass to 
man-hood or woman-hood. Those whom I had 
left girls were now become young women ; the 
change is not so great as from kitten-hood to cat- 
hood ; but if ever you have children of your own, 
you will then know how the joyousness which 



they impart diminishes, and the anxieties increase 
as they grow up. A little of this one feels for 
those friends to whom we are most attached ; and 

you know that I have as hearty a regard for 

as he has for me. I never knew a better man, 
and have never known a happier one. A bless- 
ing seems to have attended him through life. 

"Now for your own speculations as to the 
choice of a profession. And let me begin by ad- 
monishing you that this is a choice between risks, 
uncertainties, and difficulties (discomforts might 
be added to the list), not between two ways, each 
pleasant alike, and each leading surely to the 
resting-place which is the object of the journey. 

" You hesitate between the professions of the- 
ology and medicine. Morally and intellectually, 
both are wholesome studies for one who enters 
upon them with a sound heart and a proper sense 
of duty. I should not say the same of the law, 
for that must, in my judgment, be always more 
or less injurious to the practitioner. The com- 
parative advantages and disadvantages seem to 
be these : the medical profession will require you 
to live in a town, most likely in London, or cer- 
tainly in one of the larger cities ; this may be a 
recommendation or otherwise, according to your 
inclinations. It requires means for supporting 
you till you get into practice, and this is slow and 
up-hill work, as well as being in a great degree 
uncertain ; you may make a great fortune by it, 
but not till late in life, and your labors increase 
with your success. 

" As a clergyman, then, you have your fellow- 
ship till you choose to vacate it ; a less busy, but 
a less anxious life is before you. Talents and 
industry may do more for you as a clergyman ; 
good manners and good nature may tell to better 
account as a physician. But the prudential bal- 
ance is so nearly equipoised, that the determina- 
tion may fairly be a matter of free choice. With 
regard to the studies in which they would engage 
you, I think you would like that of physic best at 
first, but that the older you grew the better you 
would like and feel the value of those to which 
theology would lead you. 

" Opinions must always be inherited, and hap- 
py are we who can refer to the title-deeds upon 
which ours are founded. As you read more and 
observe more, what are now prejudices will be- 
come principles, and strike root as such, and as 
such bring forth fruit in due season. Nullius ad- 
dictus, Sfc.j is the boast of vanity and sciolism. 
There are very few who do not put faith in their 
apothecary and their lawyer, and we are less 
likely to be deceived when we confide in the opin- 
ions which have been held by men of whose learn- 
ing, and ability, and integrity no doubt can be en- 
tertained. If the writers from whom I now derive 
most pleasure and most profit had been put into 
my hands when I was at your age, I should have 
found little in them that was attractive. Our 
higher intellectual faculties (perhaps it were bet- 
ter to say our spiritual ones) ripen slowly, but 
then they continue to improve till the bodily or- 
gan fails. Take this maxim with you, that in 



500 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF /Stat. 57. 



divinity, in ethics, and in politics there can be no 
new truths. Even the latter is no longer an ex- 
perimental science, and woe be to those who treat 
it as such ! 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

"Keswick, Feb. 7, 1831. 
" My dear Mrs. Hodson, 

"You may infer how incessantly I was en- 
gaged during my abode in town from the 1st of 
November to the 27th of December, when you 
are told that I could not possibly find time for 
writing more than the first six pages of- that 
paper in the Quarterly Review, though the num- 
ber was waiting for it. The remainder was 
written at Caroline Bowles's, where I shut my- 
self up for eleven days, refusing all invitations, 
seeing no visitors, and never going out, except 
when she mounted her Shetland pony, and I 
walked by her side for an hour or two before 
dinner. That paper, however, is but the first 
fruits of my journey. I have a great deal more 
to say, and am busily employed in saying it. 

" When I met Joanna Baillie at Rogers's, her 
sister and my daughter Bertha constituted the 
whole party ; for, as to literary parties, they are 
my abomination. She is a person whom I ad- 
mired as soon as I read her first volume of Plays, 
and liked when I saw her as much as I had ad- 
mired her before. I never talk much in com- 
pany, and never carry abroad with me the cheer- 
ful spirits which never forsake me at home. But 
I was not sad that morning, though perhaps my 
thoughts might sometimes be more engaged than 
they ought to have been by the engagements of 
various kinds which were pressing upon me. 
Bertha said of me in one of her letters from town 
that I used to look as if I had more to think of 
than I liked. This was only because it was so 
much, not that I looked at the course of events 
with any thing like despondency. Very far from 
it ; I found few persons so hopeful, so confident 
as myself; but those few were exactly the per- 
sons on whose judgment I have most reliance. 
The Whigs have already increased the army, 
called for the yeomanry force which they had 
disbanded, and begun to prosecute for sedition. 
I expect to see them suspend the Habeas Cor- 
pus, reissue one pound notes, and go to war. We 
have at least a government now, and we have 
only had the shadow of one before since the great 
defection ; and the men in power must, of neces- 
sity, do what their opposition would have pre- 
vented or deterred their predecessors from doing. 
This advantage is worth purchasing at the cost 
of that minimum of reform which is to be looked 
for at their hands. 

" Yours very 'truly, R. Southey." 

To Captain Southey. 

"Keswick, Feb. 13, 1831. 
" My dear Tom, 
"## * * # # # 

Heartily glad I am to be at my own desk by my 



own fireside, and once more at rest. In London 
I could not find any time for writing any thing ; it 
was less interruption to let in all callers than to 
receive and answer notes if they were excluded. 
I was at the most important debates which I 
could attend conveniently, because my quarters 
were with Rickman. I walked into the city on 
the Lord-mayor's Day and the day before, and 
saw the sort of multitude which had been brought 
together for mischief, and from various quarters 
I heard what the mischief was — a Cato-street 
scheme, with this difference only, that instead of 
attacking the ministers at a dinner-party, the king 
and the Duke of Wellington were to have been 
killed in their carriages, and the new police mas- 
sacred. 

" The Quarterly Review was kept waiting for 
my paper. But yet I have a great deal to say 
upon the state of public affairs, both through the 
medium of the Quarterly and in other ways. As 
soon as possible I mean to address a series of 
letters to the people. 

" Murray is now reprinting my Moral and 
Political Papers, in a small cheap form, like his 
Family Library. About half a volume is printed, 
and in revising them for the press it is mournful 
to see that they are in the main as applicable now 
as when they were written, and that much of the 
present evil might have been averted if the warn- 
ing which was then given had been taken in 
time. The evil has now, I think, become so 
great that it must draw on a remedy. And it 
is like a special judgment upon the Whigs, who 
have raised the devil, that they should be in a 
position which makes it their business to lay him 
if they can. They must do every thing whict 
they used to declaim against ; and, happily, the) 
can do it, because there will be no factious op 
position to them. 

" The Duchess of Kent sent for me one day t( 
dine with her ; the reason, as I learned from Si; 
John Conroy, being that she thinks of making ? 
Northern tour with the little princess, and intend- 
ed to ask me what tour she should take, and what 
time it would require. No such questions, how- 
ever, could the duchess ask, for there were more 
than twenty persons at dinner, of whom I only got 
at the names of those nearest me, and of course she 
could have very little conversation with me. I 
took it quietly, felt as I should have done at a 
table d'hote where all were strangers, made a 
good dinner, and withdrew as soon as my broth- 
er's carriage came for me at a quarter before 
ten. 

# # # # # # # 



God bless 



you 



R. S." 



To the Rev. Neville White. 



"Keswick, March 21, 1831. 
" My dear Neville, 
"# =* # # # # # 

You know, my dear Neville, that I have en- 
deavored always to impress upon the public the 
necessity of educating the people. If that edu- 
cation is either so conducted, or left so imperfect 
as in many cases to do harm rather than good, 



^TAT. 57. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



501 



the fault is not in the principle, but in the mis- 
management of it. The great evil which at 
present it produces is that of making young per- 
sons discontented with the stations which they 
were intended to fill, and thus producing more 
claimants for the stations one degree higher than 
can be provided for in that class. Whenever the 
education which such persons receive shall be- 
come universal, this mischief must necessarily 
cease. It produced nothing but good in Scot- 
land, because it was universal there. 

" A more difficult question is how to render 
the religious instruction which children receive 
at school of more effect. And where parents 
neglect, as they so very generally do in that sta- 
tion of life, this duty, I do not see how this is to 
be done by schools and teachers. We want a 
reformation of manners to effect that without 
which manners, alas ! can not be reformed. 
This is evident, that boys and girls are taken 
from school precisely at that age when they be- 
come capable of, in some degree, understanding 
and feeling what till then they have only learned 
by rote. Then it is that the aid of catechists is 
wanting. In a small parish the clergyman can 
do much ; in large ones I do not wonder that they 
are deterred from attempting what with their 
utmost exertions they could not possibly accom- 
plish. 

"I am perfectly satisfied that no children 
ought to be left without education, so much as to 
enable them to read, write, cipher, and under- 
stand their moral and religious duties. But 
about infant schools I do not see my way so 
clearly, and am not sure whether some harm is 
not done, both to parent and child, by taking so 
much off the parent's hands. No doubt it is a 
choice between evils. Of this I am sure, that 
half the crimes which disgrace this nation are 
brought on by street education, which goes on in 
villages as well as in towns. So far as infant 
schools tend to prevent this, they are greatly 
beneficial. 

" You ask me about Magdalen institutions. 
There is scarcely any form of misery that can 
have so strong a claim upon compassion as that 
which these are intended to alleviate. Often as 
the intention may be disappointed, one case in 
which it succeeds may compensate for fifty dis- 
appointments. And these poor creatures are not 
so generally, I might say uniformly, to be dis- 
trusted as prison converts. In prisons, I believe, 
the common effect is, that the cleverest criminals 
add hypocrisy to their other sins. 

" Look again at what I have said concerning 
the observance of Sunday, and you will perceive 
that I have argued against Dymond's liberal no- 
tions about the day, and also against, not a re- 
ligious, but a puritanical observance of it; for 
that, I am sure, tends to promote irreligion. Of 
the two extremes I would choose rather the pop- 
ish than the puritanical Sabbath. Let us keep 
the mean. 

" James Stanger is expected here next week, 
but for a short time only. He is a very valuable 
man, and I have a sincere respect for him, though 



very far from being as good a neighbor as he 
might like to find me, and, were he less consid- 
erate than he is, might expect me to be. Bui 
I have no time for neighborly intercourse. 

" No room is left for politics. My hope is that 
the ministers will not think it expedient to resign 
till war begins, for something would seem want- 
ing in political justice if it were not to be begun 
under their administration. God forgive them 
for the mischief they are doing by their portent- 
ous budget of reform, and for calling in, as they 
have done and are doing, the aid of the villainous 
press, in order to carry it by intimidation. Pas- 
sages in the , which even the editor would 

not dare to write, are said to- have been supplied 
to him for this purpose. 

" Our kind remembrances to your fireside. 

11 God bless you, my dear Neville ! 
" Yours affectionately, R. Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 3, 1831. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 

" Would that I were more at leisure to con- 
verse with those who are at a distance ; but 
leisure and I seem to have parted company for- 
ever in this world, and occupation does not bring 
with it that quiet now which it used to do in less 
uneasy times.* Not that I have lost either heart 
or hope ; for, though nothing can be worse than 
all the manifestations of public feeling from all 
sides, I expect that the delusion will in a great 
degree be removed when the present excitement 
has spent itself; and though I have no reliance 
whatever upon the good sense of the people, 
there is yet goodness enough in the nation to 
make me trust in full faith that Providence will 
not deliver us over to our own evil devices, or 
rather to those of our rulers. Those who gave 
Earl Grey credit for sagacity, believed, upon his 
own representations, that time had moderated his 
opinions, and that he would always support the 
interests of his order. Provoked at the exposure 
of his whole cabinet's incapacity, which their 
budget brought forth, he has thrown himself upon 
the Radicals for support, bargained with O'Con- 
nell, and stirred up all the elements of revolution 
in this kingdom, which has never been in so per- 
ilous a state since the Restoration. 

" The poor people here say they shall all be 
' made quality ' when this ' grand reform' is 
brought about. ' it is a grand thing !' The 
word deceives them; for you know, Grosvenor, 
it ' stands to feasible' that reform must be a good 
thing, and they are not deceived in supposing 

.t- . 

* " If I wore in the seventeenth year of my age instead 
of the fifty-seventh, I might, perhaps, like the prospect of 
a general revolution in society, looking only at the evils 
which it was to sweep away, and the good with which it 
was to replace them. But I am old enough to know some- 
thing of the course on which we have entered. Anarchy 
is the first stage— and there the road divides, one way 
leading by a circuitous route, and so' difficult a one as to 
be scarcely practicable, back to the place from whence 
we start ; the other by a broad and beaten way to military 
despotism. The tendency is to a despotism of institutions, 
which, when once established, stamps a whole people in 
its iron mold and stereotypes them." — To H. Taylor, E$q.. 
March 13, 1831. 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 57. 



502 

that its tendency is to pull down the rich, what- 
ever may be its consequences to themselves. 

"May 14. 
" This letter has lain more than a week unfin- 
ished in my desk. To-day's paper tells me that 
his Right Honor* has gained his election ; and 
this I am very glad of, hoping, however, that the 
head of the family, or one of those uncles who 
can so well afford it, will bear the costs. There 
is no statesman to whom I ascribe more of the 
evils which are gathering round us than Lord 
Grenville. The Catholic Question was an egg 
laid and hatched in that family, and Leda's egg 
was not prolific of more evils to Troy than that 
question has proved, is proving, and will prove 
to these kingdoms. 

^ ^ jfc ^ ^ T? ^V 

" I saw Lord this morning : he said ' we 

are going to wreck;' and I was shocked to see 
how ill he looked — twenty years older than when 
I dined with him at Croker's in December last. 
It is not bodily fatigue, but anxiety, that has pro- 
duced this change ; the clear foresight of evils 
which are coming in upon us with the force of a 
spring-tide before a high wind. Every one whom 
I see or hear from is in worse spirits than myself, 
for I have an invincible and instinctive hope that 
the danger will be averted by God's mercy. In 
the present state of the world nothing seems to 
proceed according to what would have been 
thought likely. Who, for example, could have 
expected that France would not have been at 
war before this time, or that Louis Philippe 
would have been still on his uneasy throne ? 
Who would have supposed that Russia would 
have been defeated in its attempt to suppress the 
Poles? or that Austria could have put down the 
insurrection in Italy ? I say nothing of the mad- 
ness which king, cabinet, and people have man- 
ifested at home, because they really seem to be 
acting under a judicial visitation of insanity. But 
I am almost ready to conclude that we shall 
weather this storm, because all probabilities and 
all appearances are against it. Some unexpect- 
ed event may occur ; the war for which France 
has been preparing upon so formidable a scale 
may break out in time, and in a way which will 
render it impossible for our ministers to remain 
at peace ; or such a revolution may be effected 
in that country as will frighten the king and min- 
istry here into their senses. Some death may 
take place which may derange the administra- 
tion ; some schism may make it fall to pieces ; 
the agricultural insurrections and the burnings 
may begin again, and act in prevention»of a rev- 
olution which they would otherwise inevitably 
follow; or, perhaps, the cholera morbus may be 
sent us as a lighter plague than that which we 
have chosen for ourselves. 

"Be the end of these things what it may, 
Grosvenor, ' we's never live to sec'i,' as an old 
man of Grasmere, whom Betty knew, said upon 
some great changes which were taking place in 



Mr. Wynn. 



his time ; c but we's, may be, hear tell, 1 he added, 
and so say I. 

" Further, I say, come to Keswick this year ; 
and remember, Grosvenor, that you and I have 
not many ' next years' to talk of, even if life were 
less precious than it is. 

" I have a great deal to say to you, and a great 
deal to show you, if I had you by the fireside, and 
in the boat, and on the ascent of Skiddaw, and 
two or three other mountains, where I would 
walk beside your horse, if your own feet were 
too sensitive to perform their own duty. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Dr. Southey. 

" Keswick, June 27, 1831. 
" My dear H., 

" I returned home* on Friday, and Bertha ar- 
rived the same night, safe, and if not sound, yet 
much better than she had of late been, and I hope 
on the convalescent list. My journey ended as 
I expected, in my declining the proposed execu- 
torship, and giving good counsel to no purpose. 
The poor old doctorf may live long, or soon be 
taken off. He is completely speechless, but in 
full possession of all his other faculties, and his 
mind is as quick and vigorous as ever. Never- 
theless, I have reason to believe that the will will 
be contested, on a most untenable plea of insan- 
ity in the testator. If so, I must appear as a 
witness. 

" The proofs which awaited my return I have 
got through ; not so the letters, which are, as 
usual, de omnibus et quibusdam aliis. There 
were the proofs of an article upon the New 
Christianity and New System of Society, started 
by the St. Simonites in France ; proofs of my 
Essays, of which half the first volume is printed, 
and which I dedicate to Inglis ; and proofs of 
the Peninsular War. This will be ready for 
publication in November. You have got my 
Brazilian small stock out of the fire in good 
time : I should have thought myself lucky to get 
out at 50 ; and wonder that they have not fallen 
so low as to prove that there are no purchasers. 
No other revolution could be so injurious to the 
commerce of this country, nor produce such in- 
terminable evils in its own. 

" Recommend Ivan Vejeeghan, a Russian Gil 
Bias, to those who wish to see a lively descrip- 
tion of society in Poland and Russia. It con- 
tains a better account than can any where else 
be met with. Were the rest of the world undis- 
turbed and unaffected by what may happen in and 
around Poland, the war there might be regarded 
with much indifference, as a process which can 
not worsen the moral condition of either people, 
and might possibly improve it, though that pos- 
sibility is a very poor one. But how any thing 
better than a barbarous government, whether it 
be an oligarchy or a despotism, can'be construct- 
ed in a country where there is no middle class, 
nor any persons in a condition to be raised into 

* The next letter explains the object of this journey 
fully. t Dr. Boll. 



jEtat. 57. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



503 



such a class, I do not perceive. The peasants 
are serfs, and trade is in the hands of Jews, 
the vilest, filthiest, and most superstitious of their 
race. 

"If I had Aladdin's lamp^the genius should 
transport me, and my household and my books, 
to Cintra; though, just now, perhaps, one might 
be safer under the paternal protection of Ferdi- 
nand than of Miguel. But I verily believe that 
Spain and Portugal are the safest countries in 
Europe, and that Spain will be a most peaceable 
and flourishing one for some years to come. God 
bless you ! R. S." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

" Keswick, July 15, 1831. 
"My dear Neville, 

" When your letter arrived I was absent from 
home on a melancholy business, obeying, indeed, 
a call from my poor old friend Dr. Bell, who told 
me that he was speechless and in a perilous state, 
and that he greatly desired to see me. I found 
him totally deprived of speech, by a gradual pa- 
ralysis of the organs, but no otherwise in danger 
of death than that death is daily probable at his 
advanced age, and that this paralysis may extend 
to the neighboring parts and prevent his swal- 
lowing, or descend and stop the digestive func- 
tions. 

"He had deposited <£l 20,000 3 per cents, in 
the hands of certain trustees belonging to the 
University of St. Andrews, and when I arrived 
this sum had been divided into twelve parts, six 
of which went to the University and town, and 
four for founding Madras schools at. Edinburgh, 
Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Inverness. I was con- 
sulted about the disposal of the remaining two, 
and my advice was that he should dispose of one 
for the augmentation of small livings (which 
might have been so managed by vesting it in 
trustees as to call forth an equal sum from Queen 
Anne's bounty, and thus augment forty livings), 
and apply the other to founding his own schools 
in the parishes so augmented : to which sugges- 
tion I trusted for making the other acceptable. 
He was delighted at first with the thought, and 
readily agreed to it. But the next day he return- 
ed to the one thought which has always possessed 
him, and education was to have it all. I urged 
in vain that the Church of England had some 
claim for a part of the large sum which had al- 
most wholly been derived from it. 

" There will be a residue of his property, and 
I suspect of considerable amount, by his anxiety 
as to the disposal of it. About this, too, I was 
consulted, but to no purpose, for all will go in 
some shape or other to schools. I pleaded for 
his relations earnestly, but in vain. He consid- 
ers it his duty to devote his whole property to 
the object which has occupied his whole life. 

" He wished me to be one of his executors ; 
but this was impossible, without neglecting my 
own business for an indefinite time. As his will 
then stood, he had bequeathed a thousand pounds 
each to me and Wordsworth, with the charge of 
editing his works. The will was to be re-made, 



and I think it not unlikely that his bequest may 
be omitted at last ; for though I believe there is 
no person for whom he has a higher regard, and 
though I am sure that the advice which I gave 
him can not have lowered me in his esteem, 
whatever it may in his liking, yet if he weighs 
me in the balance against a Madras school to be 
established in any part of Scotland, my scale will 
kick the beam. 

" He has been a most devoted friend to chil- 
dren : he has loved them with all his heart, so 
indeed as to have left little room in it for any 
other affections. I passed four mournful days 
with him, and was absent twelve days from home, 
which is to me a serious loss of time. 

"About the Liturgy I have left mysel little 
room to write. It wants few alterations, and 
those very easy and unobjectionable. I would 
divide the Morning from the Communion Serv- 
ice ; the two together, with the addition of a 
sermon, being far too long both for the priest and 
the people. Some of the first lessons might bet- 
ter be changed, and a few of the Psalms passed 
over, as not being for edification. When Church 
reformation begins, if revolution does not render 
it unnecessary, I fear we shall find many Judases 
in the Establishment. It was more by her own 
treacherous children that she was overthrown in 
the Great Rebellion than by the Puritans. But 
this must ever be the case. 

# # # * # * * 

" God preserve us from the* cholera morbus, 
from which nothing but his mercy can preserve 
us ! It is a fearful thought that perhaps in his 
mercy he may bring it upon us as the least of the 
evils which we deserve ! Yet I have that com- 
fortable reliance upon Providence, that even in 
these times I am not cast down. 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! And be- 
lieve me always 

" Yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Henry Taylor. Esq. 

"Keswick, July 15, 1831. 
" My dear H. T., 

" This day being Friday, when no letters go 
for London, I intended to have sent you a note 
of introduction to Sir Walter ; but this day's 
newspaper brings account that he has had an- 
other attack, and is in extreme danger. I fear 
this is true, because I wrote to him last week,* 
and should most likely have heard from him in 
reply if he had been well. His make is apo- 
plectic, and I dare say he has overworked him- 
self, with much wear and tear of anxiety to boot, 
which is even more injurious. Latterly his spir- 
its have failed him. a good deal owing to the 
prospect of public affairs : that, indeed, can ex- 
hilarate such persons only as , and those 

who hope to fish in troubled waters. 

" The sort of statesman that we want is a man 
who yields nothing that he ought not to yield, 

* The later letters to Sir W. Scott have not come into 
ray hands.— Ed. 



504 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JEtat. 58 



who WDuld dispute all the way from London to 
"Witton-le-Weir, taking Oxford on the road ; who 
will summon cab-men when it is proper so to 
do, and engage with a whole quarterly meeting 
of Quakers in argument. 

^ ^ W T? ^ ^T TT 

"Wordsworth, in all likelihood, will be at 
home at the time you wish. I saw him last 
week ; he is more desponding than I am, and I 
perhaps despond less than I should do if I saw 
more clearly before me. After seeing the reign 
(I can not call it the government) of Louis Phil- 
ippe's last twelve months, Poland resisting Rus- 
sia, and Italy not resisting Austria, William IV. 
dissolving Parliament in order to effect parlia- 
mentary reform, and Prince Leopold willing to 
become king of the Belgians, who can tell what 
to expect, or who would be surprised at any 
thing that was most unexpected, most insane, or 
most absurd ! Certainly what seems least to be 
expected is that we should escape a revolution, 
and yet I go to sleep at night as if there were 
no danger of one. 

" Have you seen the strange book which An- 
astasius Hope left for publication, and which his 
representatives, in spite of all dissuasion, have 
published ? His notion of immortality and heav- 
en is, that at the consummation of all things, he, 
and you, and I, and John Murray, and Nebu- 
chadnezzar, and Lambert the fat man, and the 
living skeleton, and Queen Elizabeth, and the 
Hottentot Venus, and Thurtell, and Probert, and 
the twelve apostles, and the noble army of mar- 
tyrs, and Genghis Khan and all his armies, and 
Noah with all his ancestors and all his posterity 
— yea, all men and all women, and all children 
that have ever been or ever shall be, saints and 
sinners alike, are all to be put together, and made 
into one great celestial eternal human being. 
He does not seem to have known how nearly 
this approaches to Swedenborg's fancy. I do 
not like the scheme. I don't like the notion of 
being mixed up w T ith Hume, and Hunt, and 
Whittle Harvey, and Phillpotts, and Lord Al- 
thorpe, and the Huns, and the Hottentots, and 
the Jews, and the Philistines, and the Scotch, 
and the Irish. God forbid ! I hope to be I my- 
self; I, in an English heaven, with you yourself 
— you, and some others, without whom heaven 
would be no heaven to me. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John Kenyon, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 11, 1831. 
" My dear Kenyon, 
" I am always glad to receive a letter from 
you. It reminds me of many pleasant meetings, 
and of years upon which, though they have long 
gone by, it is not yet become painful to lookback. 
" Something we must all have to regret ; I 
have done much since you first became acquaint- 
ed with me, but much less than I hoped to have 
done, than I should have done under more favor- 
able circumstances, and than I might have done 
under those in which I have been pfaced. You 



have chosen rather to enjoy your fortune than to 
advance it j and with your power of enjoyment, 
I am far from thinking that you have chosen ill. 
You would be neither a wiser, happier, or better 
man if you were sitting on the bench all be-robed 
and be-wigged as Mr. Justice Kenyon, nor if 
you were in the House of Commons, flitting, like 
the bat in the fable, between two contending par- 
ties, and not knowing to which you properly be- 
longed. Men make a great mistake when they 
fancy themselves useful members of society be- 
cause they are busy or bustling ones. You have 
seen a great deal of the world, and your recol- 
lections and observations, were you to employ 
yourself in preserving them, might produce 
something which posterity would not willingly 
let perish. 

" Poole will be here on a flying visit next 
week : he says it will be his last visit to the 
North. I know not why it should be so, if he 
continue, as he tells me he now is, in good 
health. I have lately lost in Duppa one who, 
though somewhat less than a friend, was much 
more than an acquaintance. In him the link is 
broken which connected me with some who are 
gone before me to their rest, and with places 
which I shall never again see. Some pages of 
Espriella are his writing ; and not a few of my 
cheerful recollections have ceased to be cheerful 
now, because he forms a part of them. I have 
very few friends younger than myself, and this is 
a misfortune. 

" The general* is here, in good health and 
spirits. It is very pleasant to see the perfect 
boyishness with which he enters into all youthful 
sports. He spells Sir Nicholas's name, plays 
forfeits, dances, and wears a false nose, as grave- 
ly and with as much serious enjoyment as he 
used to play the cymbals five or six-and-twenty 
years ago. Senhouse also is here with his fam- 
ily. Both desire to be remembered to you. 

"I am writing some Colloquies, but not with 
the same interlocutor ; and I am collecting my 
political papers, lest my claims to unpopularity- 
should be forgotten : some of my friends may 
say the publication in this respect being ill-timed 
to a nicety. This year will clear my hands of 
the Peninsular War, and then the History of Port- 
ugal will go to press, the work which I have 
most at heart. Whether any thing will come of 
the collections which I have made for other un- 
dertakings not less extensive in their kind, God 
knows. I sometimes fear that I shall have the 
reflection at last of having heaped up much 
treasure of this kind in vain. 

" God bless you ! 

" Yours very sincerely, 

"Robert Southey." 

To John 3fay, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 1, 1831. 
" My dear Friend, 
"* * * # # * * 

The prospect before me is not so clear as it was 



General Peachey. 



Atat. 58. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



505 



The state of politics has affected every branch of 
business, and none more than that upon which I 
have to depend. It can not be long before it be 
determined whether the Quarterly Review will 
continue to pay me at its former rate, or wheth- 
er I must withdraw from it, and. look about for 
other means of support. Other employment, 
equally profitable and certain in its profit as this 
has hitherto been, it may not be easy to find ; 
but I have no fear of getting on well at last, and 
my disposition saves me from all disquietude 
which is produced by needless anxiety. 

" Your own cares at this time can have left 
you little leisure for those fears which the moral, 
political, and physical state of Europe awaken in 
every one who has leisure to look before him and 
around him. The spirit of insubordination, con- 
nected with every thing that is most false and 
perilous in politics, morals, and religion, has ex- 
tended so widely, so all but generally, through- 
out the working classes, that the white inhabit- 
ants in Jamaica are not in more danger from the 
negroes than we are from our servile population. 
This spirit has been greatly aided by the agita- 
tion which the Reform Bill has excited; and 
whatever plan of reform may be at length agreed 
on, and to whatever extent it may be carried, 
the consequences of such a ferment must long be 
felt. One issue leads to certain revolution, the 
other gives only a chance of averting it. With 
these prospects at home, and the cholera rapidly 
advancing to the opposite coast of the Continent 
(it is daily expected at Hamburg), I do not think 
that England, since it was England, has ever 
been threatened by such serious dangers ; for 
any pestilence must be more dreadful than in 
former times, in proportion to the increased dens- 
ity of our population and the rapidity of commu- 
nication throughout the country, and any revolu- 
tion, instead of throwing down (as in former con- 
vulsions) a few high towers and old houses like 
a storm of wind, would rend and overthrow the 
foundations of society like an earthquake. These 
reflections occur to me so frequently and with 
so much force, that the deprecations in the Lit- 
any which apply to these specific dangers have 
for some time made part of my prayers at night 
and morning. 

" My occupations of late have been the Pen- 
insular War, of which I hope to see the end in a 
few weeks after my return ; the Colloquies on 
the vulgar Errors of the Age, for which Westall 
has made some most beautiful drawings ; and a 
review of Moore's Life and Death of Lord Ed- 1 
ward Fitzgerald, which I must take with me to j 
finish in Shropshire. The reprint of my Essays 
might have been completed long since, if Mur- 
ray had pleased. But he is the most incommu- 
nicable of men : and the book hitches upon some 
notion of his that the papers upon the Catholic 
Question, which were intended to conclude the 
volumes, would injure their sale. I tell him that 
those who hate my opinions will not buy my 
books, whether those papers are included or not ; 
and that those who agree with me will like to 
have what the collection professes to be, the 



whole of my Political Essays. But here the 
matter rests, and the press stands still. 

" One thing I had nearly forgotten to tell you. 
A selection from Wordsworth's poems for young 
persons has answered so well, that a similar vol- 
ume from mine is now in the press ; and if this 
succeeds, as it may almost be expected to do, 
there will be a companion to it of prose selec- 
tions. In this way I may derive some little prof- 
it, now that the sale of the works themselves is 
at a dead stop ; and in this way some good will 
be done, as far as the selections circulate. Two 
mottoes have fallen in my way for them, which 
I think you will deem applicable : 

' Nullo imbuta veneno 
Carmina,' 

is the one ; both are from Janus Douza : the 
other, 

' Quales filiolis suis parentes, 
Quales discipulis suis magistri, 
Tuto prselegere et docere possint.' 

" Believe me always, my dear and excellent 
friend, 

"Yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct. 14, 1831. 
" My dear Rickman, 

" Since you last heard from me I have taken 
a round of about 300 miles — by way of Liver- 
pool to Shrewsbury, and by way of Manchester 
home 5 and, among all the persons with whom I 
fell in, in stage-coaches and at inns, there was 
but one reformer, and he a Londoner. The oth- 
ers generally wanted a little encouragement to 
draw them out, but, when I had spoken boldly, 
were glad to declare themselves. 

" Manchester* was perfectly quiet when The 
Times described it as being in a state of dread- 
ful excitement. There was alarm enough on 
the day of the meeting, but the Radicals, having 
routed the Whigs to their heart's content, spent 
the evening in jollity instead of mischief. The 
Whigs called the meeting, the Radicals had their 
own way at it, and both have done what the Con- 
servative party would have wished them to do. 

"Among the means which have occurred to 
me for lessening the power of the newspapers, 
one is, that the debates should be officially pub- 
lished, and sold at a low price, so that their com- 
parative cheapness might carry them into circu- 
lation. I would have also, whether connected 
with the debates or not, a paper as official as 
the Moniteur, and as authentic as the Gazette, 
in which government should relate as much news 
as can possibly be related, never deceiving the 
people. This, if ably conducted, might prevent 
much delusion and consequent mischief. * * 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



* " The borough -reeve of Manchester tells James White 
that if that town were rid of about thirty fellows, who are 
the notorious movers of all political mischief there, it 
would be as quiet and as well-disposed as any place in 
England. Does that government deserve the name of gov- 
ernment which has no power to keep such fellows in or- 
der V'—To J. Rickman, Esq., Oct. 25, 1831. 



506 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 58. 



On my father's return from this short journey, 
he found an invitation awaiting him to offer him- 
self as a candidate for the Professorship of Hu- 
manity at Glasgow, and it was represented to 
him that the chances of success were not doubt- 
ful. "Under the present circumstances of the 
publishing trade," he says, "it would have be- 
come a question of prudence in which inclination 
must not have been suffered to interfere, if it had 
not so happened that the invitation found its way 
to me too late to admit of my making inquiries 
concerning particulars which it did not commu- 
nicate. If, as I suspect, the professors are re- 
quired to subscribe the Kirk's Articles of Faith, 
there could have been no choice." 

To a suggestion from another friend of the 
practicability of obtaining some permanent posi- 
tion of this kind, he says, " Headships are out of 
the question both as to the requisite knowledge 
and the way of attaining them. No, H. T., I 
have nothing to look for but what comes out of 
this ink-stand. There may be some temporary 
inconvenience, but, unless all things are subvert- 
ed about me, that ink-stand will supply my wants 
till death or infirmity overtake me. For the first 
I am sufficiently prepared as to worldly affairs ; 
for the latter, I trust that Providence will save 
me from it, or support me under it."* 

To Herbert Hill, Esq. 

"Keswick, Oct. 30, 1831. 
" My dear Herbert, 
" # # # * * * * 

The study of the Fathers opens so wide a field, 
that I, who have long cast a longing eye thither- 
ward, .have been afraid to enter it, because it 
was too late in the day for me ; and yet few men 
can be prepared in mind and inclination for such 
pursuits early enough to go through with them. 
Routh, I suppose, has published most of what 
your friend recommends to you. It is in the 
early Fathers that you will find least admixture 
of other than theological matter ; their success- 
ors offer a mine which has been very imperfectly 
worked as yet of historical materials ; that is, 
for the history of manners and opinions. Let 
nothing of this kind escape you. I not unfie- 
quently find notes useful which were made five- 
and-thirty years ago, when I could little foresee 
to what use they would be applied. 

"In a note of Isaac Reed's to Dodsley's Old 
Plays, he quotes a MS. from ' a chest of papers 
formerly belonging to Mr. Powell (Milton's fa- 
ther-in-law), and then existing at Forest Hill, 
about four miles from Oxford, where, he says, 
in all- probability, some curiosities of the same 
kind may remain, the contents of these chests 
(for I think there are more than one) having nev- 
er yet been properly examined.' This note was 
written fifty years ago, and most likely the pa- 
pers have now disappeared ; but it may be worth 
while to inquire about them, for the bare possi- 
bility of discovering some treasures. 

" I am, I hope, settled to my winter's work, 



* To Henry Taylor, Esq., Oct. 23, 1831. 



heartily glad to be so, though with darker pros- 
pects than at any former time. But I am in 
good hopes, and trust that, though we are under 
the worst ministry that ever misconducted the 
affairs of a great nation, Providence will preserve 
us. Even if they succeed in bringing upon them- 
selves the destruction which they deserve, you 
will live to see a restoration of the monarchy and 
the Episcopal Church. 
" God bless you ! 

" Yours affectionately, R. S." 

To the Rev. J. W. Warter. 

"Keswick, Dec. 27, 183L 
" My dear Warter, 

" The merry Christmas that we wish you will 
be over before our wishes can reach Copenhagen, 
and the new year will be far on its way to Feb- 
ruary — may it, however, be a happy one in its 
course ! None within my memory has ever open- 
ed with such threatening aspects •, but this con- 
sideration, which enters night and morning into 
my prayers, affects me very little at other times, 
partly because I am too busy to entertain it, 
partly because my constitutional hilarity over- 
comes it, and still more, perhaps, because I have 
a strong persuasion, such as might almost be 
called an abiding trust, that Providence will visit 
this country, sinful as it is, rather in mercy than 
in vengeance. 

" The misconduct of those people who let the 
cholera into Sunderland has been, if possible, ex- 
ceeded by that of the government which has let it 
out ! instead of shutting it up and extinguishing 
it in the first house where it appeared. But even 
in the king's speech the question cf contagion is 
spoken of as doubtful, and the government have 
dealt with this pestilence just as they did with 
the Catholic Question — allowed the evil to in- 
crease till they could plead its extent as an ex- 
cuse for yielding to it : they kept up the farce 
of a quarantine upon the ships, and allowed free 
intercourse by land . The cholera is now as fairly 
denizened as the small-pox. 

"I have always thought Copenhagen one of 
the safest places from this disease, because your 
government there is an efficient one in such cases, 
and is perfectly aware of the danger, and yet 
has few points to guard, which being guarded it 
can not be brought to you. In England it will 
have as free a course as sedition, treason, and 
blasphemy. This house is as favorably situated 
as any one can be that is not at a distance from 
an inhabited place ; and with this assurance we 
shall commit ourselves to God's mercy, if it should 
be imported into Keswick. 

" You ask me about the insurrection at Bris- 
tol. Government are well informed that it was 
part only of a wider scheme, in which Birming- 
ham, Nottingham, and other places were to have 
taken part. The bishop behaved manfully ; the 
mob were masters of the city, and one of the 
minor canons waited upon him before the hour 
of service, and represented to him the propriety 
of postponing it. ' My young friend,' said the 



Mtit.SB. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



507 



bishop, w.th great good nature, laying his hand 
upon his shoulder as he spake, ' these are times 
in which it is necessary not to shrink from dan- 
ger. Our duty is to be at our post.' The serv- 
ice accordingly was performed as usual, and he 
himself preached. Before evening closed, his 
palace was burned to the ground, and the loss 
which he sustained (besides that of his papers) 
is estimated at 6610,000. Except the books and 
papers which were consumed there, nothing has 
been destroyed but what may be replaced ; for, 
though the fire has done no good (that is, though 
it has burned none of those filthy dens of wretch- 
edness with which all our cities are disgraced), 
it has touched none of the antiquities of the place. 
A letter from Bristol gives this description, by 
an eye-witness, of what was going on all night 
in Queen's Square, the main scene of action : 
' The mob gave notice of the houses they meant 
to attack by knocking at the doors, and they al- 
lowed the family a quarter of an hour to escape. 
This interval they spent in dancing : they clear- 
ed a circle in the middle of the square, and went 
round hand in hand, prisoners in their prison dress- 
es (drunk with the delight of having been set 
free) and women of the worst description. The 
light from the blazing houses made them all ap- 
pear black ; and the dance was to many of them 
the dance of death, for they were so improvident 
for their own escape, that they set many rooms 
and different stories on fire at the same time, and 
when the roofs fell in many of them were seen 
to drop into the burning ruins.' It is not known 
how many perished there, but the number killed 
and wounded by the soldiers was not short of 500. 

" This event has made the decent part of the 
people understand what the populace are, and 
has made the populace fear the soldiers. Lat- 
terly, indeed, the mob were so drunk that a hand- 
ful of resolute men might have knocked them on 
the head, as sailors kill seals upon an unfrequent- 
ed island. 

"The truth is, that the West Indian planters 
are not in more danger from their negroes than 
we are from our servile population. The old 
habit of obedience is destroyed, and what is even 
worse, there is no longer the bond of mutual in- 
terest between the workmen, whether in manu- 
factures or agriculture, and their employers. 
The poor are poorer than they ought to be ; they 
know this, and they know their own numbers and 
their strength. Where this is the case, no sys- 
tem that depends upon cheap labor for its px-os- 
perity can continue. Great changes in the con- 
stitution of our society are therefore inevitable ; 
but the changes which our ministers are moving 
earth and hell to effect, can not even alleviate 
any one existing evil : their direct tendency is 
to give more power to that part of the people 
who have already far too much, and who, in 
truth, can not possibly have too little, in any 
well-ordered state. 

" How much matters of this kind have been 
in my thoughts during the last three-and-twenty 
years, you will see whenever my Essays reach 
you. I expeot daily to see them advertised. 



"lam glad to hear that you have been buy- 
ing books. I have subscribed to the Bibliothe- 
ca Anglo-Saxonica ; and to Jonathan Boucher's 
Glossary, which is at last about to be completed 
and published as a Supplement to Johnson. If 
the continuation be as good as Boucher's own 
part, it will be the best work of its kind, I believe, 
in any language. Cuthbert and I are reading 
the Merchant of Venice in the Friesland dialect, 
Halbertsma having sent me, from Deventer, a 
translation by Posthumous of that play and of 
Julius Caesar. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 28, 1831. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" You have taken a wise man's view of the 
prospect before you; only in one point I think 
you anticipate something worse than is at all 
likely to happen, for it is by no means likely that 
your retiring allowance will be so niggardly as 
to impose upon you the necessity of any retrench- 
ment. I shall be sorry when this vile measure 
is carried into effect, believing, upon your judg- 
ment, that it is a bad measure in itself; but I 
should be sorry for it as a mere change, unless 
there were some great and certain good to arise 
from it ; and even then I should be sorry, for 
the sake of the poor old Exchequer itself, and 
my more than forty years' acquaintance with it. 
But for your sake, certainly, if your future allot- 
ment depended upon my will, your harness should 
be taken off, and to grass you should go for the 
rest of your life, but with a comfortable shed for 
winter and bad weather, and plenty of good win- 
ter food there, and warm litter. Whatever be- 
comes of the Exchequer, this would be my wish 
for you. The latter years of life ought to be our 
own ; by the time we reach the threshold of old 
age, the cares of the world have had from us all 
that ought to be exacted for them. 

" You ought, by this time, to have received my 
Essays, reprinted from the Quarterly Revfew, and 
the Edinburgh Annual Register ; and with the 
passages restored which poor Gifford cut out, that 
is, where I was lucky enough to recover either 
the MSS. or the proofs. Except the dedication 
to Sir Robert Inglis, they contain nothing that 
will be new to you ; but you will like to have 
thern thus collected ; and when you are cutting 
the leaves open, you will see many proofs of mel- 
ancholy foresight. My intention was, if these 
volumes should obtain a tolerable sale, to follow 
them with similar volumes ecclesiastical, histor- 
ical, literary, and miscellaneous, about eight or 
ten of which my stores would supply. But in 
the present state of things an encouraging sale 
is not to be expected, especially for a book con- 
taining the most unpopular opinions expressed in 
the strongest language in which I could convey 
them. 

"At present, thank, God, we are all in tolera- 
ble health, and in good spirits : these, you know, 



508 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 58. 



never fail me. Your godson is a tall fellow, near- 
ly as tall, and only some months younger than I 
was when you first saw me across the school, lit- 
tle thinking at the time what you and I should be 
to each other in after years. 

" God bless you, my dear G. My love to Miss 
Page and your brother, and as many new years 
to you all as may be happy ones. The Smoker* 
is desired to accept the assurances of their high 
consideration from the Cattery of Cats' Eden. 

"R. S." 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

FEARS OF A REVOLUTION THE CHOLERA MORBUS 

MARY COLLING CHARLES SWAIN DR. 

BELL'S DEATH POLITICAL APPREHENSIONS 

OFFER OF PROFESSORSHIP AT DURHAM FEW 

MEN KNOWN THOROUGHLY COMPARISON BE- 
TWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE EDUCATION 

OPINION OF MR. SWAIN'S POETRY KNOWLEDGE 

NOT THE FIRST THING NEEDFUL HISTORY OF 

PORTUGAL REVIEW OF BOWLES'S ST. JOHN 

IN PATMOS MARY COLLING VISIT TO LOW- 

THER LORD MAHON PRINCE POLIGNAC PO- 
LITICAL PROSPECTS LORD NUGENT LORD 

BROUGHAM THE CORN-LAW RHYMER DAN- 
GERS OF THE COUNTRY THE FACTORY SYS- 
TEM LORD ASHLEY AMERICAN DIVINITY 

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ALISON'S HISTORY 

OF EUROPE DEATH OF A FAVORITE CAT 

HISTORY OF BRAZIL DR. BELL ALLAN CUN- 

NINGHAM'S LIVES OF THE PAINTERS FRENCH 

POLITICS EBENEZER ELLIOTT PROSPECTS 

OF THE COUNTRY THE DOCTOR MARRIAGE 

OF HIS ELDEST DAUGHTER THE CORN LAWS 

HABITS OF DAILY LIFE HENRY TAYLOr's 

PLAYS ZOPHIEL REMONSTRANCE IN A CASE 

OF CRUELTY. — 1832-1834. 

My father's apprehensions concerning the state 
and prospects of the country at this time may, 
perhaps, to persons reading them now, appear 
exaggerated and unfounded ; and, indeed, we are 
often apt to think lightly both of our own fears 
and those of others when the danger has passed 
by. But these feelings were not confined to him- 
self, for many others shared them fully. Every 
reader of Sir Walter Scott's life will remember 
with what fears he had viewed the approach of 
the present crisis. Mr. Rickman, with a cool, 
clear head, and with peculiar opportunities of 
knowing the feelings and wishes of the various 
parties in the House of Commons, saw the dan- 
ger clearly, at the same time that he believed 
it would be averted. Mr. Wordsworth, too, 
looke'd at the prospects of the country and the 
signs of the times with the darkest apprehension, 
and, not being endowed with such elastic spirits 
as my father, was occasionally much depressed 
by his fears. 

It must, however, be remembered that, not- 
withstanding the opinion my father h^d of the 



A favorite cat of Mr. Bedford's. 



pernicious tendency of the measures the Whig 
party were then advocating — opinions confirmed 
and strengthened by the means adopted to carry 
those measures, and by the feelings with which 
so many of the poorer classes regarded them — 
yet he had never lost his heart, hope, or a confi- 
dence that there was that stability in the coun- 
try which, under Providence, would withstand the 
shock. 

But he had other causes for looking gloomily 
at the course of events — private reasons as well 
as political ones. " The Great Trade," as it has 
been called, shared in the general stagnation. 
Men's minds were too full of the stirring politics 
of the time to read any thing except newspapers 
and pamphlets, the sale of his own works was al- 
together at a stand, and publishers naturally were 
unwilling to enter into new engagements. The 
Quarterly Review was suffering from its being 
on the unpopular side, and he was beginning to 
fear lest his main support should fail him; yet 
his spirits did not fail him, and in a little time the 
prospect began to look brighter. 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, June 3, 1832. 
" My dear Neville, 

" Though the old-fashioned wish of a Merry 
Christmas and a Happy New Year would now 
be after date, it is not too late to express a wish 
that God's blessing may be with you and yours 
in this year and in all the years that shall follow 
it, and that His special mercy may protect you, 
whatever evils this nation may be afflicted with. 

" Lord Althorpe thinks the arrival of the chol- 
era is the greatest national calamity that could 
befall us ; this he says, because, being Chancel- 
lor of the Exchequer, he dreads the effect which 
an extended quarantine must produce upon the 
revenue ; and truly, after the experiments in free 
trade, and the repeal of taxes, which has cut 
down the national income without affording the 
slightest perceptible relief to any portion of the 
people, he may apprehend this consequence. 

" It is many years ago, long before the Collo- 
quies were begun, that the likelihood of a visita- 
tion of pestilence occurred to me, when thinking 
of the condition of this country and the ways of 
Providence. Considering the condition of the 
poor, the miserable population which the manu- 
facturing system had collected in great bodies, 
and the zeal with which the most mischievous 
opinions were propagated, I thought, with David, 
that pestilence was the lightest evil that could 
be expected, and therefore that, perhaps, it was 
the likeliest. 

" The possibility of such a political crisis as 
the present was never in my thoughts. Who, 
indeed, could have dreamed that we should ever 
have a ministry who would call in the mob for 
the purpose of subverting the Constitution ? The 
fearful question which a few months must resolve 
is, whether pestilence will arrest the progress of 
revolution, or accelerate it, by making the popu- 
lace desperate. Nothing can more dangerously 
tend to make them so than the opinion which is 



JEtat. 58. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



509 



given in all the newspapers that it is a disease 
from which the more fortunate classes seem to 
be exempt ; and that unclean habits, crowded 
habitations, and poor diet render men peculiarly 
liable to it. 

" 10th. On the morning after I had written 
the above, the Ballot for January 1 was sent me, 

where, in the leading article, , by whom it 

is edited, endeavors to excite the populace by 
means of the cholera, telling them that they, and 
they alone, are the marked victims of this pesti- 
lence, and that it is oppression which has made 
them so ! and that the rich are safe, because they 
are rich, and have all the comforts of life ! 

" The king, I am told, will make as many 
peers as his ministers choose ; and nothing then 
remains for us but to await the course of revolu- 
tion. I shall not live to see what sort of edifice 
will be constructed out of the ruins, but I shall 
go to rest in the sure confidence that God will 
provide as is best for His church and His people. 

" My tenderest regards to your dear mother, 
and those of my fireside to you and yours. 

" God bless you, my dear friend ! 

"Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To the Rev. James White. 



My dear James, 



" Keswick, Feb. 8, 1832. 



" The endless round of occupation in which 
my days are passed has prevented me from thank- 
ing you, as long ago I ought and intended to have 
done, for the trouble and the care which you took 
for and of my daughter. This delay lies on my 
conscience for another reason, though happily 
what I have to say is not yet too late ; it is to give 
you my most serious and earnest opinion, that 
when the cholera reaches Manchester, your duty 
is not to look after the sick. Upon the Roman 
Catholic system it would be ; it is not upon the 
principle of the Reformed Church. The prog- 
ress of the disease is too rapid, and when it proves 
fatal, its effects are also too violent, to admit of 
any good being done by religious instruction: 
this matter I have talked over with Mr. White- 
side here, and he entirely agrees with me. 
Preach rousing sermons to your people, tell them 
death is at their doors, and exhort them to hold 
themselves in readiness for his summons. Do 
as you are doing to prepare against the evil by 
other means, but do not expose yourself unneces- 
sarily to infection when it comes. No man is 
less likely to take it than you are, your very ar- 
dor being the best prophylactic ; but you are not 
to presume upon that. 

" I think it would be prudent if those who 
have authority were to enjoin that the funeral 
service should not be performed where the dis- 
ease is raging in individual cases, nor even over 
many at one time, but that, when the disease has 
ceased, there should be a general service in ev- 
ery place for those who have died of it ; this 
would much lessen the spread of the contagion, 
and have a solemn effect at last. 

" One good I confidently hope for from this 
visitation. The preparatory measures of pre- 



caution have made the squalid misery of the 
lower orders matter of public notoriety. What 
you and I have so long known, and what was al- 
ways known to those whose business or duty 
leads them among the poor, is now brought pub- 
licly to the knowledge of those who, if not ig- 
norant of it, might at least excuse their gross in- 
attention to this great and crying evil by affect- 
ing to be so. They who are insensible to the 
moral evils of such poverty, and even to its po- 
litical dangers, may be roused by the physical 
consequences, when they see it acting as a re- 
cipient and conductor not only for sedition and 
rebellion, but for pestilence also. * * 

" There will be only a short paper of mine in 
the next Quarterly Review upon Mary Colling's 
Fables. You will be interested with her story, 
and amused, perhaps, with the introduction of the 
Poet Laureate of Trowbridge. 

" Pray remember me to Mr. Swain when you 
see him. I had been much pleased with his 
poems, and was not less pleased with him, for, 
indeed, he seemed to be in all things such as I 
could have wished to find him. 

" To-night I begin the last chapter of the Pen- 
insular War, and you may well suppose that I 
shall proceed rapidly, seeing the end so near. 

" Take care of yourself ; that is, do not at- 
tempt more than flesh and blood can perform. 
You can do no greater good to others than by 
sparing yourself, and keeping yourself in health 
for the service of some more manageable flock 
in a different sort of pasture. 

" God bless you, my dear James! 

" Yours affectionately, R. S " 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 18, 1832. 
" My dear Friend, 
" # * # # # * # 

I know no one who has been pursued by such a 
series of unmerited afflictions : one may use such 
language in speaking of calamities that are 
brought on by the actions of our fellow-creatures. 

" # # # # # * * 

If I had been called to Cheltenham, I should cer- 
tainly have gone on to Bristol ; but as yet I have 
received no further intelligence from thence than 
a few lines from the poor old doctor's secretary, 
informing me of his death, and saying that when 
the trustees arrived, official information would be 
sent to me.* I persuade myself that it is not 
likely I shall be called from home, disagreeable 
as it would be, and especially inconvenient at 
this time. 

"No man can care much about public affairs 



* "I have just received news of Dr. Bell's death from 
his faithful secretary Davies, who says that ' official in- 
formation will be dispatched to me when the trustees ar- 
rive.' When it comes, I fear it may call me to Chelten- 
ham ; but certainly I shall not go if the business can be 
done by proxy. Poor old man, he is now at rest from his 
discovery, which was a perpetual torment to him, what- 
ever good it may ultimately produce to others. But I had 
a great liking for the better parts of his strongly-marked 
character ; and his death, though expected, and for his 
own sake long to have been desired, takes full possession 
of my mind just now, and troubles it." — To H. Taylor, 
Esq., Jan. 31. 



510 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



MtAT. 58. 



when his own troubles are pressing heavily upon 
his heart and mind. But I greatly fear that the 
time is hastening on when public concerns will 
affect the vital interests of every individual. 
Wordsworth is made positively unhappy by this 
thought. I should be so if my mind were not 
constantly occupied, for I see most surely that 
nothing but the special mercy of Providence can 
save us from a revolution ; and I feel, also, that 
we have much more reason to fear the Almighty's 
justice than to rely upon his mercy in this case ; 
yet I rely upon it, and keep my heart firm in that 
reliance. 

" Feb. 20. 

" Yesterday brought me the expected letter 
from Dr. Bell's trustees. He has left me <£1000. 
He had left me also his furniture, &c, but this 
he revoked in a codicil a few days before his 
death, giving some unintelligible reason for so 
doing, and adding at the same time a bequest of 
^61 00 to my dear Isabel* as his godchild; his 
memory, therefore, had completely failed him at 
that time. The legacy to me is the largest he 
has left ; and most welcome it is, as something 
on which I may rely (as far as any thing depend- 
ent upon the fearful insecurity of human life, and 
of all our social institutions in these days, may be 
relied on) for Cuthbert's support at Oxford : it 
relieves me from any difficulty respecting means, 
if he and I should live so long, and this frame of 
things should be kept together. 

" I collect from the trustees' letter that Dr. 
Bell changed his intention concerning the publi- 
cation of his works, which he had desired Words- 
worth and myself to superintend, but it seems he 
still wished and expected that I should draw up 
an account of his life. Upon this I shall have 
further information, no doubt, in due time. Poor 
man ! the last letter I received from him told me 
fhat he had bequeathed to me his furniture, and 
that therefore I must be prepared to set off for 
Cheltenham as soon as I should be informed of 
' an event which could not be far distant.' If I 
had done so, how uncomfortably should I have 
felt on my arrival there ! * * * * 

God bless and support you, my dear friend, and 
bring you through all difficulties into a peaceful 
port. 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 2, 1832. 
"My dear H. T., 

" # # * # # # # 

• 

In how different a situation should we now be if 
ministers had looked to the real evils of the coun- 
try, and left the imaginary ones alone ! The 
great remedy for pauperism can be nothing but 
constant emigration, to which I would have all 
pauper children destined who are orphans, or 
whose parents have deserted them : they are eas- 
ily transpoi-ted, easily settled, and in this manner 
best provided for. Always bearing in mind that 
the country can not be healthy unless the great 

* Isabel Southey died in 1826. 



drain of emigration is kept open, the means of 
more immediate relief which I should look to 
would be, from bringing wastes into cultivation, 
thinking it profit enough if those who must other- 
wise be supported by the public can raise their 
own food there. 

" I wish government would employ upon 

a digest of the agricultural surveys — a work of 
national importance, for which he is peculiarly 
qualified, and in the course of which much would 
suggest itself upon this very subject of the poor. 

" I like your simile of the pyramid,* and am 
content with it — content that the work should be 
a lasting one, and, though seen by few, heard of 
by many. The commonwealth of Readingdom 
is divided into many independent circles. Novel 
and trash readers make by much the largest of 
the communities ; I think the religious public 
rank next in numbers ; then perhaps come those 
who affect poetry : history is read by those only 
who are desirous of information, and of these very 
few like to have it at length, or, indeed, can afford 
time for it. But in every generation there are 
some. My story belongs to a brilliant part of 
our own history, and to a most important one in 
that of two other countries ; it is sure, therefore, 
of a place in the Bibliotheca Historica of all three. 

" The History of Portugal, if I live to execute 
it, will be my best historical work. There, as 
in the Brazil, industry in collecting materials, and 
skill in connecting them, may be manifested, and 
a great deal brought to light which will be deem- 
ed of no little interest in the history of European 
society and of the human mind. A good deal of 
the Peninsular story required, as you observe, 
little more than the mere patience of detailing it 
on my part-, but the whole has an entireness of 
subject which can belong to the history of very 
few wars, and an interest from the importance 
of the cause and the peculiarity of the circum- 
stances which is quite as uncommon. I believe 
none of my works have been read with more ea- 
gerness by those into whose hands it has come, 
and you know I never look for a wide public. 
It is more profitable to have your reputation 
spread itself in breadth ; I am satisfied with look- 
ing to the probable length of mine. God bless 
you! R. S." 

The next letter was in reply to one contain- 
ing some overtures from some of the authorities 
at Durham as to whether my father would be 
disposed to accept a Professorship of History in 
that University. The fact of his being willing 
to listen to and consider the details of an offer! 



* " I shall be very glad to see the third volume of the 
Peninsular War appear. It will be a great work, I sup- 
pose the greatest of its kind, and yet Tshould almost re- 
gret to see you engage again in any narrative of so much 
detail ; a great portion of the labor bestowed upon such 
a work must be not of a kind to bring into play the fac- 
ulties of your mind in all their extent and variety, and I 
doubt whether now or henceforward the growth of liter- 
ature will admit of works being constructed on such a 
scale. This sort of Great Pyramid will be allowed to be a 
wonderful structure, but it will not be commonly resort- 
ed to "— H. T. to R. S., Feb. 28, 1832. 

t With reference to the offer, he says, in a letter to Mr. 
Bedford, after stating that it is solely from prudential mo- 



Mtat. 58. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



511 



of this kind, at his age and with his habits, shows 
that a change had come over him, and that a set- 
tled income had become a matter of far greater 
importance in his eyes than formerly. 

This scheme, however, as he anticipated, soon 
fell to the ground, the remuneration it was in- 
tended to offer not being such as he could pru- 
dently have accepted. 

To George Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 3, 1832. 
" My dear Sir, 

"Your letter which I have this day received 
proposes for my consideration a question of pru- 
dence, which can be answered only when the 
particulars are made known. At present I can 
say no more than that it is a matter in which my 
inclinations shall not be allowed to have more 
than their due weight, but that it must be no in- 
considerable advantage which could induce me 
to alter my habits of life, and divide the remain- 
der of it between two places of abode ; for, though 
not so rooted here as to be absolutely irremova- 
ble, I am leased to the spot, and my. library also 
binds me to it. Perhaps no consideration could 
induce me wholly to leave it ; but Durham is an 
easy distance, and periodical migrations, though 
attended with some discomfort, would probably 
be wholesome for my family, and not hurtful to 
myself. 

" But I will dismiss from my mind at present 
all thoughts of this kind, and of the difficulties 
and objections on one side, and on the other the 
plans which would readily present themselves to 
be sketched and shaped. It would be losing 
time to think of these things now ; only I may 
say that my estimate of what would be to be 
done goes far beyond Mr. 's. My consid- 
eration would be, not with how little, labor I 
might go through the functions of the professor- 
ship, but how I might best discharge them for 
the benefit of those whom I should have to ad- 
dress, and for my own credit hereafter. 

" Farewell, my dear sir. Present our kind 
remembrances to Mrs. Taylor, and believe me 
always 

" Yours, with great and sincere regard, 

" Robert Southey." 

To H. Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 7, 1832. 
" My dear H. T., 
" # # # # # # # 

Most men play the fool in some way or other, 
and no man takes more delight in playing it than 
I do, in my own way. I do it well with children, 
and not at all with women, toward whom, like 
John Bunyan, ' I can not carry myself pleasantly,' 
unless I have a great liking for them. Most men, 
I suspect, have different characters even among 
their friends, appearing in different circles in dif- 
ferent lights, or rather showing only parts of 



tives, he " deemed it right to listen to the overture. It is 
not in the natural or fitting course of things that I should 
be put in harness at an age when I ought rather to be turn- 
ed out to grass for the remairder of my days." 



themselves. One's character, being teres atque 
rotundus, is not to be seen all at once. You 
must know a man all round — in all moods and 
all weathers — to know him well ; but in the com- 
mon intercourse of the world, men see each other 
in only one mood — see only their manners in so- 
ciety, and hear nothing that comes from any part 
lying deeper than the larynx. Many people 
think they are well acquainted with me who know 
little more of me than the cut of my jib and the 
sound of my voice. 

" The probabilities, I think, are much against 
the Durham scheme. It will not appear to them 
worth their while to make it worth mine; they 
will consider what, according to common pru- 
dence, they might be expected to afford; as I 
must what, upon the same ground, I ought to 
accept. The two prudentials are not likely to 
agree, and they will never know what they lose in 
failing to engage me, for, were I to live and do 
well, my work would be worth far more to them 
than my name. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 1,18311. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" If you had been within reach of me a week 
ago, when I wrote Laus Deo at the end of the 
Peninsular War, I should have taken my hat and 
my walking-stick, and set out for the satisfaction 
of singing ' be joyful' in your presence and 
with your aid. The volume, since I wrote to you 
in December, has outgrown my expectations by 
more than a hundred pages, so much more de- 
tail have I been led into by my materials than at 
first sight had been anticipated. 

" From this you will conclude that I am in 
good health and in good spirits, notwithstanding 
the dismal prospect of public affairs. On private 
scores, however, I have uneasiness enough, of 
which it were useless to speak where no good 
can be obtained. 

* # * # # # * 

" As for the likings or dislikings, Grosvenor, 
which are formed at first sight or upon casual 
acquaintance, no one who has lived long in the 
world will attach more importance to them than 
they deserve. Complicated as every human 
character must be, we like or dislike just that 
part of it which happens to present itself to our 
observation ; and perhaps the same person, in 
another point of view, makes a very different im- 
pression. It is so with countenances, and it is 
so even with natural scenery. Upon a second 
journey I have sometimes looked in vain for the 
beauties which delighted me on the first ; and, 
on the other hand, I have discovered pleasing 
objects where I had formerly failed to perceive 
them. I know very well in what very different, 
lights I myself must appear to different people, 
who see me but once, or whose acquaintance 
with me is very slight : not a few go away with 
the notion that they have seen a stiff, cold, re- 
served, disobliging sort of person; and they judge 
rightly as far as they see, except that no one 



512 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 58. 



should be deemed disobliging merely for taking 
no pains to make himself agreeable where he 
feels no inclination to do so. 

"This I think is the greatest disadvantage 
that notorious authorship brings with it. It 
places one in an unfair position among strangers : 
they watch for what you say, and set upon you 
to draw you out, and whenever that is the case, 
in I go like a tortoise or hodmandod into my shell. 

^ *fi* ^Jy* *7v TV tt tt 

" God bless you, my dear G. ! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 15, 1832. 
" My dear G., 
" There are Greek and English Lexicons now ; 
but if your nephew is intended for a public school, 
the better way, as he would be a day-boy (which 
I look upon to be the greatest of all advantages), 
would be to send him to Westminster as soon as 
he was fit for the second form : I do not say for 
the petty, because the work of the first two years 
may probably be as well got at home in six 
months. Had I lived in London, Cuthbert should 
certainly have gone to Westminster as a day-boy. 
There is in schemes of education, as in every 
thing else, a choice of evils : no safe process — 
that is impossible. My settled opinion is, that 
the best plan is a public school, where the boy 
can board at home : upon this I have no doubt. 
When he can not, the question between public 
and private education is so questionable, that in 
most cases a feather might turn the scale. With 
me it was turned by the heavy weights of dis- 
tance and expense, and the consideration that 
life is uncertain ; and by educating my son at 
home, I was at least sure of this, that his years 
of boyhood would be happy. 

" Your godson whom you are not likely to see 
unless you come to Keswick, is nearly, if not 
quite, as tall as his godfather, though he com- 
pleted his thirteenth year only in February last. 
His knowledge of Greek is about as much as I 
carried with me into the fifth form ; his Latin 
rather less than I brought to Westminster, the 
truth being that I am not qualified to teach him 
either critically ; but what he lacks can be super- 
added easily in due time. We went through the 
Pentateuch (omitting the Levitical parts), Josh- 
ua, and Judges, in your present of the Septua- 
gint, and read the same portion of the Bible on 
the same day in German and Dutch. Having 
got so far, I substituted Herodotus for the Septu- 
agint, and added the Swedish to our biblical 
readings. We now read Herodotus and Homer 
on alternate days. God alone knows what may 
be appointed for him or for me. * * * 

" I am reviewing Lord Nugent's Life of Hamp- 
den, with the intention of winding up with some 
remarks on the present state of affairs. One of 
the amiable correspondents of the Times asks, in 
to-day's paper, whether I am one of the Duke 
of Wellington's advisers ! a question which shows 
how much this fellow knows either about the 
duke or me. 

" God bless you ! R. S. 



" The Cattery of Cats' Eden congratulate the 
Cat without a name upon his succession in Staf- 
ford Row." 

To Charles Swain, Esq. 

"Keswick, May 1, 1832 
" My dear Sir, 
" Do not look upon my invitation to you as a 
matter of politeness, a motive from which I never 
act further than the common law of society re- 
quires. 

" Respect for you and your talents, and the 
use you have made of them, was my motive. 
Your poetry is made of the right materials. If 
ever man was born to be a poet, you are ; and if 
Manchester is not proud of you yet, the time will 
certainly come when it will be so. 

" Come when you will, and stay as long as 
you can, I shall be sincerely happy to receive 
you here. I wish you were with us now ; the 
sun shines, the birds are busy, the buds beginning 
to open. There is a vernal spirit abroad which 
carries joy to young hearts, and brings the best 
substitute for it to those whose season for joy is 
past, not to return again. 
" God bless you! 

"Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Southey.' 

To the Rev J. W. Warter. 

"Keswick, June 20, 1832. 
" My dear Warter, 
"# # # # # ## 

Oxford or Cambridge are good places of residence 
for men who, having stored their minds well, 
want well-stored libraries which may enable 
them to pursue their researches and bring forth 
the fruits of them. But the plant which roots 
itself there will never attain any vigorous growth. 
The mind must be a very strong and a very 
active one which does not stand still while it is 
engaged in tutoring, and both universities now 
are little more than manufactories in which men 
are brought up to a certain point in a certain 
branch of knowledge, and when they have reach- 
ed that point they are kept there. 

" But, after all, knowledge is not the first 
thing needful. Provided we can get contented- 
ly through the world, and (be the ways rough or 
smooth) to heaven at last, the sum of knowledge 
that we may collect on the w T ay is more infinitely 
insignificant than I like to acknowledge in my 
own heart. Indeed, it is not easy for me always 
to bear sufficiently in mind that the pursuits in 
which I find constant interest and increasing en- 
joyment must appear of no interest whatever to 
the greater pai*t not merely of mankind, but of 
the educated part even of our own countrymen. 
I forget this sometimes when I am wishing for 
others, opportunities by which perhaps they would 
not be disposed to profit. 

t£ tt ^ w * * ^ 

"I wish I could answer Sarmento's question 
to my own satisfaction. If I could follow my in- 
clinations, a week would not elapse before the 
History of Portugal would be in the press. But 



JETAT. 59. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



513 



this work can only have that time allotted to it 
which can be won from works of necessity, and 
that not yet. I hope my affairs are in such a 
train that next year it will become my chief ob- 
ject in those subsecive hours, for which I can find 
no English word. Once in the press, it would 
0go on steadily, for the subject has been two-and- 
thirty years in my mind. So long is it since I 
began not merely to collect materials, but to di- 
gest them, and for at least two thirds of the his- 
tory I have only to recompose in the process of 
transcribing what has long been written. I 
believe no history has ever yet been composed 
that presents such a continuous interest of one 
kind or another, as this would do, if I should live 
to complete it. The chivalrous portion is of the 
very highest beauty ; much of what succeeds has 
a deep tragic interest ; and then comes the grad- 
ual destruction of a noble national character 
brought on by the cancer of Romish superstition. 
" But I have other letters to write by this post, 
and therefore must conclude. God bless you ! 

R. S." 

To the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles. 

"Keswick, July 30, 1832. 
" Mvr dear Sir, 

" This morning I received your St. John in 
Patmos, two months after the date of the note 
which accompanied* it : this is mentioned, that 
you may not think I have been slow in acknowl- 
edging and thanking you for it. I have just read 
the poem through, and with much pleasure. 
Yours I should have known it to have been by 
the sweet and unsophisticated style upon which 
I endeavored, now almost forty years ago, to form 
my own. You have so blended the episodical 
parts that they do not in any degree disturb the 
solemn and mysterious character of the whole. 

" You will not, I am sure, suppose that I could 
for even a moment feel hurt by your remarks in 
the preface. After having reviewed in the Quar- 
terly Review Grahame's Georgics, Montgom- 
ery's Poems, and his World before the Flood, 
and Landor's Count Julian, I found it necessary 
to resolve that I would not review the work of 
any living poet. Applications to me from stran- 
gers, and from others in all degrees of acquaint- 
anceship, were so frequent, that it became ex- 
pedient to be provided with a general reason for 
refusing, which could offend no one ; there was 
no other means of avoiding offense. Many would 
otherwise have resented the refusal, and more 
would have been more deeply displeased if they 
had not been extolled according to their own es- 
timate of their own merits. From this resolu- 
tion I did not consider myself as departing when 
I drew up the account of Mary Colling ; her 
story and her character interested me greatly, 
and would, I thought, interest most readers. I 
wished to render her some service, and have the 
satisfaction of knowing that this has been in 
some measure effected. It was a case wherein 
a little praise, through that channel, might be 
the means of producing some permanent benefit 
ho ha 
Kk 



whose sweet countenance, if you look at her por- 
trait, will say more in her favor than any words 
of mine could do. 

" I have no wish to encourage the growth of 
humble authors, still less of adventurers in litei 
ature, God knows. But I earnestly wish, espe- 
cially in an age when all persons can read, to 
encourage in all who have any love of reading 
that sort of disposition which would lead them 
to take pleasure in your poems and in mine, and 
in any which are addressed, as ours always have 
been, to the better feelings of our nature. The 
tendency of our social system has long been to 
brutalize the lower classes, and this it is that 
renders the prospect before us so fearful. I wish 
to see their moral and intellectual condition as 
much as possible improved ; it seems to me that 
great improvement is possible, and that in bet- 
tering their condition the general good is pro- 
moted. 

" Would that there were a hope of seeing you 
here, that I might show you this lake and these 
mountains, and these books, and talk with you 
upon subjects which might make us forget that 
we are living in the days of William IV., Earl 
Grey, the Times newspaper, and the cholera 
morbus. God save the first, and deliver us from 
the rest ! 

"Believe me, my dear sir, yours, with sin- 
cere respect and regard, 

"Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, August 19, 1832. 
" My dear Neville, 

" It rarely happens in these times that the 
post brings me any matter for rejoicing ; but it 
never at any time brought me a communication 
which gave me more thorough delight than your 
letter which arrived this morning. You have 
now the reward of your deserts, and it is no 
slight comfort to see that desert has been thus 
rewarded. All circumstances, too, are as you 
could have wished them to be ; for, though your 
lot has not fallen in a beautiful country, it is near 
Norwich, and therefore a desirable location for 
you. Walpole is a name which from childhood 
I have regarded with good will, and henceforth 
I shall regard it with still better. 

"I shall certainly look in upon you on my 
next journey to London. When that may be I 
know not, but certainly not before the spring, 
and perhaps not so soon. Engagements will 
keep me to the desk, and, happily, inclination 
would never take me from it. 

" I shall like dearly to see you in your Rec- 
tory : to a certain degree you will once more 
have to form new habits, but in this instance the 
change is likely to be salutary. 

" I dare say that the duties of your parish will 
be much less fatiguing than those in which you 
engaged as a volunteer in Norwich, and they 
will be more agreeable, because, in a little while, 
as soon as your parishioners know you, you will 
perceive the fruits of them. Any clergyman 
who does his duty as you will do it must soon be 



514 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF jEtat. 59. 



loved by his flock, and then no other station in 
life can be so happy. 

"I wish James were emancipated from his 
bondage, and settled as his bishop ought to settle 
him, where he might enjoy the well-deserved re- 
ward of his labors, and some rest from them. 

" Much against my will, I am going to Low- 
ther Castle on Friday next, to remain till Mon- 
day. Lord Lonsdale asks me in so kind a man- 
ner, saying that he is always unwilling to take 
me from my employments, that I can not refuse 
to go ; and his object is to introduce me to Lord 
Mahon, whom I know only by letter, but whose 
way of thinking and pursuits make him desire to 
become acquainted with me. It is gratifying 
to perceive that there are persons growing up 
whose minds have been influenced by my writ- 
ings, and that here and there the seed which dur- 
ing so many years I have been casting on the 
waters, has taken root, and is beginning to bring 
forth fruit after its kind. 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! With the 
kindest congratulations and remembrances of my 
household, and my own especially to your dear 
mother and your wife, believe me always, 
" Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

"Keswick, Oct 15, 1832. 
" My dear R., 

" I have been working hard upon a paper on 
French affairs, which I shall finish to-morrow. 
A pamphlet by Prince Polignac furnishes the 
text and much of the matter for it. This was 
sent me by Sir Robert Adair, who is his partic- 
ular friend, and I have since, through the same 
channel, had a letter from the poor prisoner him- 
self.^ Adair has also sent me a curious pam- 
phlet, written to vindicate the Belgian revolution 
from the disgrace of having any thing in common 
with the last French one. 

"It is very difficult to foresee any thing in the 
present state of Europe. Nothing could have 
seemed more improbable than the preservation 
of peace thus long. If it be still preserved, the 
struggle between the government and the Cham- 
ber will go on till the nation distinctly see that 
it is, in fact, a question whether there is to be 
any government or none, and then the least un- 
likely termination would be that Soult would 
enact the part of Monk, and Louis Philippe make 
a merit of having acted as king, in order to pre- 
serve the monarchy till he could safely transfer 
it to the legitimate prince. To this or to another 
military despotism it must come. 

"Last night we had the M. of Hastings here, 
who voted with the ministry, and now appre- 
hends the consequences. Wynn thinks there is 
a reaction in the country ; C , on the con- 
trary, believes revolution to be imminent and in- 
evitable. I will not say that every thing de- 
pends upon the new elections, but much certain- 
ly does ; and I suspect that the Radicals, when 



See Appendix. 



the time comes, will be found much more ulert 
and active than their opponents are prepared to 
expect, or, perhaps, to withstand. We are only 
sure of one Conservative member from this coun- 
ty, Matthias Attwood's success being doubtful. 
" Oddly enough, while American notions of 
government are obtaining ground in Europe, the* 
United States themselves seem likely to be dis- 
united, and give practical proof of the instability 
of any such system. No doubt our West Indian 
planters would call upon America to receive 
them into the Union, and be received according- 
ly, if the Slave Question were not likely to be 
the cause of quarrel between the Southern States 
and the Congress. Most likely I shall write a 
paper upon this question for the Christmas num- 
ber. From the way in which the emancipators 
on the one hand, and the colonial assemblies on 
the other, are proceeding, we shall soon have 
those islands in the condition of St. Domingo. 

" Murray has published a letter to himself by 
Lord Nugent, which letter abuses me by name, 
a-la-William Smith. It has been published more 
than a fortnight, and he has never sent it me, 
nor do I know any thing of it, except at second 
hand from a newspaper. If I should think it 
worth while to take any notice of this attack, it 
will be very briefly, and through the newspapers ; 
but I must make myself aifgry before I can be- 
stow even the little time upon such a business 
which it would require. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 1, 1833. 
"My dear Friend, 

" * * * * If any one had told 

me that I should ever feel an anxious interest in 
any promise of the Lord Chancellor Brougham's, 
it would have seemed a most improbable suppo- 
sition, and yet I am now solicitous about two of 
his promises — that to which you are looking, 
and that which he made to Henry about the 
Lunacy Commission. I have known men who 
make promises without the slightest intention of 
keeping them, rather with the full intention of 
never performing them. This is not Brougham's 
case : in such things he does not look so far for- 
ward ; and he is a good-natured man, much too 
good-natured ever to raise hopes, meaning to 
disappoint them. # # # # 

"This year will not pass away without great- 
er changes than the last. It is already apparent 
that the reformed Parliament will not work. 
Government by authority has long been defunct. 
Government by influence was put to death by 
the Reform Bill, and nothing is left but govern- 
ment by public opinion. 

" I have gone through the whole evidence 
concerning the treatment of children in the fac- 
tories, and nothing so bad was ever brought to 
light before. The slave trade is mercy to it. 
We know how the slave trade began and im- 
perceptibly increased, nothing in the beginning 
being committed that shocked the feelings and 



Mr at. 59. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



515 



was contrary to the spirit of the age. Having 
thus grown up, it went on by succession, and of 
later years has rather been mitigated than made 
worse. But this white slavery has risen in our 
own days, and is carried on in the midst of this 
civilized and Christian nation. Herein it is that 
our danger consists. The great body of the 
manufacturing populace, and also of the agricul- 
tural, are miserably poor ; their condition is worse 
than it ought to be. One after another, we are 
destroying all the outworks by which order, and, 
with it, property and life, are defended, and this 
brutalized populace is ready to break in upon us. 
The prelude which you witnessed at Bristol was 
a manifestation of the spirit that exists among 
them. But in the manufacturing districts, where 
the wages of the adults are at a starvation rate, 
and their children are literally worked to death 
— murdered by inches — the competition of the 
masters being the radical cause of these evils, 
there is a dreadful reality of oppression, a dread- 
ful sense of injustice, of intolerable misery, of 
intolerable wrongs, more formidable than any 
causes which have ever moved a people to in- 
surrection. Once more I will cry aloud and 
spare not. These are not times to be silent. 
Lord Ashley has taken up this Factory Question 
with all his heart, under a deep religious sense 
of duty. I hear from him frequently. If we are 
to be saved, it will be, I will not say by such 
men, but for the sake of such men as he is — men 
who have the fear of God before their eyes, and 
the love of their fellow-creatures in their hearts. 
" God bless you, my dear friend ! Remember 
me most kindly to your two daughters ; and be- 
lieve me always yours most affectionately, 

"R. Southey." 

To the Lord Bishop of Limerick. 

" Keswick, March 6, 1833. 
" My Lord, 

" I am greatly obliged to you for your edition 
of Burnet's Lives, made still more valuable by 
the Introduction, the Prefaces, and the Notes 
with which they are enriched. No books are 
read with more interest than such as this, and 
none are likely to do so much good. 

" The Americans seem more awake to the 
uses of exemplary biography than we are. They 
lose no opportunity of pronouncing funeral ora- 
tions ; and in what may be called the ordination 
charge of a Unitarian minister, the old pastor 
recommends that biographical discourses should 
be delivered from the pulpit occasionally instead 
of sermons, instancing as fit subjects such men 
as Watts, Lindsey, and Howard. This will re- 
mind you of the Roman Catholic practice, to 
which we are indebted for such books as the Flos 
Sanctorum. 

" But the American Unitarians come nearer 
to the Romanists on more dangerous ground. 
Two volumes have lately been sent me from 
New England of sermons by James Freeman, a 
.rery old and very amiable man, exceedingly be- 
loved and reverenced by his friends and his flock. 
Had they come to me as a collection of essays, 



in which any thing religious or devotional might 
or might not incidentally be introduced, I should 
have been pleased with the happy disposition that 
they indicate, the benevolent spirit that pervades 
them, and their occasional felicity of expression, 
and, I may add, with what might then have de- 
served to be called their unobtrusive piety ; but 
as discourses from a gray-haired pastor to his 
people, I could not peruse them without sorrow, 
nor, indeed, sometimes without astonishment. 
He tells his congregation, ' Alms, when they are 
bestowed from pious and benevolent principles, 
will carry you to Heaven : they will deliver you 
from death, and never suffer you to descend into 
a place of darkness. This is rendering it may 
be said, the path to everlasting happiness very 
plain and easy. True ; but I do not render it 
easier and plainer than the Scriptures have 
made it.' 

"No wonder that the Roman Catholics in- 
crease at Boston, as they do in Holland and else- 
where, wherever such Christianity is preached. 
' The Almighty,' he says, ' sent down from His 
throne such men as Copernicus, Kepler, and 
Newton to enlighten the world.' 

" In an Ordination Charge he says, ' In this age 
of the Church it is unnecessary that you should 
read the Fathers, except for improvement in 
morals and devotion, because others have read 
them for you, and have extracted from them al- 
most all the facts that they contain.' 

" These are some of the fruits which Puritan- 
ism has brought forth in America. It seems as 
if in our own country the experiment was about 
to be repeated of improving the vineyard by 
breaking down the fences, and letting the cattle 
and the wild beasts in. The crisis is probably 
very near at hand : I see my way much more 
distinctly into it than out of it. For the last two 
years it has been evident that O'Connell has 
formed an alliance offensive and defensive with 
the political unions. He relies upon them either 
to frighten the ministers out of their coercive 
measures by a demonstration of physical force, 
embodied, mustered, and ready to take the field, 
or, if they fail in this, he expects them to hoist 
the tricolor flag, and march upon London when- 
ever he gives the signal for rebellion in Ireland. 
Brandreth's insurrection in 1817, the projected 
expedition of the Blanketeers a little later, and 
the Bristol riots, were all parts of a widely-con- 
certed scheme, which has only been from time 
to time postponed till a more convenient season, 
and is now thoroughly matured, and likely to be 
attempted upon a great scale whenever the lead- 
ers of the movement think proper. I am not 
without strong apprehensions that before this 
year passes away, London may have its Three 
Days. 

" But earnestly as such a crisis is to be dep- 
recated, I do not fear the result. It may even 
come in time to save us from the otherwise in- 
evitable overthrow of all our institutions by the 
treachery and cowardice of those who ought to 
uphold them. The Whigs will never give over 
the work of des'.ructi'<n which they have so pros- 



516 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Mtat. 59. 



perously begun till the honester Destructives are 
armed against them, and threaten them with 
their due reward. The sooner, therefore, that 
it comes to this, the better. 

" Meantime there is a comfort in seeing by the 
London election that a great change has taken 
place in public opinion there : there is a comfort 
in knowing that the Church of England and of 
Ireland could never at any time have been better 
able to bear hostile inquiry, and to defend them- 
selves than now ; above all, there is a never-fail- 
•ng comfort in a constant reliance upon Provi- 
dence, and this, God be thanked, I am enabled 
to feel. 

" I beg my kindest remembrances to Mr. Fors- 
ter ; and remain, with the greatest respect, my 
lord, your lordship's obliged and obedient servant, 
" Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

" Keswick, April 10, 1833. 
" My dear Neville, 

"Your letter, which I have this morning re- 
ceived, came when I was just about to reply to 
that of March 11th. You may judge how my 
other correspondents fare by the length of time 
that your letters remain unanswered, there being 
none which I receive more gladly or to which I 
reply with more interest ; and yet more than half 
my mornings are consumed in letter-writing ; 
though, as far as possible, I have, from necessity, 
cut off all useless correspondence, and curtailed 
the rest. 

" Now, my dear Neville, to the other part of 
your letter — the uses and the danger of the 
Church Establishment. I will touch upon one 
of its uses which happened to be noticed in con- 
versation yesterday with Wordsworth by the way- 
side. He mentioned of what advantage the 
Church of England had been to that great body 
of Dissenters among whom the Unitarian heresy 
has spread, and your country was particularly 
instanced. A great part of the Presbyterian con- 
gregations lapsed with their preachers, as sheep 
follow the bell-wether ; but of those who remain- 
ed orthodox, the majority found their way into 
the right fold. They held the doctrines of the 
Church before in the main, differing from them 
only in points where our Articles most wisely 
have left room for difference ; and they now found 
by experience the insufficiency of their own dis- 
cipline, and the want of such a standard as the 
Establishment preserves. 

" Public property the Church indeed is — most 
truly and most sacredly so — and in a manner the 
very reverse of that in which the despoilers con- 
sider it to be so. It is the only property which 
is public — which is set apart and consecrated as 
a public inheritance, in which any one may claim 
his share who is properly qualified. You have 
your share of it, I might have had mine. There 
is no respectable family in England, some of 
whose members have not, in the course of two or 
three generations, enjoyed their part in it; and 
many thousands are at this time qualifying them- 
selves to claim their portion. Upon what prin- 



ciple can any government be justified in robbing 
them of their rights ? 

" Church property neither is nor ever has been 
public property in any other sense than this. The 
whole was originally private property, so dispos- 
ed of by individuals in the way which they deemed 
most beneficial to others, and most for the good 
of their own souls. How much of superstition 
may have been mingled with this, matters not. 
Much of this property was wickedly shared among 
themselves by those persons who forwarded the 
Reformation as a scheme of spoliation, and in 
other ways materially impeded its progress. Yet 
they did nothing so bad as the Whig ministry 
are preparing to do, for they, no doubt, mean to 
give to the Romish clergy what they take from 
the Irish Protestant Church. 

" You should read Townsend's pamphlet upon 
Lord Henley's absdrd and mischievous schemes. 
It is a most able and manly composition, and the 
name and character of the writer carry weight 
with them. God bless you ! 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 

To A. Mison, Esq. 

"Keswick, April 17, 1833. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I am much obliged to you for your History. 
It reached me on Monday evening last, so that 
I have only had time to run through the whole 7 
and peruse those parts which arrested me. 

" A better book could not possibly have been 
made upon that subject within the same limits, 
nor could the subject be treated in a manner 
more likely to be in the highest degree useful, 
if any thing in these times could be addressed 
with effect to the understanding of an infatuated 
nation. 

" The events which you have so vividly de- 
scribed are fresh in my memory, for I was just 
old enough to take the liveliest interest in them 
as they occurred, and young enough for that in- 
terest to have all the eagerness of hope. I 
thought as highly of the Girondists as you have 
spoken of them, but was too young and too ig- 
norant to see their errors as you have done. I 
entered, therefore, warmly into their views, and 
no public event ever caused me so much pain as 
the fate of Brissot and his associates — till I lived 
to see our own Constitution destroyed. Few of 
that party hold the same place in my estimation 
now — perhaps only Isnard and Vergniaud, for 
their speeches (which is all that we know of 
them), and Madame Roland, whose great quali- 
ties can not be estimated too highly. But of the 
rest, too many were as profligate as they were 
superficial and irreligious. Brissot, who was in 
some respects the best of them, has been greatly 
lowered in my mind since I read two volumes 
of his Memoirs, and a collection of nine volumes 
of his works. He was an amiable man in his 
private relations, but as a man of letters not 
above the third or fourth rank ; and that enthu- 
siasm which sometimes supplied to him the place 
of sound principle, could not supply his want of 
judgment. 



jEtat. 59. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



517 



" I do not see the name of Helen Maria Will- 
iams among your references ; if you have not 
seen her letters, you would find in them more 
particulars concerning this party than in any oth- 
er work that has fallen in my way. With all 
the cotemporary works I am well acquainted ; 
later ones I have not happened to meet with, and 
have not sought. The best that I have met with 
relating to ftie early period is Puisaye's — the 
two or three first volumes — his latter volumes 
relate chiefly to the miserable intrigues among 
the emigrants ; but there is some very interest- 
ing matter respecting his own life among the 
Chouans. I have been twice in company with 
Puisaye, and never saw a finer countenance, nor 
one that I could more readily have confided in. 

" Are you accurate as to Barrere's death ?* 
I very well remember that in 1805 or 1806 the 
newspapers said he was attached to the French 
embassy at Lisbon ; and though this was not the 
case, the impression upon my mind is, that he 
was employed under Bonaparte's government. 

" You have a good word for General Biron at 
his death. If this were the ci-devant due, he was 
altogether unworthy of it, having been one of 
the most profligate and thoroughly worthless of 
the French nobility. 

" Danton and Robespierre quarreled at one 
of the political clubs before the 10th of August: 
high words ended in a challenge : they met, and 
the duel was prevented by the interference of an 
Englishman, who went out as a second to the 
one, and represented to them how injurious it 
would be to the cause of liberty if either of 
them should fall. That Englishman was the 
present James Watt of Soho, and from him I 
heard this remarkable fact. 

" But I must conclude, once more thanking 
you for the book, which is every thing that such 
a book ought to be in all respects, except that 
for my own gratification I wish this part of your 
subject had been extended to four volumes in- 
stead of being compressed into two; the book- 
sellers and the public would no doubt be of a 
different opinion, but it is because men are too 
busy or too idle to read what ought to be read, 
that they w T ho engage in state affairs are igno- 
rant of what they ought to know, and hence the 
consequences that we have seen, and those which 
we may foresee. 

11 1 very well remember when you and Mr. 
Hope came in upon our cheerful party. Our 
friend Mr. Telford, whom I saw here last, was 
depressed in spirits by his growing deafness ; 
this was more than two years ago, and I fear 
that the cause is not likely to be removed at his 
age. 

" Should any circumstance lead you into this 
country, I hope you will give me an opportunity 
of shaking you once more by the hand, and own 
me a fellow-laborer in the field of history. 
"Believe me, my dear sir, 

" Yours very truly, . 

"Robert Southey." 

* This observation was quite just, and was corrected 
in the next edition. — A. A. 



My father's fondness for cats has been occa- 
sionally shown by allusion in his letters, and in 
The Doctor is inserted an amusing memorial of 
the various cats w r hich at different times were 
inmates of Greta Hall. He rejoiced in bestow- 
ing upon them the strangest appellations ; and 
it was not a little amusing to see a kitten an- 
swer to the name of some Italian singer or In- 
dian chief, or hero of a German fairy tale, and 
often names and titles were heaped one upon an- 
other, till the possessor, unconscious of the hon- 
or conveyed, used to " set up his eyes and look" 
in wonderment. Mr. Bedford had an equal liking 
for the feline race, and occasional notices of their 
favorites therefore passed between them, of which 
the following records the death of one of the 
greatest. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 18, 1833. 
" My dear G., 

" * # * # * * * 

Alas ! Grosvenor, this day poor old Rumpel was 
found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat 
could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject. 

" His full titles w T ere : 

" The Most Noble the Archduke Rumpel- 
stiltzchen, Marquis Macbum, Earl Tomlemagne, 
Baron Raticide, Waowhler, and Skaratch. 

"There should be a court mourning in Cat- 
land, and if the Dragon* wear a black ribbon 
round his neck, or a band of crape a la militaire 
round one of the fore paws, it will be but a be- 
coming mark of respect. 

" As we have no catacombs here, he is to be 
decently interred in the orchard, and cat-mint 
planted on his grave. Poor creature, it is well 
that he has thus come to his end after he had 
become an object of pity. I believe we are each 
and all, servants included, more sorry for his loss, 
or rather more affected by it, than any one of us 
w r ould like to confess. 

"I should not have written to you at present 
had it not been to notify this event. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

" Did I tell you that my History of Brazil has 
led the English merchants who trade with Monte 
Video to claim an exemption from certain du- 
ties : the attorney general pronounces that they 
have established a prima facie claim to that ex- 
emption ; the officers of the customs are instruct- 
ed to act upon that opinion ; and one house alone 
saves d£l200 by this, by their own statement to 
me, for I have had several letters uporr the sub- 
ject, soliciting information during the inquiry. 
# # # # # # #>» 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 20, 1333. 
" My dear Friend, 
"Dr. Bell's amanuensis (Davies) has arrived 
at Keswick with the poor doctor's papers : he 
is established in lodgings at the bottom of the 
garden, and I go to him every morning at svven, 
* A cat of Mr. Bedford's. 



518 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtat. 59. 



and remain with him till nine, inspecting a mass 
of correspondence which it will take several 
months to go through.. Dr. Bell, from the time 
he went to India in 1787, seems to have pre- 
served every paper — first, for the interest which 
he took in them, and latterly, no doubt, with a 
persuasion that whatever related to him would 
De deemed of importance by posterity, and with 
a sure conviction that the more fully he was 
known the higher would be the opinion formed 
of his character ; and this is certainly the case 
till the latter part of his life, when his own sys- 
tem obtained such complete possession of his 
heart and soul as to leave room for nothing else. 

" My acquaintance with him began in 1809, 
but it was not till two or three years afterward 
that I began to know him intimately, and then I 
believe there was no person among the connec- 
tions of his latter life for whom he entertained a 
more sincere regard. From that time it was his 
wish that I should undertake the office which has 
now been committed to me, and I have great 
pleasure in thinking that his life and correspond- 
ence will not disappoint the expectations which 
he had formed. 

" Having been several weeks at this task, I 
have now become as well acquainted with the 
first half of his life as the most unreserved let- 
ters could make me, and this has made me un- 
derstand how little we know of men with whom 
we become acquainted after a certain age, and 
upon what different foundation the friendships 
of boyhood, of youth, and of maturity rest ; but, 
withal, the older they are (like good Rhenish 
wine), the finer is the relish. If you and I had 
first met in London ten years later than we did 
in -Lisbon, our intimacy could never have been 
what it is. 

" This session of Parliament is not likely to 
pass over without some fearful struggle. The 
mob in London stand in fear of the soldiers, and 
still more of the police. The want of such a po- 
lice has given them the upper hand at Manches- 
ter, Birmingham, and Sheffield, and elsewhere ; 
and, in the confidence of their union and their 
numbers, it seems to me more than probable that 
they will attempt a simultaneous march upon 
London, such as the Blanketeers intended about 
fourteen years ago. In that case there will be 
an insurrection in London, unless they are stopped 
on the way and defeated ; and well will it be if 
the metropolis suffers nothing worse than it did 
in 1780. This is certain, that if any resistance 
to the revolutionary spirit is intended by the gov- 
ernment, it must be made soon, and made effect- 
ually, otherwise there will be no security for life 
or property in England. Meantime, I am not 
distressed with anticipations of evil : near as it 
may be, it does not yet disturb me when I lie 
down at night, nor enters into my dreams. We 
are in the hands of Providence ; and though I 
do not see by what human agency it is to be 
brought about, I know that the^Almighty can de- 
liver us, and feel as if he would. God bless you, 
my dear old friend ! Yours most affectionately, 
" Robert Southey." 



To Allan Cunningham, Esq. 

"Keswick, June 3, 1833. 
My dear Allan, 

" Thank you in my own name, and in my 
daughter Bertha's, for the completing volumes 
of your Painters. The work is very far the best 
that has been written for the Family Library, and 
will continue to be reprinted long after all the 
others with which it is now associated. I do not 
except the Life of Nelson from this ; the world 
cares more about artists than admirals after the 
lapse of centuries ; and as long as the works of 
those artists endure, or so long as their concep- 
tions are perpetuated by engravings, so long will 
a lively interest be excited by their lives, when 
written as you have written them. 

" Give your history of the rustic poetry of 
Scotland the form of biography, and no booksell- 
er will shake his head at it unless he is a booby. 
People who care nothing about such a history 
would yet be willing to read the lives of such 
poets, and you may very well introduce all that 
you wish to bring forward under cover of the 
more attractive title. The biography of men 
who deserve to be remembered always retains its 
interest. 

Are you right as to Lawrence's birth-place ? 
The White Hart, which his father kept at Bris- 
tol, is in the parish of Christ Church, not St. 
Philip's, which is a distant part of the city. 

" Sir George Beaumont's marriage was in 
1774, the year of my birth; he spent that sum- 
mer here, and Faringdon was with him part of 
the time, taking up their quarters in the little inn 
by Lowdore. Hearne, also, was with him here, 
either that year or soon afterward, and made for 
him a sketch of the whole circle of this vale from 
a field called Crow Park. Sir George intended 
to build a circular banqueting-room, and have 
this painted round the walls. If the execution 
had not always been procrastinated, here would 
have been the first panorama. I have seen the 
sketch, now preserved on a roll more than twen- 
ty feet in length. 

" Sir George's death was not from any decay. 
His mother lived some years beyond ninety, and 
his health had greatly improved during the latter 
years of his life. He was never better than when 
last in this country, a very few months before his 
death. The seizure was sudden : after breakfast, 
as he was at work upon a picture, he fainted ; 
erysipelas presently showed itself upon the head, 
and soon proved fatal. 

" I know that he painted with much more ar- 
dor in his old age than at other times of his life, 
and I believe that his last pictures were his best. 
In one point I thought him too much of an artist : 
none of his pictures represented the scene from 
which he took them ; he took the features, and 
disposed them in the way which pleased him best. 
Whenever you enter these doors of mine, you shall 
see a little piece of his (the only one I have) which 
perfectly illustrates this : the subject is this very 
house, and scarcely any one object in the picture 
resembles the reality. His wish was to give the 
character — the spirit of the scene. But whoever 



JEtat. 60. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



519 



may look upon this picture hereafter with any 
thought of me, will wish it had been a faithful 
portrait of the place. 

" He was one of the happiest men I ever knew, 
for he enjoyed all the advantages of his station, 
and entered into none of the follies to which men 
are so easily tempted by wealth and the want of 
occupation. His disposition kept him equally 
from all unworthy and all vexatious pursuits ; he 
had as little liking for country sports as for public 
business of any kind, but had a thorough love for 
art and nature ; and if one real affliction or one 
anxiety ever crossed his path in any part of his 
life, I never heard of it. I verily believe that no 
man ever enjoyed the world more, and few were 
more humbly, more wisely, more religiously pre- 
pared for entering upon another state of existence. 

" He became acquainted with Coleridge here 
before I came into this country ; this led to his 
friendship with Wordsworth, and to his acquaint- 
ance with me (for more than acquaintance it can 
hardly be called) . He has lodged more than once 
in this house, when it was in an unfinished state : 
this very room he occupied before the walls were 
plastered. 

" Next to painting and natural scenery, he de- 
lighted in theatricals more than in any thing else. 
Few men read so well, and I have heard those 
who knew him intimately say that he would have 
made an excellent actor. 

" Thank you for your good word in the Athe- 
naeum. I had not heard of it before : little of the 
good or evil which is said of me reaches this 
place ; and as I believe the balance is generally 
largely on the wrong side (enmity being always 
more on the alert than friendship), my state is 
the more gracious. The new edition of Byron's 
works is, I think, one of the very worst symptoms 
Df these bad times. 

" I am glad to hear of your sons' welfare ; 
they will all find your good name useful to them 
through life. 

" Since this letter was begun, the influenza 
laid hold on me and all my children ; all except 
Cuthbert had it very severely. I was completely 
prostrated by it for a full week, and it has left 
me emaciated and weak ; nor, indeed, is my chest 
yet completely rid of it. However, I begin to 
walk about, and have resumed my usual habits. 

" God bless you, my dear Allan ! My daugh- 
ter joins in kind remembrances to Mrs. Cunning- 
ham. Believe me always 

" Yours affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Lord Mahon. 

" Keswick, Oct. 22, 1833. 
" My dear Lord Mahon, 
" Long ago I ought to have thanked you for 
your paper, which had been so unbecomingly in- 
terpolated in the Quarterly Review. And now, 
having just completed that portion of our naval 
history which has never been brought together, I 
was about to have done this with my first leisure, 
when you give me a second occasion for thanks, 
both on my own part and on Cuthbert's, whose I 



eyes were lit up upon finding himself thus unex- 
pectedly remembered. 

" The French play is ^rench indeed, and in its 
own way far exceeds Calaeron's Cisma de Ingla- 
terra. I shall place it among my curiosities. 
The Loi sur l'Instruction Primaire I am glad to 
possess, because the subject must, ere long, take 
up much of my thoughts, when preparing for 
the press the Life and Correspondence of Dr. 
Bell. This task will lead me to inquire into the 
history of scholastic education, its present state, 
primary schools, Sunday schools — the good and 
the evil — the too much and the too little. There 
are no other means by which the character of 
society might so beneficially and so surely be 
changed ; but even in this the practical difficul- 
ties are so many, that the man must have either 
great warmth of enthusiasm or great strength 
of principle who is not rendered almost hopeless 
when he contemplates them. 

"Your account of the state of affairs in France 
is almost what I should have wished it to be. 
Louis Philippe, in his own country at least, is a 
Conservative ; and if the Due de Bordeaux ever 
succeeds to the throne (which, if he lives, I think, 
as well as hope, he will), it were better both for 
him and for France that some years should have 
their course before this restoration takes place ; 
better for him, because he must acquire more 
knowledge in his present condition than he pos- 
sibly could as a reigning prince, and better for 
France, because in a few years death will have 
removed those persons whom it might be alike 
injurious to punish or to pardon. When venge- 
ance has been long delayed, its just infliction sel- 
dom fails to call forth compassion, even for great 
criminals ; and a still worse effect has followed 
in all restorations when old adherents are neg- 
lected, and old enemies not only forgiven, but 
received into favor, and trusted and rewarded. 
For these reasons, and because the citizen king 
will govern with a stronger hand than the legiti- 
mate king, I incline to wish that Louis Philippe 
may reign long to curb his subjects, and break 
in the people to habits of obedience by the vigor- 
ous exercise of his power. 

" This reminds me of the spirit which is breath- 
ed in the Corn-Law Rhymes. I have taken those 
poems as the subject of a paper for the Christmas 
Review, not without some little hope of making 
the author reflect upon the tendency of his writ- 
ing. He is a person who introduced himself to 
me by letter many years ago, and sent me vari- 
ous specimens of his productions, epic and dra- 
matic. Such of his faults in composition as were 
corrigible, he corrected in pursuance of my ad- 
vice, and learned, in consequence, to write as he 
now does, admirably well, when the subject will 
let him do so. I never saw him but once, and 
that in an inn in Sheffield, when I was passing 
through that town. The portrait prefixed to his 
book seems intentionally to have radicalized, or 
rather ruffianized, a countenance which had no 
cut-throat expression at that time. It was a re- 
markable face, with pale gray eyes, full of fire 
and meaning, and well suited to a frankness of 



520 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 60. 



manner and an apparent simplicity of character 
such as is rarely found in middle age, and more 
especially rare in persons engaged in what may 
be called the warfare of the world. After that 
meeting I procured a sizarship for one of his 
sons ; and the letter which he wrote to me upon 
my offering to do so is a most curious and char- 
acteristic production, containing an account of 
his family. I never suspected him of giving his 
mind to any other object than poetry till "Words- 
worth put the Corn-Law Rhymes into my hands, 
and then, coupling the date of the pamphlet with 
the power which it manifested, and recognizing 
also scenery there which he had dwelt upon in 
other poems, I at once discovered the hand of 
my pupil. He will discover mine in the advice 
which I shall give him. It was amusing enough 
that he should have been recommended to my 
notice as an uneducated poet in the New Monthly 
Magazine. 

"In such times as these, whatever latent evil 
there is in a nation is brought out. This man 
appeared always a peaceable and well-disposed 
subject till Lord Grey's ministry, for their own 
purposes, called upon the mob for support, and 
then, at the age of fifty, he let loose opinions 
which had never before been allowed to manifest 
themselves, and the fierce Puritanism in which 
he had been bred up burst into a flame. * * 

" And believe me always yours with sincere 
regard, Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. J. Miller. 

" Keswick, Nov. 16, 1833. 
t: My dear Sir, 

" The ' Suggestions,'* which I have to thank 
for your welcome letter, came to me about three 
weeks ago, from Mr. Charnock of Ripon, through 
Mrs. Hodson — the Margaret Holford of former 
days. With whom they have originated I have 
not heard, nor do I sufficiently understand what 
is hoped for from the proposed association, or 
how it can act. But that any association formed 
on such principles will have my cordial good 
wishes, and all the support that I can give it in 
my own way, you need not be assured. 

" Among the many ominous parallelisms be- 
tween the present times and those of Charles the 
First, none has struck me more forcibly than 
those which are to be found in the state of the 
Church ; and of those, this circumstance espe- 
cially — that the Church of England at that time 
was. better provided with able and faithful min- 
isters than it had ever been before, and is in like 
manner better provided now than it has ever been 
since. I have been strongly impressed by this 
consideration ; it has made me more aprehensive 
that no human means are likely to avert the 



* "The 'Suggestions' here spoken of were entitled, 
' Suggestions for the Promotion of an Association of the 
Friends of the Church ;' but the association never was 
formed The practical result was 'The Oxford Tracts ;' 
l»ut the whole theory and management fell into other (and 
exclusive) hands, so that any direct influence and work 
of the ' Suggestions' must ever remain unknown and un- 
defined. Perceval's and Palmer's Narratives of the Theo- 
logical Movement tell all that is to be told on the subject" 
-J. M. 



threatened overthrow of the Establishment ; but 
it affords also more hope (looking to human 
causes) of its restoration. 

" The Church will be assailed by popular clam- 
or and seditious combinations ; it will be attacked 
in Parliament by unbelievers, half-believers, and 
misbelievers, and feebly defended by such of the 
ministers as are not secretly or openly hostile to 
it. On our side we have God and the right. 
Olariov nal eATrioTeov must be our motto, as it 
was Lauderdale's in his prison. We, however, 
are not condemned to inaction, and our hope rests 
upon a surer foundation than his. 

" He, no doubt, built his hopes upon the strange 
changes which take place in revolutionary times. 
Some of those changes are likely to act in our 
favor. The time can not be far distant when the 
United States of America, instead of being held 
up to us for an example, will be looked to as a 
warning. Portugal and Spain will show the 
egregious incapacity and misconduct of the pres- 
ent administration ; and Louis Philippe, becom- 
ing a Conservative for his own sake, must also 
' seek peace and ensue it,' because the liberal 
principles to which France would appeal in case 
of a Continental war would overthrow his throne. 
It can not be his policy to excite revolutionary 
movements in other countries, while all his efforts 
are required for repressing them at home. Our 
revolutionary ministers, therefore', will not find 
so ready an ally in him as he might find in them, 
if it were his object to bring on a general war : 
and if we get on without any financial embar- 
rassments (which we may do, as long as peace 
is maintained), there will be no violent revolu- 
tion here. "We may have an easy descent ; and 
when the state machine has got to the bottom, 
and is there fast in the quagmire, the very people 
who have made the inclined plane for it, and huz- 
zaed as it went down with accelerated speed, 
when they see what the end of that way is, will 
yoke themselves to it to drag it up again, if they 
can, with labor and with pain. 

" I am constitutionally cheerful, and, therefore, 
hopeful. God has blessed me with good health 
and buoyant spirits, and my boyish hilarity has 
not forsaken me, though I am now in my sixtieth 
year. 

" Of late I have been employed, profitably for 
myself, and therefore necessarily, in Messrs. 
Longman's great Cabinet manufactory. I am 
now preparing a friendly lecture to the Corn- 
Law Rhymer in the Quarterly. I taught him, 
as he says, the art of poetry, and I shall now en- 
deavor to teach him something better, and bring 
him to a sense of his evil ways. I shall endeavor 
also to prepare for the same number, as a sort 
of companion or counterpart to the lives of Ober- 
lin and Neff, a life of the Methodist blacksmith, 
Samuel Hick, who was born without the sense 
of shame, and, nevertheless, was useful in his 
generation. 

' ; But I am preparing for an undertaking of 
some importance — the Lives of the English Di- 
vines, upon a scale like that of Johnson's Lives 
of the Poets — to accompany a selection from 



Mr at. 60. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



521 






their works, in monthly parts. An introductory 
part, or volume, will bring down the history of 
religious instruction to the reign of Elizabeth. 
Jf this plan be executed as it is designed, it can 
not but be of great use. It has been long in my 
thoughts ; but I have so much to do that it can 
not possibly be started till the commencement 
of the year after next, and I do not look to so 
distant a date without a full sense of the insta- 
bility of human life. Meantime, however, I work 
on, and lay new foundations, and form new 
schemes, and am not only eating, and drinking, 
and buying books (the only ' buying and selling' 
with which I have any concern), but, moreover, 
giving in marriage. 

# # * # # # * 

" And now that I have told you all that most 
concerns myself, dear sir, farewell ! Remem- 
ber me to your brother and sister, and believe 
me always 

" Yours with sincere respect and regard, 

" Robert Southey." 

Various allusions have already been printed 
respecting The Doctor, the most extraordinary 
and perhaps the most original of any of my fa- 
ther's works. It seems probable that, in the first 
instance, the idea of this book arose out of the 
plan of The Butler (see ante, p. 192), in which 
he so vainly endeavored to persuade Mr. Bedford 
to engage ; but The Butler was to have been 
pure nonsense, relieved only by occasional glim- 
merings of meaning, to deceive the reader into 
the idea that there was meaning in all the rest, 
while the nonsense in The Doctor bears only a 
small proportion to the other portions. 

What the original story of The Doctor and his 
Horse was I am not able to say accurately. I 
believe it was an extremely absurd one, and that 
the horse was the hero of it, being gifted with 
the power of making himself " generally useful" 
after he was dead and buried, and had been de- 
prived of his skin. There was to have been a 
notable horse in The Butler also, but he was of 
different "metal" to this one (see ante, p. 197), 
and to skin him would not have been an easy 
matter, being akin to 

" That famous horse of brass, 
On which the Tartar king did pass." 

The Doctor, being once commenced (in 1813), 
was occasionally taken up as an amusement, and 
the earlier portions of it are plainly written at a 
time when his spirits rose higher than they ever 
did in later years. It then became, as it were, 
a receptacle for odd knowledge and strange fan- 
cies, and a means of embodying a great deal, 
both of serious and playful matter, for which a 
fitting place could not easily be found in other 
works. 

It had now lain by for many years, additions 
having been made to it from time to time, and 
its existence being known only to few persons, 
my father determined upon publishing two vol- 
umes anonymously, and continuing it if it paid its 
expenses. Mr. Bedford had long been in the 
secret, and Mr. H. Taylor had lately been ad- 



mitted ; through them, therefore, all arrange- 
ments were made for the publication; and that 
his well-known hand-writing might not betray 
him, the MS. was all copied before it went to 
the press. 

This book, or at least the greater part of it, 
having been written before I was born, and not 
much thought of for some years, it happened at 
first from accident that I was ignorant of its ex- 
istence, and it then occurred to my father to pre- 
serve this ignorance intact, that it might both 
afford amusement to himself, and be of use in 
mystifying others. All the copying, correcting, 
&c, had therefore been carried on without my 
knowledge — no easy matter, for, with a boy's in- 
quisitiveness, I had been used to take great inter- 
est in the progress of every thing of the kind. 

When, therefore, the first two volumes were 
published and arrived, bearing " from the Author" 
written in a disguised hand, I well remember my 
father putting them aside with a kind of disdain, 
with the expression "some novel, I suppose," 
although to seize upon them and cut them open 
would have been a great delight to him ; and the 
rest of the family, though equally anxious to see 
the long-looked-for Doctor on his first appearance 
as a book, were obliged to wear an indifferent 
aspect toward it. 

It happened, fortunately for the furtherance 
of their plan, that the Rev. James White (brother 
of Kirke White) was then a visitor in the house, 
having come to officiate at the marriage of my 
eldest sister with the Rev. J. W. Warter ; and as 
he thoroughly appreciated the book, and knew 
enough of my father to have some faint suspi- 
cions now and then of the truth, my ignorance 
aided considerably to mystify him ; and our com- 
bined enjoyment of the humorous parts, and the 
conversation we carried on about it, was a source 
of infinite amusement to those who were more 
enlightened. After some weeks had elapsed, my 
father came down one day, and saying to me that 
I had often asked him for one of his manuscripts, 
and that now he had one for me he thought 1 
should value, he put into my hands the MS. of 
The Doctor. My amazement can be more eas- 
ily imagined than described. 

But these were almost the last bright moments 
of our home. My eldest sister was on the point 
of leaving it for another, and deeper sorrows were 
hard at hand. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 10, 1834 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" # * # # # * 

The books arrived a few days since ; this I be 
lieve you have already been told. But I have 
not told you how much amusement Cuthbert af- 
forded us on this occasion. The whole business 
of transcribing, receiving, correcting, and return- 
ing proof sheets (to say nothing of the original 
composition), has been so well concealed from 
him, that whenever he knows the truth it will be 
difficult for him to conceive how he can possibly 
have been kept in ignorance. From this igno- 



522 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 60. 



ranee we anticipated much entertainment, and 
have not been disappointed. When I went down 
to dinner, he told me with great glee that the 
book which had come that morning was one of 
the queerest he had ever seen. He had only 
looked into it, but he had seen that there was 
one chapter without a beginning, and another 
about Aballiboozonorribang (for so he had got the 
word), which, whether it was something to eat, or 
whether it was the thing in the title-page, he could 
not tell, for in one place it was called the sign of 
the book, and in another you were told to eat beans 
if you liked, but to abstain from Aballiboozo. 

" At tea he was full of the chapter about the 
warts and the moonshine, and all the philosophers 
in the dictionary. At supper he was open-mouth- 
ed about the sirloin of a king, and the school- 
master's rump ; he would read to me about the 
lost tribes of Israel : and concluded by wishing 
he had not seen the book, for he should be troubled 
by dreaming about it all night. 

" To-day he says that there is more sense in 
the second volume, but he does not like it so well 
as the first. That there is not much in the book 
about the doctor ; and, indeed, he does not know 
what it is about, except that it is about every 
thing else ; that it was very proper to put &c. in 
the title-page; that the author, whoever he is, 
must be a clever man, and he should not wonder 
if it proved to be Charles Lamb. You may im- 
agine how heartily we have enjoyed all this. 

" A letter from Wordsworth tells us that the 
book has just arrived there, and that one of W.'s 
nephews (a Fellow of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, and a very clever and promising person) 
had got hold of it, was laughing while he looked 
over the contents, and had just declared that the 
man who wrote the book must be mad. 

" God bless you, my dear Grosvenor ! 

"R. S." 

To Henry Taylor. Esq. 

"Keswick, Jan. 16, 1834. 
" My dear H. T., 

" Edith departed yesterday from the house in 
which she was born. God grant that she may 
find her new home as happy as this has been to 
her, though the cheerfullest days of this have long 
been past. Her prospects are fair ; and, what 
is of most consequence, she is intrusted to safe 
hands. 

" As my household diminishes, there will be 
room for more books. These I shall probably 
continue to collect as long as I can, living in the 
past, and conversing with the dead — and The 
Doctor. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

"Keswick, May 2, 1834. 
" My dear Friend, 
"# # # # # * * 

The days pass so rapidly with me because of 
their uniformit}-, that I am made sensible of their 
lapse only by looking back, and feeling with sur- 
prise, and sometimes with some sorrow, and some 



shame also, the arrears which they have brought 
upon me in their unheeded course. 

" See how the day is disposed of! I get out 
of bed as the clock strikes six, and shut the house- , 
door after me as it strikes seven. After two 
hours with Davies,* home to breakfast, after 
which Cutfcbert engages me till about half past 
ten, and when the post brings no letters that 
either interest or trouble me (for of the latter I 
have many), by eleven I have done with the 
newspaper, and can then set about what is prop- 
erly the business of the day. But letters are 
often to be written, and I am liable to frequent 
interruptions, so that there are not many morn- 
ings in which I can command from two to three 
unbroken hours at the desk. At two I take my 
daily walk, be the weather what it may, and 
when the weather permits, with a book in my 
hand; dinner at four, read about half an hour; 
then take to the sofa with a different book, and 
after a few pages get my soundest sleep, till 
summoned to tea at six. My best time during 
the winter is by candle-light : twilight interferes 
with it a little ; and in the season of company I 
can never count upon an evening's work. Sup- 
per at half past nine, after which I read an hour, 
and then to bed. The greatest part of my mis- 
cellaneous work is done in the odds and ends of 
time. 

" To make any amendment of the Poor Laws 
what it ought to be, one leading principle should 
be, that while relief is withheld from the worth- 
less pauper, or administered only in such meas- 
ure as to keep him from famishing, it should be 
afforded to the deserving poor (as it could then 
be afforded) more liberally, and that none should 
be condemned to a work-house but those who 
deserve it as a punishment. It should be made 
apparent that all industrious laborers, all of good 
character, would gain by the proposed alteration ; 
for every possible artifice and exertion will be 
used to make the people believe that this is a 
law passed by the rich against the poor, and there 
never was a time when it was more easy to stir 
up a servile war, nor when such a war would 
have been so greatly to be dreaded. May God 
preserve us ! 

^v ^f ^ tP ^ * * 

" It is needless to say how gladly I would use 
any endeavors in my power toward effecting your 
wishes with regard to the Poor Commission, or 
in other ways. They are worth little, I well 
know, but, however little, they shall be zealously 
made when we know in what channel they must 
be directed. We may see great changes, and, 
perhaps, great troubles, before the appointments 
are made ; for, though Louis Philippe has won 
one great battle for us, we may yet have another 
to fight at home. 

" God bless you, my dear old friend ! 

" Yours most affectionately, R. S." 



* Mr. Davies, the late Dr. Bell's secretary, was then lodg- 
ing in Keswick, within five minutes' walk of Greta Hall. 



jEtat. 60. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



523 



To Lord Makon. 

«' Keswick, May 12, 1834. 
"My dear Lord Mahon, 

" Thank you for Sir Robert Peel's speech. I 
do not wonder at the effect which it produced. 
But could it be believed of any ministers, except 
the present, that in the course of a week after 
the close of the debate in which that speech was 
delivered, they should have returned to their old 
base policy of complimenting and truckling to 
O'Connell ? 

"In reading that entertaining paper upon the 
modern French drama in the last Quarterly Re- 
view, I fancied that we were obliged to you for 
it. It is, indeed, curiously characteristic of the 
people and the times. 

" You will, I think, be pleased with the forth- 
coming play upon the history of Philip van Ar- 
tevelde. The subject was of my suggesting, as 
eminently dramatic, and the first part (which is 
all that I have seen) is written with true dramatic 
power. But so was the author's former tragedy, 
Isaac Comnenus, which met with few readers, 
and was hardly heard of. To obtain immediate 
popularity, an author must address himself to the 
majority of the public — and the vulgar will al- 
ways be the majority — and upon them the finer 
delineations of character and of human feeling 
are lost. 

"If you have not seen Zophiel,* it is well 
worth your reading, as by far the most original 

poem that this generation has produced. If 

or had treated the same subject, they would 

have .made it most mischievously popular ; but, 
exceptionable as it is, the story is told with an 
imaginative power to which the one has no pre- 
tensions, and with a depth of feeling of which 
both were by nature incapable. The poem has 
attracted no notice ; the chief cause of the pres- 
ent failure I suppose to be that it is not always 
perspicuously told. The diction is surprisingly 
good ; indeed, America has never before pro- 
duced any poem to be compared with it. 

" The authoress (Mrs. Brooks) is a New En- 
glander, of Welsh parentage. Many years ago 
she introduced herself to me by letter. When 
she came to this place, and sent up a note to say 
she had taken lodgings here, I never was more 
surprised, and went to call upon her with no fa- 
vorable expectations. She proved, however, a 
most interesting person, of the mildest and gen- 
tlest manners, and my family were exceedingly 
taken with her. Coming fresh from Paris, she 
was full of enthusiasm for the Poles, for whom 
the profits of this poem were intended, if there 
should be any ; and she had a burning thirst for 
fame, which seems now to have become the ab- 
sorbing passion of her most ardent mind. I en- 
deavored to prepare her for disappointment by 
moderating her confident hopes. She left her 
manuscript in my hands at her departure. When 
I had failed to obtain a publisher for it, some of 
her American connections engaged with a book- 



* Zophiel, or the Bride of Seven, by Maria del Occi- 
dents 



seller in Great Queen Street, and I corrected the 
proof-sheets. 

" Believe me, my dear lord, 

" Yours with sincere regard, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, July 3, 1834. 
" My dear G., 
" I have been prevented from writing before, 
first, by being too busy with proof-sheets and 
letters, and secondly by being too idle, company 
and the season having idled me. 

" The day before yesterday I commanded a 
cart party to Honister Crag, and walked the 
whole way myself, twenty-one and a half miles 
by Edward Hill's pedometer, without difficulty 
or fatigue ; so you see that, notwithstanding a 
touch of the hay-as#hma, I am in good condition, 
and have a pair of serviceable legs. 

" Henry Taylor's Tragedies are of the very 
best kind. I am exceedingly glad that you have 
taken to one another so well. He is the only 
one now living, of a generation younger than 
yours and mine, whom I have taken into my 
heart of hearts. 

"I certainly hope that you may be set free 
from all official business with such a pension as 
your long services and your station entitle you 
to ; for I have ne fears of your feeling any diffi- 
culty in the disposal of your time, or any other 
regret for the cessation of your long-accustomed 
business than what always belongs to the past, 
and what in this case may arise from the disso- 
lution of an old establishment, which, for the very 
sake of its antiquity, ought to have been pre- 
served. You will get more into the country than 
you otherwise could have done, and you will 
come here and take a lease of health and good 
spirits from the mountains. I shall pass through 
London with Cuthbert on our way to the West 
in the autumn. Our stay will hardly exceed a 
week. 

" Just now I am very busy, finishing a third 
volume of Naval History. This is my sheet an- 
chor. In the way of sale The Doctor has clearly 
failed ; yet it may be worth while to send out 
another volume, and so, from time to time, at 
longish intervals, till the design is completed. 
This may be worth while, because the notice that 
each will excite will keep the name alive, and 
act advantageously when it comes to be included 
in the posthumous edition of my works. Mean- 
time, the pleasure that I and my household, and 
a very few others who are behind the curtain, 
will receive, will be so much gain. It will not 
be amiss to throw out hints that Henry Taylor 
may be the author, having shown in his plays 
both the serious and the comic disposition and 
power. 

"My cousin, Georgiana Hill, is here for the 
first time, and as happy as you may suppose a 
girl of eighteen is likely to be on such an occa- 
sion. Did I tell you that I have a pony, the best 



524 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 60. 



of ponies (given me by Sir T. Acland) ? and I 
have bought a light chair, in which Cuthbert or 
Bertha drive out their mother. If I could give 
you a good account of her, all would be well. 
But her spirits are so wretchedly nervous, and I 
begin to fear so hopelessly so, that I have need 
of all mine. 

" God bless you, my dear G. ! My love to 
Miss Page. R. S." 

The following letter was addressed to a party 
from one of the universities who were at that 
time reading at Keswick, and it is inserted for 
the sake of showing how strong was his abhor- 
rence of all cruelty. I have seen his cheek glow, 
and his eye darken and almost flash fire, when 
he chanced to witness any thing of the kind, and 
heard him administer a rebuke which made the 
recipient tremble. Like some other gentle na- 
tures, when his indignation was roused — and it 
was only such cases that did fairly rouse it — he 
was stern indeed. 

In reading or speaking of any cases of cruelty 
or oppression, his countenance and voice would 
change in a most striking manner. 

This letter was sent without a signature, and 
transcribed by another hand. 

"Keswick, July 12, 1834. 
" Young Gentlemen, 

" It has come to the knowledge of the writer 
that one of your amusements here is to worry 
cats — that you buy them from those owners who 
can be tempted to the sin of selling them for such 
a purpose, and that you employ boys to steal 
them for you. 

" A woman who was asked by her neighbor 
how she could do so wicked a thing as to sell 
her cat to you, made answer that she never 
would have done it if she could have saved the 
poor creature, but that, if she had not sold it, it 
would have been stolen by your agents, and there- 
fore she might as well have the half crown her- 
self. 

" Neither her poverty nor her will consented, 
yet she was made to partake in your wickedness 
because she could not prevent it. She gave up 
to your barbarity a domestic animal — a fireside 
companion, with which her children had played, 
and which she herself had fondled on her lap. 
You tempted her, and she took the price of its 
blood. 

"Are you incapable, young gentlemen, of un- 
derstanding the injury you have done to this 
woman in her own conscience and in the estima- 
tion of her neighbors ? 

" Be this as it may, you can not have been so 
ill taught as not to know that you are setting an 
evil example in a place to which you have come 
for the ostensible object of pursuing your studies 
in a beautiful country ; that your sport is as 
blackguard as it is brutal ; that cruelty is a crime 
by the laws of God, and theft by the laws also 
of man ; that in employing boys to steal for you, 
and thus training them up in the way they should 
not go, you are doing the devil's work ; that they 



commit a punishable offense when serving you 
in this way, and that you commit one in so em- 
ploying them. 

" You are hereby warned to give up these 
practices. If you persist in them, this letter will 
be sent to all the provincial newspapers." 

One other trifling circumstance I may briefly 
notice here as occurring at this time — a request 
from the Messrs. Galignani that he would write 
a brief sketch of Lord Byron's life and literary 
character, to be prefixed to their edition of his 
works, leaving "the remuneration entirely to 
himself." It is hardly needful to add that the 
proposal was not entertained. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS— MODE OF TUITION— 
MY MOTHER'S ILLNESS AND REMOVAL TO YORK 
FEELINGS UNDER AFFLICTION EVIL EF- 
FECTS OF ANXIETY UPON HIS HEALTH COR- 
RESPONDENCE WITH SIR R. PEEL CONCERNING 

THE OFFER OF A BARONETCY JOURNEY TO 

SUSSEX RETURN TO KESWICK GRANT OF AN 

ADDITIONAL PENSION LITERARY EMPLOY- 
MENTS THE DOCTOR DEATH OF MISS 

HUTCHINSON MR. WYOn's MEDALLIONS 

PRESENT FEELINGS AND EMPLOYMENTS SPAN- 
ISH LITERATURE WESTMINSTER SCHOOL 

CAUSES OF ITS DECLINE STATE OF HIS SPIR- 
ITS — jackson's works — feelings of thank- 
fulness FOR HIS NEW PENSION NOVEL MODE 

OF BOOK-BINDING LITERARY EMPLOYMENTS 

RECOLLECTIONS OF C LAMB SINGULAR EF- 
FECTS OF SOUND AND LIGHT STATE OF THE 

CHURCH LIFE OF COWPER DIFFICULTY OF 

LEAVING HOME IS SUBPG3NAED TO A TRIAL 

AT LANCASTER. 1834-1836. 

As my task draws nearer to its conclusion it 
becomes naturally more painful, and the more 
so because, in chronicling the events which dark- 
ened my father's later years, they rise up so viv- 
idly before my own sight. 

" It is my youth, that where I stand 
Surrounds me like a dream. 
The sounds that round about me rise 
Are what none other hears ; 
I see what meets no other eyes, 
Though mine are dim with tears."* 

A happier home or a happier boyhood than 
mine had been it would not be easy to conceive. 
My father had so strongly imprinted on his mem- 
ory the sad changes through which his own " gen- 
tle spirit" had to pass in childhood and boyhood — 

"The first grief he felt, 
And the first painful smile that clothed his front 
With feelings not his own ;" 

and how, on first quitting home, 

" Sadly at night 
He sat himself down beside a stranger's hearth ; 
And when the lingering hour of re6t was come 
First wet with tears his pillow" — 

* Henry Taylor. 



/Etat. 61. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



525 



that he resolved that the early years of his own 
children should be as happy as he could make 
them. He had again become the " father, teach- 
er, playmate," all in one, though probably with 
far less heart and hope than in earlier years ; 
and he had given up as much time as he could 
possibly spare to my education. This, however, 
was somewhat of a desultory and irregular kind, 
more amusing and attractive, perhaps, than very 
profitable, at least as regarded the attainment of 
a good foundation for correct scholarship. He 
was himself far from being an accurate classic ; 
indeed, he had spoiled his Latinity by continually 
reading bad Latin — " feeding upon monkish his- 
torians;" and although he did his best to put me 
in the right way, I found I had much up-hill 
work to undergo at too late a period, having learn- 
ed the practice from him of catching at the gen- 
eral meaning of a passage without much knowl- 
edge or examination of its construction — " mak- 
ing a shy at it," as school-boys say — an evil hab- 
it as regards ordinary purposes, though doubtless 
profitable for him whose glance was so keen and 
so sure. 

He had also an odd plan (conducing to this 
same end), which he practiced a good deal with 
me in modern tongues, of reading the original 
aloud, and making me render it into English by 
the ear ; and this he would do with the Dutch, 
German, Danish, and Swedish, being particular- 
ly partial to the Northern tongues, and wishing 
to become more versed in them himself. French 
he disliked exceedingly ; and he did not teach 
me Spanish and Portuguese, which he knew thor- 
oughly, probably for that very reason. 

Another odd practice I may mention. After 
reading a portion of Homer in our daily studies, 
he would make me read aloud the .ame portion 
in every translation he possessed — Pope, Cowper, 
Chapman, and Hobbes — a process more amusing 
than profitable ; and he would do the same thing 
with Virgil, out of Sotheby's magnificent Poly- 
glot!. 

In other matters I was left very much to my- 
self, allowed to run riot amid the multitude of 
books, and permitted, if not encouraged, to in- 
dulge a desultory appetite for odd reading ; and 
here again some objects were sacrificed which 
might have been attained had I been encouraged 
to read less and more carefully. 

But while this sort of bringing up had, as all 
home education must have, some disadvantages, 
I must always feel grateful for it, as enabling me 
to have that appreciation of my father's charac- 
ter — that companionship with him and freedom 
from reserve, that "perfect love that casteth out 
fear," which I could never have felt had I been 
earlier sent out into the world. The most cer- 
tain evil of the many years of school-boy life is 
the want of friendship between father and son. 
To all of us, indeed, Greta Hall was a most de- 
lightful home. The daily walks ; the frequent 
excursions "by flood and fell;" the extreme 
beauty of the surrounding country, his own keen 
appreciation of and deep delight in which had ex- 
( tended to his children; the pleasant summer so- 



ciety, full of change and excitement ; the quiet- 
er enjoyments of winter, all tended to attach us 
more to it, perhaps, than was desirable. We 
"loved it, not wisely, but too well." 

But its best days were over : he had said so 
with a too true foreboding, when, in the first 
month of the year, his eldest daughter had 
changed her name, and departed to another home 
on the distant coast of Sussex ; and it being now 
thought necessary that I should be placed under 
her husband — Mr. Warter's tuition — to be pre- 
pared for Oxford, my father prepared to take me 
thither. But the pain of quitting a peculiarly 
happy home is not much, if at all, diminished by 
postponement. 

" Then, in truth, we learn 
That never music like a mother's voice, 
And never sweetness like a father's smile, 
And never pleasures like that home-born throng, 
Circling calm boyhood, has the world supplied."* 

And like to this were my father's own anticipa- 
tions. "This," he says, "will never again be 
Cuthbert's home, in the whole full meaning of that 
word. He will come to it at vacation times, but 
never more will he have that sense of home com- 
fort and home happiness here, the want of which 
is very ill compensated by all the hopes, and em- 
ulations, and excitement of the world on which 
he must now enter. I shall miss him sadly, and 
begin to perceive that books, which have always 
been the chief pleasure of my life, will soon be 
the only ones with which there are no regrets to 
mingle. "f 

But these plans were destined to be sadly and 
suddenly disconcerted for the time. I have be- 
fore alluded to the weak and nervous state of my 
mother's spirits ; and of late, total loss of appe- 
tite and sleep had caused serious apprehensions, 
which were, alas ! too well founded ; for, just as 
we were on the point of departing, the melan- 
choly truth became apparent that she was no 
longer herself. It is, perhaps, rash to endeavor 
to search into the causes of these mysterious vis- 
itations of Providence ; but it may, I think, fairly 
be alleged, that an almost life-long anxiety about 
the uncertain and highly precarious nature of my 
father's income, added to a naturally nervous con- 
stitution, had laid the foundation for this mental 
disease ; and my father himself also now felt and 
acknowledged that Keswick had proved, espe- 
cially of later years, far too unquiet a residence 
for her weakened spirits, and that much compa- 
ny and frequent visitors had produced exactly the 
opposite effect to what he had hoped. Her im- 
mediate removal seemed to offer the best hope 
of restoration, and this step was at once taken. 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"York, Thursday night, Oct 2, 1834. 

" My dear Grosvenor, 

" After what Henry Taylor has imparted to 

you, you will not be surprised at learning that I 

have been parted from my wife by something 

worse than death. Forty years has she been the 

* Robert Montgomery. 

t To H. Taylor, Esq., Aug. 21, 1834. 



526 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 61. 



life cf my life, and I have left her this day in a 
lunatic asylum. 

" God, who has visited me with this affliction, 
has given me strength to bear it, and will, J know, 
support me to the end, whatever that may be. 

" Our faithful Betty is left with her. All that 
can be done by the kindest treatment and the 
greatest skill we are sure of at the Retreat. I 
do not expect more than that she may be brought 
into a state which will render her perfectly man- 
ageable at home. More is certainly possible, but 
not to be expected, and scarcely to be hoped. 

" To-morrow I return to my poor children. 
There is this great comfort, that the disease is 
not hereditary, her family having within all mem- 
ory been entirely free from it. 

" I have much to be thankful for under this 
visitation. For the first time in my life, I am 
so far beforehand with the world that my means 
are provided for the whole of next year, and that 
I can meet this additional expenditure, consider- 
able in itself, without any difficulty. As I can 
do this, it is not worth a thought; but it must 
have cost me much anxiety had my affairs been 
in their former state. 

"Another thing for which I am thankful is, 
that the stroke did not fall upon me when the 
printers were expecting the close of my naval 
volume, or the Memoir of Dr. Watts. To inter- 
rupt a periodical publication is a grievous loss to 
the publishers, or, at least, a very serious incon- 
venience. 

" Some old author says, ' Remember, under 
any affliction, that Time is short : and that, though 
your Cross may be heavy, you have not far to 
bear it.' 

" I have often thought of those striking words. 

"God bless you, my dear Grosvenor! My 
love to Miss Page ; she, I know, will feel for us, 
and will pray for us. R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"York, Oct. 2, 1834. 
" My dear H. T., 
" Yesterday I deposited my dear wife in the 
Retreat for Lunatics, near this city, and to-day 
I visited her there. To-morrow I return home, 
to enter upon a new course of life. 

* # # # # # # 

" Recovery is possible, but I do not attempt to 
deceive myself by thinking that it is likely. It 
is very probable that she may be brought into a 
state which will no longer require restraint. In 
that case. I shall engage a proper attendant from 
this place, bring her home, appropriate two 
rooms to her use, and watch over her to give 
her all the comforts of which she may be capa- 
ble, till death do us part. 

" The call upon me for exertion has been such, 
that, by God's help, I have hitherto felt no weak- 
ness. 

" That this is a far greater calamity than death 
would have been, I well know. But I perceive 
that it can be better borne at first, because there 



is a possibility of restoration, and, however feeble, 
a hope ; therefore that collapse is not to be ap- 
prehended which always ensues when the effort 
which the circumstances of a mortal sickness, 
and death, and burial, call forth in the survivor, 
is at an end. 

" Mine is a strong heart. I will not say that 
the last week has been the most trying of my 
life, but I will say that the heart which could 
bear it can bear any thing. 

"It is remarkable that the very last thing I 
wrote before this affliction burst upon me in its 
full force was upon Resignation, little foreseeing. 
God knows, how soon and how severely my own 
principles were to be put to the proof. The oc- 
casion was this : Mrs. Hughes thought it would 
gratify me to peruse a letter which she had just 
received from one of her friends — a clergyman 
who had recently suffered some severe domestic 
affliction. He said that his greatest consolation 
had been derived from a letter of mine, which 
she had allowed him to transcribe some years 
ago, and which he verily believed had at that 
time saved his heart from breaking. The letter 
must have been written upon my dear Isabel's 
death. I have no recollection of it ; but that 
must have been the subject, because Mrs. Hughes 
and her husband had both been exceedingly struck 
with her, and declared — when such a declaration 
could without unfitness be made — that she was 
the most radiant creature they had ever beheld. 

" This made me reflect upon the difference 
between religious resignation and that which is 
generally mistaken for it, and, for immediate pur- 
pose, in no slight degree supplies its place. You 
will see what I was thus led to write in its prop- 
er place. 

" Davies came with me here, and has been of 
great use. God bless you, my dear H. T. ! 

"R. S." 

To H. Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Oct 6, 1834. 
" My dear H. T., 

" Your letter did not surprise me, though it 
would from almost any one else. Thank you 
most heartily for your offer. But at present it is 
better that I should be alone, and that the girls 
should be left to themselves with Miss Hutchin- 
son. For me this is best, because nothing is so 
painful as the reaction of your own thoughts after 
you have been for a while drawn away from them, 
if this be attempted too soon. When I can enjoy 
your company, I shall be most thankful for it ; 
and as you know I shall not give myself to mel- 
ancholy, you need not apprehend any ill conse- 
quences from my being alone. 

" The worst of my business has been got 
through. I had Cuthbert at his lessons this 
morning ; to-day will clear off the remaining and 
less important letters, and to-morrow I hope to 
resume my work ; not, however, forcing myself 
to it, but following the course which my own in- 
stinct will point out. 

" Miss Fenwick will like to see the last pas- 
sage which I wrote before this calamity burst 



jEtat. 61. 

upon me, and certainly with no prospective feel- 
ings. It will be safe with her if you tell her from 
whence it is extracted. God bless you ! 

"R.S." 

" ' He had looked for consolation where, when 
sincerely sought, it is always to be found, and he 
had experienced that religion effects in a true 
believer all that philosophy professes, and more 
than all that mere philosophy can perform. The 
wounds which stoicism cauterizes, Christianity 
heals. 

" ' There is a resignation with which, it may 
be feared, most of us deceive ourselves. To bear 
what must be borne, and submit to what can not 
be resisted, is no more than what the unregener- 
ate heart is taught by the instinct of animal na- 
ture. But to acquiesce in the afflictive dispensa- 
tions of Providence — to make one's own will con- 
form in all things to that of our heavenly Father 
— to say to Him, ki the sincerity of faith, when 
we drink of the bitter cup, "Thy will be done" 
— to bless the name of the Lord as much from 
the heart when He takes away as when He gives, 
and with a depth of feeling of which, perhaps, 
none but the afflicted heart is capable : this is 
the resignation which religion teaches, this the 
sacrifice which it requires. This sacrifice L. 
had made, and he felt that it was accepted.' " 

This was, indeed, a sad return — this an awful 
separation between those who had been so long, 
so truly united ; to this death had been a light 
evil, for when are we so near as then — 

" Tis but the falling of a leaf, 
The breaking of a shell, 
The rending of a veil." 

But what a gulf is there "fixed" between the 
reasoning and the unreasoning mind ? 

Yet even now, when sorrow had indeed 
"reached him in his heart of hearts," he sought 
for all sources of comfort, for all motives for res- 
ignation and thankfulness. Writing to Mr. War- 
ter from York, he says, " I can not but regard it 
as a special mercy that this affliction should have 
fallen upon me at a time when there were no ex- 
traneous circumstances to aggravate it, the griev- 
ous thought excepted of the grief it would cause 
at Tarring. How easily might it have happened 
when I was pressed for time to bring out a vol- 
ume for periodical publication, the delay of which 
would have been a most serious loss to the pub- 
lishers — nor could it have occurred when I was 
so perfectly able to support the expense. My 
dear Edith had laid by money for a time of need 
which will fully cover the mournful demand upon 
me. Moreover, Mr. Telford* has left me d£200 ; 



ROBERT SOUTH EY. 



527 



* " That kind old man, Mr. Telford, has (most unex- 
pectedly) left me £200. His will, like his life, is full of 
kindness ; bequests to all whom he loved, and all who 
had served under him so as to deserve his good opinion ; 
and to the widows of such as had gone before them, a 
larger portion than would have been allotted to their hus- 
bands. Mr. Rickman is one of the executors, and put a 
copy of the will into my hands, doubling it at the place 
which concerned me. After the surprise and the first 
emotion, it was some time before I smiled at recollecting 
the whimsical manner in which I was designated thus : 



and, independent of this, I am, for the first time 
in my life, so far beforehand with the world, that 
I have means at command for a whole year's 
expenditure, were my hand to be idle or palsied 
during that time. There is, therefore, no rea- 
son for anxiety concerning the means of meeting 
this additional expenditure. 

" Thank God, my strength has not failed nor 
my health suffered." • 

This, as may well be imagined, is a period not 
to be remembered without pain : the anxiety at- 
tendant upon absence, and the constantly varying 
accounts while the issue was yet doubtful and 
there was room for hope, though but slenderly 
grounded, had the most injurious effect upon my 
father's naturally sensitive mind. He kept up, 
indeed, wonderfully, and a common observer 
would have remarked but little change in him, 
except that he was unusually silent ; but to his 
family the change was great indeed. Yet he 
bore the trial patiently and nobly ; and when, in 
the following spring, it was found that the poor 
sufferer was likely in all respects to be better 
under his own roof, and the period of suspense, 
and doubt, and alternate hope and fear had passed 
away, it was marvelous how much of the old 
elasticity remained, and how, though no longer 
happy, he could be contented and cheerful, and 
take pleasure in the pleasures of others. A few 
extracts from his letters will show his state of 
mind and feeling at this time. About three 
weeks after his return home, he says, " Thif 
morning's letter is decidedly favorable, and I feel 
its effects. Hitherto I have not recovered my 
natural sleep at night : plenty of exercise and 
quiet employment fail of their wonted effect in 
producing it, because in darkness and solitude 
uncomfortable thoughts prevent sleep for a while, 
and then trouble it. I should not be the better 
for society nor for leaving home. There is noth- 
ing to be done but to pursue the same course of 
self-management, live in as much hope as it may 
be reasonable to encourage, and, above all, to 
bear always in mind that we have both entered 
on the last of our seven stages. In a very few 
years, what may have befallen us in the course 
of these years may be of some interest to any 
one who may write my life, but it will be of no 
consequence to us, whose lot, doubtful as it is 
for the short remaining portion of our time, is, I 
trust, fixed for eternity."* 

A little later he says to another friend, " I am 
beginning to sleep better the last few days, and 
I do every thing that is likely to keep myself in 
bodily and mental health, walking daily in al) 
weathers, never overtasking myself, or forcing 

To Thomas Campbell, poet, £200. 
" Robert Southey, do. £200. 
He had completed and put to press a history of all his 
works. It will be a splendid book, with about seventy 
engravings. He was far the greatest man that has ever 
appeared in his profession, and has left behind him the 
greatest works ; and as no man in that profession has left 
a greater name, so, I verily believe, no one in any line has 
ever left a better ; for he was thoroughly disinterested, 
and as kind-hearted and considerate as man could be." — 
To Mrs. J. W. Warter, Sept. 11, 1834. 
* To H. Taylor, Ksq., Oct 23, 1834. 



528 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 61. 



myself to a distasteful employment, yet never 
remaining idle. But my spirits would assuredly 
give way were it not for a constant reference to 
another world, and a patient hope of God's mer- 
cy in this."^ 

With one more extract I will conclude this 
year — the saddest of all I have had yet to chron- 
icle : "I find it a grievous thing that I must 
now, for the first time, think about u-ays as well 
as means. For the last eight-and-thirty years I 
had nothing to do but to provide the means in 
my own quiet way, and deliver them over to one 
of the best stewards that ever man was blessed 
with. The ways were her concern, and her 
prudence and foresight exempted me from all 
trouble as well as from all care. My daughters 
can not yet stand here in their poor mother's 
place, and I must be more accustomed to my 
new situation before I introduce them to it. 
Nothing can possibly exceed the good sense and 
good feeling which they have manifested under 
our present affliction ; but their attentions to me 
give me a very painful sense of how much im- 
portance I am to their happiness. Cuthbert, 
also, is a great comfort to me. Whatever course 
I may find it necessary to take, his removal to 
Sussex \sill not be delayed beyond the commence- 
ment of the spring."! 

Tbe new year brought nothing cheerful with 
it to our now diminished and saddened circle. 
The regular report from York was the only ob- 
ject of interest, and that, while it varied a little, 
and sometimes raised temporary hopes, yet, on 
the whole, gradually prepared us for the convic- 
tion that no permanent restoration was to be ex- 
pected, and that the most that could be looked 
for was such an improvement as would permit the 
sufferer to be taken care of under her own roof. 

The days thus passed by in an almost unbroken 
routine of regular employment — my father him- 
self working, if possible, more closely than ever 
— when an event occurred which broke the cur- 
rent of his thoughts for a time, and which, in its 
sequel, proved a most fortunate occurrence for 
the comfort of his remaining years, and one which 
helped very materially to lighten the still darker 
days which were yet in store. 

One morning, shortly after the letters had ar- 
rived, he called me into his study. "You will 
be surprised," he said, " to hear that Sir Robert 
Peel has recommended me to the king for the 
distinction of a baronetcy, and you will probably 
feel some disappointment when I tell you that I 
shall not accept it, and this more on your ac- 
count than on my own. I think, however, that 
you will be satisfied I do so for good and wise 
reasons ;" and he then read to me the following 
letters, and his reply to them. 

Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq. 

" Whitehall Gardens, Feb. 1, 1835. 
" My dear Sir, 
" I have offered a recommendation to the king 

* To John May, Esq., Nov. 12, 1834. 
t To G. C. Bedford, Esq., Dec. 18, 1834. 



(the first of the kind which I have offered), 
which, although it concerns you personally, con- 
cerns also high public interests, so important as 
to dispense with the necessity on my part of that 
previous reference to individual feelings and 
wishes which, in an ordinary case, I should have 
been bound to make. I have advised the king 
to adorn the distinction of baronetage with a 
name the most eminent in literature, and which 
has claims to respect and honor which literature 
alone can never confer. 

" The king has most cordially approved of my 
proposal to his majesty ; and I do hope that, 
however indifferent you may be personally to a 
compliment of this kind, however trifling it is 
when compared with the real titles to fame 
which you have established, I do hope that you 
will permit a mark of royal favor to be conferred 
in your person upon the illustrious community of 
which you are the head. 

" Believe me, my dear sir, with the sincerest 
esteem, 

*' Most faithfully yours, 

" Robert Peel." 

This was accompanied with another lettei 
marked private. 

Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq. 

"Whitehall, Feb. 1,1835. 
" My dear Sir, 

"I am sure, when there can be no doubt as 
to the purity of the motive and intention, there 
can be no reason for seeking indirect channels 
of communication in preference to direct ones. 
Will you tell me, without reserve, whether the 
possession of power puts within my reach the 
means of doing any thing which can be service- 
able or acceptable to you, and whether you will 
allow" me to find some compensation for the many 
heavy sacrifices which office imposes upon me 
in the opportunity of marking my gratitude as a 
public man, for the eminent services you have 
rendered, not only to literature, but to the high- 
er interests of virtue and religion ? 

" I write hastily, and perhaps abruptly, but I 
write to one to whom I feel it w 7 ould be almost 
unbecoming to address elaborate and ceremo- 
nious expressions, and who will prefer to receive 
the declaration of friendly intentions in the sim- 
plest language. 

" Believe me, my dear sir, with true respect, 
" Most faithfully yours, 

"Robert Peel. 

' P.S. I believe your daughter is married to a 
clergyman of great worth, and perhaps I can not 
more effectually promote the object of this letter 
than by attempting to improve his professional 
situation. You can not gratify me more than 
by writing to me with the same unreserve with 
which I have written to you." 

Robert Southey, Esq.. to Sir Robert Peel. 

"Keswick, Feb. 3, 1835. 
" Dear Sir, 
"No communications have ever surprised m© 



jEtat. 61. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



529 



so much as those which I have this day the hon- 
or of receiving from you. I may truly say, also, 
that none have ever gratified me more, though 
they make me feel how difficult it is to serve 
any one who is out of the way of fortune. An 
unreserved statement of my condition will be the 
fittest and most respectful reply. 

" I have a pension of ^6200 conferred upon 
me through the good offices of my old friend and 
benefactor, Charles W. Wynn, when Lord Gren- 
0i\\e went out of office ; and I have the laureate- 
ship. The salary of the latter was immediately 
appropriated, as far as it went, to a life insur- 
ance for d£3000. This, with an earlier insur- 
ance for <£l000, is the whole provision that I 
have made for my family ; and what remains of 
the pension after the annual payments are made, 
is the whole of my certain income. All beyond 
must be derived from my own industry. Writ- 
ing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have 
gained ; for, having always something better in 
view, and therefore never having courted popu- 
larity, nor written for the mere sake of gain, it 
has not been possible for me to lay by any thing. 
Last year, for the first time in my life, I was 
provided with a year's expenditure beforehand. 
This exposition might suffice to show how ut- 
terly unbecoming and unwise it would be to 
accept the rank which, so greatly to my honor, 
you have solicited for me, and which his maj- 
esty would so graciously have conferred. But 
the tone of your letter encourages me to say 
more. 

" My life insurances have increased in value. 
With these, the produce of my library, my pa- 
pers, and a posthumous edition of my works, 
there will probably be c£l 2,000 for my family 
at my decease. Good fortune, with great exer- 
tions on the part of my surviving friends, might 
possibly extend this to 6615,000, beyond which 
I do not dream of any further possibility. I had 
bequeathed the whole to my wife, to be divided 
ultimately between our four children ; and hav- 
ing thus provided for them, no man could have 
been more contented with his lot, nor more thank- 
ful to that Providence on whose especial blessing 
he knew that he was constantly, and, as it were, 
immediately dependent for his daily bread. 

" But the confidence which I used to feel in 
nryself is now failing. I was young, in health 
and heart, on my last birth-day, when I com- 
pleted my sixtieth year. Since then I have been 
shaken at the root. It has pleased God to visit 
me with the severest of all domestic afflictions, 
those alone excepted into which guilt enters. 
My wife, a true helpmate as ever man was bless- 
ed with, lost her senses a few months ago. She 
is now in a lunatic asylum ; and broken sleep 
and anxious thoughts, from which there is no es- 
cape in the night season, have made me feel how 
more than possible it is that a sudden stroke may 
deprive me of those faculties, by the exercise of 
which this poor family has hitherto been sup- 
ported. Even in the event of my death, their 
condition would, by our recent calamity, be ma- 
terially altered for the worse ; but if I were ren- 
Ll 



dercd helpless, all our available means would 
procure only a respite from actual distress. 

" Under these circumstances, your letter, sir. 
would in other times have encouraged me to ask 
for such an increase of pension as might relieve 
me from anxiety on this score. Now that lay 
sinecures are in fact abolished, there is no other 
way by which a man can be served, who has no 
profession wherein to be promoted, and whom 
any official situation would take from the only 
employment for which the studies and the hab- 
its of forty years have qualified him. This way, 
I am aware, is not now to be thought of, unless 
it were practicable as part of a plan for the en- 
couragement of literature ; but to such a plan 
perhaps these times might not be unfavorable. 

" The length of this communication would re- 
quire an apology, if its substance could have been 
compressed ; but on such an occasion it seemed 
a duty to say what I have said ; nor, indeed, 
should I deserve the kindness which you have 
expressed, if I did not explicitly declare how 
thankful I should be to profit by it. 
" I have the honor to remain, 

"With the sincerest respect, 

"Your most faithful and obliged servant, 

"RoBEltT SOUTHEY." 

Young as I then was, I could not, without 
tears, hear him read, with his deep and faltering 
voice, his wise refusal and touching expression of 
those feelings and fears he had never before given 
utterance to to any of his own family. And if 
any feelings of regret occasionally come over my 
mind that he did not accept the proffered honor, 
which, so acquired and so conferred, any man 
might justly be proud to have inherited, the re- 
membrance at what a time and under what cir- 
cumstances it was offered, and the feeling wfcat 
a mockery honors of that kind would have been 
to a family so afflicted, and, I may add, how un- 
suitable they would be to my own position and 
very straitened means, make me quickly feel how 
justly he judged and how prudently he acted. 

The next letter shows how thankfully he an- 
ticipated the possibility of such a result as soon 
afterward followed, from his communication in 
reply to Sir Robert Peel. 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

"Keswick, Feb. 16, 3835. 
" My dear Neville, 

You will see by the papers that a baronetcy has 
been offered to me. The offer came in a letter 
from Sir Robert Peel, and nothing could be more 
handsome than the way in which it was made. 
I may tell you (what must be known only to those 
from whom I have no secrets) he accompanied it 
with another letter, inquiring, in the kindest man- 
ner, if there was any way wherein he could serve 
me. I replied by an unreserved statement of 
my circumstances, showing how utterly unbe- 
coming and unwise it would be to accept of such, 
when I had absolutely nothing to bequeath with 
it. From the manner in which my answer was 



530 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



J&TAT. 61. 



received (which I know not from himself, but 
from two other authentic sources), I have reason 
to believe that, as soon as in his power, I may- 
receive some substantial benefit. 

" It was signally providential that I should 
have been enabled to meet the expenses which 
my domestic affliction has occasioned, and which, 
at any former time, would most seriously have 
embarrassed me ; and what a blessing it will be 
if Providence should now, by this means, relieve 
me from all the anxieties attendant upon a pre- 
carious income — anxieties which, as you know, 
I have not felt before, because I was confident in 
my own powers of exertion ; but how precarious 
these powers are, this recent visitation has made 
me feel too sensibly. 

" God bless you, my dear Neville ! I am in 
the midst of packing, and the arrangements which 
are necessary upon leaving home. It will be the 
first time that I ever left it without looking for- 
ward joyfully to the time of my return. But, by 
God's blessing, I shall soon become accustomed 
to a small family. If my hopes of a permanent 
income are realized, I shall be able, after another 
year, to devote myself wholly to my own great 
works, regardless of booksellers, and without im- 
prudence I shall be able to travel for health's 
sake whenever it may be expedient. In short, 
I shall be thankful for the past, make the best 
I can of the present, and look on to the future 
in humble, and yet, I trust, sure and certain 
hope. 

" Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Soxjthey." 

In the preceding letter my father speaks of 
being on the point of leaving home. This was 
for the purpose, first, of conveying me into Sus- 
sex, and then, if it should be found practicable, 
of removing my mother to Keswick. This proved 
to be the case. A brief extract from a letter 
written to me from Scarborough, where he re- 
mained for a short time after leaving York with 
his sad charge, will show the unvaried tone of 
his feelings under affliction. " The monotony of 
this week is a curious contrast to the excitement 
and movements of the preceding month. The 
first great change in your life has taken place 
during this interval, and I am about to enter upon 
not the least in mine — so different will my house- 
hold be from what it has formerly been, and so 
much will it be reduced. Your sisters will find 
themselves supported in the performance of their 
duties ; and after the emotion which our return 
must produce is over, their spirits, I doubt not, 
will rally. We shall always have enough to do, 
they as well as myself ; and this is certain, that 
they who are resigned to God's all-wise will, 
and endeavor to do their duty in whatever cir- 
cumstances they are placed, never can be thor- 
oughly unhappy — never, under any affliction, can 
find themselves without consolation and sup- 
port."* And again, after a few days, he writes 
to Mr. May : " The far greater number of incura- 



March 27, 1335. 



ble patients in the asylum are kept there that they 
may be out of the way of their respective families, 
though they are perfectly harmless. This may- 
be necessary in some cases, but where it is not 
necessary it seems to me that we are no more 
justified in thus ridding ourselves of a painful 
duty than we should be in sending a wife or a 
mother to die in an infirmary, that we might es- 
cape the pain and trouble of attending upon a 
death-bed."* 

Immediately after his return, when his hope! 
had been raised by a temporary improvement, 
he writes : "I had never any thought of leaving 
the girls with their mother, and transferring to 
them a duty which I am better able to bear. 
* . * * If any thing should be done for 
me (which it would be equally unwise to build 
upon, and unjust to doubt, though, to be sure, it 
is not easy to sit between the two stools) — if, I 
say, my circumstances should be rendered easy, 
I believe it would have a happy effect upon her 
who, for some twenty years, has been anxious 
over much upon that score ; though, in the morn- 
ing of life, when all my exertions and all her 
economy were required, and if either had failed 
in their respective duties we must have sunk, 
her spirits failed as little as mine."f 

Two days later the suspense was ended. 

Sir Robert Peel to R. Southey, Esq. 

"Whitehall, April 4, 1835. 
vt My dear Sir, 

" I have resolved to apply the miserable pit- 
tance at the disposal of the crown, on the Civil 
List Pension Fund, altogether to the reward and 
encouragement of literary exertions. I do this 
on public grounds ; and much more with the view 
of establishing a principle, than in the hope, with 
such limited means, of being enabled to confer 
any benefit upon those whom I shall name to the 
crown — worthy of the crown, or commensurate 
with their claims. 

" I have just had the satisfaction of attaching 
my name to a warrant which will add 6£300 an- 
nually to the amount of your existing pension. 
You will see in the position of public affairs a 
sufficient reason for my having done this without 
delay, and without previous communication with 
you. 

" I trust you can have no difficulty in sanction- 
ing what I have done with your consent, as I 
have acted on your own suggestion, and granted 
the pensions on a public principle — the recogni- 
tion of literary and scientific eminence as a pub- 
lic claim. The other persons to whom I have 
addressed myself on this subject are Professor 
Airey, of Cambridge, the first of living mathe- 
maticians and astronomers — the first of this coun- 
try, at least — Mrs. Somerville, Sharon Turner, 
and James Montgomery, of Sheffield. 
11 Believe me, my dear sir, 

11 Most faithfully yours, 

"Robert Peel." 



* March 30, 1835. 

+ To H. Taylor, Esq., April 2, 1835. 



^Etat. 61. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



531 



Robert Southey, Esq., to Sir Robert Peel. 

- Keswick, April 7, 1835. 
" My dear Sir, 

" You have conferred on me a substantial ben- 
efit, sufficient to relieve me from anxiety con- 
cerning the means of subsistence whenever my 
strength may fail, and equal to wishes that have 
always been kept within due bounds. Individu- 
ally, therefore, I am not less grateful to you than, 
as one of those who retain the old feelings and 
principles of Englishmen, I must ever be on pub- 
lic grounds. 

" Were it not from the rumors (which yet I 
hope are untrue) that your health has suffered, I 
should regard the present aspects, not, indeed, 
with complacency, but without uneasiness or 
alarm. While we have you to look to, I can not 
doubt that the nation will be saved from revolu- 
tion, and that, under Providence, you will be the 
means of saving it ; for, if you now retire from 
power, it can not be long before you will be borne 
in again upon the spring-tide of public opinion. 
Nothing in the course of public affairs has ever 
appeared to me more certain than this. 

" I have the honor to remain, Sir Robert, with 
the sincerest respect, 

" Your grateful and obedient servant, 

"Robert Southey."* 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 7, 1835. 
" My dear H. T., 

" To-day has brought Sir R. Peel's announce- 
ment that he has signed the warrant for an ad- 
ditional pension of d£300. This is just what I 
thought likely, what I think reasonable, and what, 
if I had been desired to name the sum for my- 
self, I should have fixed on, with this difference 
only, that I would have had the amount of both 
pensions without deductions.! 

" They give me, however, an income of <£375 
a year, subject to no other contingencies than 
those of the state, and I am contented and thank- 
ful. 

"God bless you! R. S." 

In the following letter my father alludes to a 
frequent interchange of letters between the ladies 
of the two households of Rydal Mount and Greta 
Hall, and this was the chief cause why so few 
letters have appeared in these volumes addressed 
to Mr. Wordsworth, which, if altogether unex- 
plained, might perhaps have led the reader to 
imagine the two families were not so intimate as 
in reality they were. 

Mr. Wordsworth himself, owing to the weak- 
ness in his eyes, which for a long time compelled 
him to write by dictation, was not a frequent 

* The editor, being in London in June last, solicited an 
interview with Sir Robert Peel for the purpose of asking 
his permission to publish this correspondence. With his 
usual kindness, a day was fixed ; but it was — the daij of 
kis death. Since then, permission has been kindly granted 
by the family. 

t This proved to be the case with respect to the latter 
pension, and he received out of a nominal income of £500, 
£444, to which the laureateship being added, made in all 
£534. 



correspondent, and my father, knowing that there 
was a constant communication going on, wrote 
only occasionally and briefly. There was also 
a very frequent personal intercourse and inter- 
change of visits, and many weeks rarely elapsed 
without a meeting between some members of the 
two families. 

To William Wordsworth, Esq. 

" Keswick, May 9, 1835. 
" My dear W., 

" Thank you for your new volume, which it 
is needless for me to praise. It will do good 
now and hereafter ; more and more as it shall be 
more and more widely read ; and there is no 
danger of its ever being laid on the shelf. I am 
glad to see that you have touched upon our white 
slavery, and glad that you have annexed such a 
postscript. 

" My good daughters, who, among their other 
virtues, have that of being good correspondents, 
send full accounts to Rydal of our proceedings. 
We shall lose hope so gradually, that if we lose 
it, we shall hardly be sensible when it is lost. 
There is, however, so great an improvement in 
their poor mother's state from what it was at any 
time during her abode in the Retreat, that we 
seem to have fair grounds of hope at present. It 
is quite certain that in bringing her home I have 
done what was best for her and for ourselves. 

" I wish the late administration had continued 
long enough in power to have provided as well 
for William* as it has done for me. It has placed 
me, as far as relates to the means of subsistence, 
at ease for the remainder of my days. Nor ought 
any man who devotes himself, as I have done, tc 
literary pursuits, to think himself ill recompensed 
with such an income as I shall henceforward re- 
ceive from the Treasury. My new pension is 
directed to be paid without deductions. 

" Bating what I suppose to be rheumatism in 
my right arm, and an ugly rash, I am in good 
health, and my spirits are equal to the demand 
upon them. To be relieved from suspense is the 
greatest of all reliefs. 

" I am busy upon the Admirals and Cowper. 
After supper I compare his letters to Mr. Unwin, 
which are all in my hands, with the printed books, 
and see what has been omitted, and correct the 
blunders that have crept into the text. This will 
be a long operation. Besides this, I have heaps 
of his letters to Lady Hesketh, and sundry others. 
One very interesting one shows the state of his 
mind as to his worldly prospects about a year 
before his malady broke out. Another says, that 
at the Temple he carefully went through Homer 
with one of his friends, and compared the orig- 
inal with Pope throughout, execrating the trans- 
lation as he went on. I shall collect a great 
deal from these materials, as well as add much 
to his printed letters. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

My father had ordered a copy of The Docto 



* Mr. Wordsworth's younger son. 



532 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF M tat. 61. 



to be sent to the Rev. John Miller, and the fol- 
owing letter was written in reply to one from 
him concerning it. In common with many oth- 
ers, it seems from the first he had believed my 
father to be the author. 

To the Rev. John Miller. 

" Keswick, July 20, 1835. 
" My dear Sir, 

" A copy of the ' unique Opus' came to me 
upon its first appearance, with my name printed 
in red letters on the back of the title-page, and 
' from the author' on the fly leaf, in a disguised 
hand; in which hand, through the disguise, I 
thought I could recognize that of my very inti- 
mate friend, the author of Philip van Artevelde. 
He, however, if my theory of the book be well 
founded, is too young a man to be the author. I 
take the preparatory postscript to have been writ- 
ten in sincerity and sadness 5 and if so, Henry 
Taylor was a boy at the time when (according 
to the statement there) the book was begun. 

" It may, I think, be inferred from every thing 
about the book and in it, that the author began 
it in his blithest years, with the intention of say- 
ing, under certain restrictions, quidlibet de quoli- 
bet, and making it a receptacle for his shreds and 
patches ; that, beginning in jest, he grew more 
and more in earnest as he proceeded ; that he 
dreamed over it and brooded over it — laid it aside 
for months and years, resumed it after long in- 
tervals, and more often latterly in thoughtfulness 
than in mirth ; fancied, perhaps, at last, that he 
could put into it more of his mind than could 
conveniently be produced in any other form ; and 
having supposed (as he tells us), when he began, 
that the whole of his yarn might be woven up 
in two volumes, got to the end of a third with- 
out appearing to have diminished the balls that 
were already spun and wound when the work 
was commenced in the loom, to say nothing of 
his bags of wool. 

" To the reasons which he has assigned for not 
choosing to make himself publicly known, this no 
doubt may be added, that the mask would not 
conceal him from those who knew him intimate- 
ly, nor from the few by whom he might wish to 
be known; but it would protect his face from 
dirt, or any thing worse that might be thrown 
at it. 

" I see in the work a little of Rabelais, but not 
much ; more of Tristram Shandy, somewhat of 
Burton, and perhaps more of Montaigne ; but 
methinks the quintum quid predominates. 

" I should be as much at a loss to know who 
is meant by RE VERNE as you have been, if I 
had not accidentally heard that the only person 
to whom the authorship is ascribed, upon any 
thing like authority, is the Rev. Erskine Neale. 
Mrs. Hodson (formerly Margaret Holford) being 
in the neighborhood of Doncaster, and desirous 
to hunt out, if she could, the history of the Opus, 
inquired about it there, and was assured by a 
oookseller that it was written by this gentleman, 
who had once resided in that place, but was then 
'ving at Hull. A clergyman whom she met 



there confirmed this, and there seemed to be nc 
doubt about it in Doncaster. It is plain, there- 
fore, that REVERNE designates this Great-ev- 
ery-where-else-unknown ; but I would not swear 
the book to him upon such evidence. 

" I can resolve another of your doubts. The 
concluding signature is not in the Garamna 
tongue, but in cryptography, or what might more 
properly be called, in Dovean language, comic- 
ography. If you look at it, and observe that k, 
e, w spell Q, you will find that when the nut is 
cracked it contains no kernel. 

" So much concerning a book which is a great 
favorite with my family, and has helped them 
sometimes to beguile what otherwise must have 
been hours of sorrow. Ten months have elapsed 
since our great affliction came upon us. * 
* * * * * This is the fortieth 
year of our marriage, and I know not whether 
the past or the present seems now to me most 
like a dream. 

" Amid these griefs, you will be glad to know 
that some substantial good has befallen us. One 
of the last acts of Sir Robert Peel's administra- 
tion was to give me a pension of c£300, in addi- 
tion to that of 66200 which I before possessed, 
the new one being (I am told) free from deduc- 
tions, and this will emancipate me from all book- 
sellers' work when my present engagements are 
completed. If my life be prolonged, I shall then 
apply myself to the histories of Portugal, of the 
Monastic Orders, and of English Literature, from 
the point where Warton breaks off. Do not con- 
clude that, in entertaining such designs at my age, 
I am immemor sepulchri ; for of the first at least 
three fourths of the labor has been performed, 
and I have been very many years preparing for 
all three, hoping the time might come when I 
could afford to make them my chief employment. 

"Farewell, my dear sir. Present my best 
wishes to your brother and sister, and believe me 
always yours with the sincerest respect and re- 
gard, Robert Southey." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Aug. 1, 1835. 
" My dear Friend, 
" # # # # # * # 

Since my last letter we have had a severe shock 
in the death of Miss Hutchinson, Mrs. Words- 
worth's sister, who was one of the dearest friends 
these poor girls had, and who was indeed to me 
like a sister. She had been with us in all our 
greatest afflictions. Her strength had been so 
much exhausted in nursing Miss Wordsworth the 
elder, and with anxiety for Dora, that after a 
rheumatic fever, from which she seemed to be 
recovered, she sunk at once, owing to mere 
weakness : an effusion on the brain was the im- 
mediate cause. Miss Wordsworth, whose death 
has been looked upon as likely any day for the 
last two years, still lives on. Her mind, at times, 
fails now. Dora, who is in the most precarious 
state herself, can not possibly amend while this 
anxiety continues, so that at this time Words- 
worth's is a more afflicted house than my own. 



JEtat. 62. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



533 



They used to be two of the happiest in the coun- 
try. But there is a time for all things, and we 
are supported by God's mercy. 

" Our health, thank God, continues good. * 
# * * If I could leave home with satis- 
faction, I should go either to Harrowgate or Shap 
(if Shap, which I hope, would do) for the sake 
of the waters. But my poor Edith likes none 
of us to leave her, and requests us not to do so. 
This, of course, would induce me to bear with 
any thing that can be borne without danger. 
Nor, indeed, should I willingly leave my daugh- 
ters, who stand in need of all that can be done to 
cheer them in the performance of their duty, and 
who are the better because they exert themselves 
to keep up their own spirits for my sake. 

' : You will see how unprofitable it would be 
for me, under these circumstances, to look be- 
yond the present any where — except to another 
world. In the common course of nature, it can 
not be long before all the events of this life will 
be of no further importance to me than as they 
shall have prepared me for a better. To look 
back over the nine-and-thirty years which have 
elapsed since you and I first met at Lisbon, seems 
but as yesterday. Wednesday, the 12th, com- 
pletes iiry sixty-first year ; and the likelihood is, 
that before a fourth part of the like interval has 
passed, you and I shall meet — where there will 
be no more sorrow nor parting. 

" God bless you, my dear old friend, and bring 
us thither in His own good time. My love to 
your dear daughters. 

l ' Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southky." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

"Keswick, Sept. 29, 1835. 
" My dear G., 

" Mr. Wyon has killed two birds with one shot. 
Seeing how perfectly satisfied every body here 
was with his medallion of me, he asked for an 
introduction to Wordsworth, which I was about 
to have offered him. Off he set in good spirits 
to Rydal, and, not finding Wordsworth there, 
was advised to follow him to Lowther. To Low- 
ther he went, and came back from thence de- 
lighted with his own success, and with the civil- 
ities of Lord and Lady Lonsdale, who desired 
that they might have both medallions. Nothing, 
I think, can be better than Wordsworth's, and he 
is equally pleased with mine. 

" He tells me of some unpublished poems of 
Cowper, which he is in hopes of obtaining for me. 

" To-morrow will be just twelve months since 
we set out on our miserable journey to York ! 
One whole year ! At our time of life there can 
not be many more to look on to at most. If her 
illusions are like dreams to her, the reality is like 
a dream to me, but one from which there is no 
awaking. 

" Yet, Grosvenor, I need not say that in doing 
all which can be done, there is a satisfaction 
which, if it be not worth all it costs, is worth 
more than any thing else. My spirits are as you 



might expect them to be — somewhat the better, 
because it is necessary that they should make the 
best appearances, and always equal to the demand 
upon them, for which I can never be sufficiently 
thankful. And what a blessing it is to be reliev- 
ed from all anxiety concerning my ways and 
means, just at the time when it must otherwise 
have made itself felt in a way which it had never 
done before. 

" I very much regret that you could not come 
here this summer. That ' more convenient sea- 
son,' for which you have so long waited, may 
now be put off till the Greek Kalends ; and, for 
aught I can see, any movement of mine to the 
South may be as distant. Here I shall remain, 
as long as it is best for these members of my 
family that I should remain here, and that is 
likely to be as long as our present circumstances 
continue. 

" Happily, while my faculties last, I shall never 
be in want of employment. At present I have 
rather more than is agreeable ; but when the 
pressure is over, it will never be renewed. Just 
now two presses are calling upon me, a third 
longing for me, and a fourth at which I cast a 
longing eye myself. The two which, like the 
daughter of the horse-leech, cry Give, give, are 
employed upon Cowper and the Admirals. The 
third is asking for the new edition of Wesley ; 
and the quantity of a good Quarterly Article 
must be written before that can be satisfied. 
Two, or, at the most, three chapters would give 
me my heart's desire with the other. But the 
Admirals will cover all my extraordinaries for 
two years to come largely ; and when the edition 
of Cowper is finished, I shall receive sweet re- 
muneration to the amount of 1000 guineas, which, 
however, will be well earned. 

" By-the-by, you are likely to possess Hender- 
son's life 5 and if so, I wish you would write me 
a letter about him, for he gave such a lift to 
Cowper by reciting John Gilpin, that a page or 
two to his honor might, with great propriety, be 
introduced. 

" I shall finish my first volume in the course 
of a few days ; the life will go far into the sec- 
ond. As much as possible, I have woven the 
materials into the narration, and made Cowper 
tell his own story ; but still the work is a web. 

" Will you believe that I had forgotten your 
direction, and that it took me five minutes to rec- 
ollect it ! Saville Row was running in my head , 
I danced for joy when I shouted EvprjKa. 

"R. S. 

" Sharpe recommended John Gilpin to Hen- 
derson. The last communication I ever had 
with him was a note confirmatory of this." 

To the Rev. John Warier. 

« Keswick, Oct. 1, 1835. 
"My dear W., 
" Poor Karl* is to start on Monday, the 12th, 
if no mishap intervene. # # * His 

sisters will miss him woefully. As for me. the 



* The German abbreviation of my name, which he com 
monly used. 



534 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JEtAT. 62. 



blossoms of my life are shed, and I stand like a 
tree in winter — well rooted, and, as yet, whole 
at the heart, and with its head unscathed. There 
is this difference, that the tree will put forth its 
foliage again. 

" Time, however, passes rapidly with us ; 
every day brings its employments, and my in- 
terest in them is Unabated. Last week I re- 
ceived a parcel sent by Quillinan from Porto, con- 
taining Gil Vincente's works, a present from one 
of the editors. My uncle would have rejoiced 
with me over it, but in losing him I lost the only 
person who could fully enter into that branch of 
my pursuits. The book is printed at Hamburg, 
from a copy of the first edition in the Gottenburg 
Library : I believe there is no other copy of that 
edition in Europe, and none of the only other one 
are in England, that other, moreover, having been 
expurgated by the Inquisition. More than any 
other writer Gil V. may be called the father of 
the Spanish drama. He was a man of most ex- 
traordinary genius, his satire so undaunted, that 
it accounts for the almost utter annihilation of 
his work. As connected with the history of Port- 
uguese manners and literature, this republication 
is the most important work that could have been 
undertaken. I sup upon him every night. 

" Grimshaw and his publishers, by taking the 
evangelical line, have removed the only uncom- 
fortable circumstance in my way, which was 
the care I must otherwise have taken (in con- 
sideration to the publishers) not to say any thing 
that would have been unpalatable to that party. 
# # # # # 

" The first fine day in next week, Bertha, 
Kate, Karl, and I are to accompany the Lord 
High Snab* to his estate, and there each of us 
is to plant a yew-tree, which planting I am to 
celebrate in a poem that is to live as long as the 
yew-trees themselves, live they ever so long. I 
need not tell you how happy the Lord High Snab 
is at the prospect of both the fete and the poem. 
It does one's heart good to see a man so thor- 
oughly happy who so thoroughly deserves to 
be so. * * * * * # 

" God bless you ! R. S." 

The following letter was written in reply to 
a communication from the Rev. T. G. Andrews, 
dean of Westminster, on the subject of Westmin- 
ster School, which at that time had greatly de- 
clined in numbers. Mr. Andrews, who took 
great interest in the matter, from "his family 
having been there for more than 200 years," had 
written, urging my father, as an Old Westmin- 
ster, to write some verses in commendation of the 
school, and with some allusion to the eminent men 
who had been educated there, which might be 
read on the anniversary dinner, and printed after- 
ward for circulation. 

* A playful appellation given to Dr. Bell's late amanu- 
ensis, Mr. Davies, who had lately purchased a small 
mountain farm near Keswick, called High Snab, whither 
for some years we made annual visits. The yew-trees 
died, and of the poem, which was to have been in the form 
of an epistle addressed to his eldest daughter, only a few 
ines were ever written. 



To the Rev. Gerrard Thomas Andrews. 

"Keswick, Nov. 12, 1835, 
" Dear Sir, 

" I can not but be much gratified by a letter 
like yours, and should be still more so did I think 
it likely, or even possible, that I could comply 
with a request that does me so much honor. 

" I know what poems ought to be which are 
designed for a public meeting — terse, pointed, 
and, above all, short. But I know, also, that I 
am given to prolixity, and that, if I could find 
leisure, or muster resolution to begin upon such 
a subject, it would lead me astray from the de- 
sired object. The musings of an old man might 
draw some quiet tears from a solitary reader, but 
at such an assembly they would be as much out 
of place as their author himself. 

* My time is more fully occupied than can be 
well conceived by any one who is not acquaint- 
ed with my habits of mind and the number of my 
pursuits. Moreover, I have outlived the inclina- 
tion for writing poetry. To be asked for an ep- 
itaph, or to contribute something to a lady's 
album, gives me much more annoyance than I 
ever felt at hearing Dr. Vincent say to me, 
' Twenty lines of Homer, and not go to breakfast. 7 

" Some causes of the decline at Westminster 
are of a permanent nature. Preparatory schools, 
which were not heard of fifty years ago, have 
annihilated the under school. King's College 
and the London University take away a large 
proportion of the day boys, who were very nu- 
merous in my time. Proprietary schools (an- 
other recent invention) are preferred by anxious 
parents ; and too many patrician ones, though 
the father were at Westminster himself, forsake 
a falling house, and send their boys to Harrow 
or to Eton. A school declines faster as soon as 
it is known to be declining. The religio loci, 
which with you is an hereditary feeling, and with 
me a strong one, can do little, I fear, to counter- 
act so many co-operating causes. 

" Your father was before my time. I should 
love and venerate his name, even did I know 
nothing more of him than his kindness to Her- 
bert Knowles.* 

"I was placed at Westminster in the under 
fourth, a few weeks before Dr. Smith left it, in 
1788. Botch Hayes was then usher of the fifth, 
and left it in disgust because he was not ap- 
pointed under-master. Most of my cotempora- 
ries have disappeared ; but in Charles W. W. 
Wynn and Grosvenor Bedford I have still two of 
my dearest friends ; and if I were beholden to 
the old school for nothing more than their friend- 
ship, I should have reason enough to bless the 
day on which I entered it. 
" Believe me, dear sir, 

" Yours with sincere respect, 

" Robert Southey." 

To C. C. Southey. 

" Keswick, Dec. 16, 1833. 

" My DEAR ClJTHBERT, 

" Twice I wished for you yesterday ; first at 



See ante, p. 343. 



JE.TAT. 62. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



535 



breakfast, because it was a beautiful morning, and 
my feet itched for a ten miles' walk. But you 
are in Sussex, Davies is in Shropshire, and I have 
not even a dog for a companion. 

" Secondly, you were wished for two hours 
afterward, when I had settled to my work, for 
then came the box of books from Ulverston. You 
would have enjoyed the unpacking. It is the 
best batch they ever sent home : thirty-six vol- 
umes, besides three for Bertha and five of Kate's. 

" I should like, if it were possible, always to 
communicate my pleasures, and keep my troubles 
to myself. Here was no one to admire the books 
with us. 

" You remember* when the miller invited me, 
to whom he had never spoken before, to rejoice 
with him over the pig that he had killed, the 
finest that he had ever fattened, and how he led 
me to the place where that which had ceased to 
be pig, and was not yet bacon, was hung up — 
scalded, exenterate, and hardly yet cold — by the 
hind feet. 

" Mr. Campbell'sf man Willy, in like manner, 
yesterday called on his acquaintance to admire a 
salmon which he had kippered the preceding 
night; the kitchen floor had been cleaned and 
swept, and the salmon was displayed on it, while 
Willy, half-seas over in the forenoon, pointed out 
to his master the beauty of the fish : he had 
never killed one in such condition before — it was 
^vorth seven shillings. 

" About six weeks hence I hope to rejoice 
both over Cowper and the Admirals, though not 
to take my leave of them then. But I hope to 
have a volume of each completed, and am now 
keeping on pari passu with both. The Evangel- 
ical Magazine has outdone its usual outdoings 
in abusing the first volume. They say I shall 
be known to posterity as embalmed in Lord By- 
ron's verse for an incarnate lie. The whole ar- 
ticle is in this strain, and it has roused Cradock's 
indignation as much as it has amused me ; for 
it is written just as I should wish an enemy to 
write. God bless you, my dear boy ! 

"R.S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 7, 1836. 
" My dear Grosvenor, 
" The best thing I can wish for myself, on the 
commencement of a new year (among those 
things which 'stand to feasible'), is, that it may 
not pass away without your making a visit to 
Keswick. Other hope for the year I have none, 
and not much (to confess the truth) of this. Time, 
however, passes rapidly enough ; and good part 
of it, by help of employment, in a sort of world 
of my own, wherein I seem abstracted from every 
thing except what occupies my immediate atten- 
tion. The most painful seasons are when I lie 
down at night and when I awake in the morning. 
But my health continues good, and my spirits 



* I remember it very well, and how my father rejoiced 
the man's heart by admiring the goodly sight. 

t A gentleman resident at .Keswick, with whom he was 
very intimate. 



better than I could possibly have expected, had 
our present circumstances been foreseen. * * 
It is remarkable that, of all employments at this 
time, the Life of Cowper should be that on which 
I am engaged. Enough of this. God bless vou ' 

"R. S." 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, Jan. 30, 1836. 
" My dear Friend, 

"Your letter arrived this morning. I sent 
off by this day's post the last portion of manu- 
script for my second volume ; and having so done, 
I lay aside all thoughts of Cowper till Monday 
morning, giving myself thus what may be called 
a quarter's holiday this evening. Methinks time 
has taken from me nothing which is so much to 
be regretted as leisure, or rather nothing of which 
I should so certainly, as well as allowably, wish 
to be possessed again. However, I live in hope 
of working my way to it. When Cowper and 
the Admirals are off my hands, I will engage in 
nothing that does not leave me master of my 
own time. It will be still too little for what I 
once hoped to perform. 

" Cradock has advertised for the 13th ; so on 
Monday, the 1 5th, your copy ought to be in Har- 
ley Street. The Life will extend to half a vol- 
ume more, and with it my hurry ends, but not 
my work. 

" I am very glad to hear that you are reading 
Dr. Thomas Jackson, an author with whom, more 
almost than any other, one might be contented 
in a prison. There is hardly any thing in his 
works which I wished away, except one shock- 
ing passage about the Jews. For knowledge, 
and sagacity, and right-mindedness, I think he 
has never been surpassed. You will be much 
pleased, also, with Knox's Remains, and his cor- 
respondence with Bishop Jebb. 

" There is no change for the better in our do- 
mestic circumstances. All hope is extinguished, 
while anxiety remains unabated, so sudden are 
the transitions of this awful malady. I can never 
be sufficiently thankful that my means of support 
are no longer precarious, as they were twelve 
months ago. The fear of being disabled, which 
I never felt before, might too probably have 
brought on the evil which it apprehended, when 
my life seemed to be of more consequence to my 
family than at any former time, and my exer- 
tions more called for. Thank God, Sir Robert 
Peel set me at ease on that score. Would to 
God that you were relieved from your cares in 
like manner ! We have both cause to return 
thanks for the happiness that we have enjoyed, 
and for the consolations that are left us. If the 
last stage of our journey should prove the most 
uneasy, it will be the shortest. It is just forty 
years since we met in another country ; most 
probably, before a fourth part of the time has 
elapsed, we shall meet in another state of exist- 
ence. 

" We have both great comfort in our children. 
Perhaps one reason why women bear affliction 
(as I think they generally do) better than men 



536 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 62 



is, because they make no attempt to fly from the 
sense of it, but betake themselves patiently to 
the duties, however painful, which they are called 
upon to perform. It is the old emblem of the 
reed and the oak — they bend, and therefore they 
are not broken ; and then comes peace of mind, 
which is the fruit of resignation. 

" Secluded as we now are from society, my 
daughters find sufficient variety of employment. 
They transcribe a good deal for me : indeed, 
whatever I want extracted of any length from 
books — most of my notes. One room is almost 
fitted up with books of their binding : I call it 
the Cottonian library ; no patch- work quilt was 
ever more diversified. They have just now at- 
tired two hundred volumes in this fashion. Their 
pleasure, indeed, in seeing the books in order, is 
not less than my own ; and, indeed, the greater 
part of them are now in such order, that they are 
the pride of my eye as well as the joy of my 
heart. 

" On Monday I begin to give my mornings 
again to the Admirals, that is, as many mornings 
as my ever-growing business of letter-writing 
may leave leisure for — letters in half of which I 
have no concern, and in the other half no pleas- 
ure. The fourth volume will contain the lives 
of Essex, Raleigh, Sir William Monson, Blake, 
and Monk. Then, not to extend unreasonably 
a work which was not intended by the publisher 
at first for more than two volumes, I shall drop 
the biography, and wind up in one volume more, 
with the Naval History from the Revolution, in 
continuous narrative. A good pretext for this 
is, that the age of naval enterprise and adventure, 
and, consequently, of personal interest, was past, 
and the interest thenceforth becomes political ; 
events are regarded, not with reference to the 
principal actors, as in Drake's time, but to their 
bearings upon the national affairs. I shall be 
glad when this work is completed, because, 
though of all my books I have been best paid for 
it, it is that which I have taken the least interest 
in composing, and which any one who would have 
bestowed equal diligence upon it might have ex- 
ecuted quite as well. 

" The snow has confined me three days to the 
house. It is now rapidly thawing, to my com- 
fort, for I feel as if the machine wanted that sort 
of winding up which is given to it by daily ex- 
ercise. God bless you, my dear old friend ! 
May I live to write a great many more books ; 
and may you and your daughters live, and read, 
and like them all. No small part of the pleas- 
ure which I take in writing arises from thinking 
how often the work in which I am engaged will 
make me present, in a certain sense, with friends 
who are far away. 

"Yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To Edward Moxon, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 2, 1836. 
" My dear Sir, 
" I have been too closely engaged in clearing 



off the second volume of Cowper to reply to youi 
inquiries concerning poor Lamb sooner. His ac- 
quaintance with Coleridge began at Christ's Hos- 
pital ; Lamb was some two years, I think, his 
junior. Whether he was ever one of the Gre- 
cians there, might be ascertained, I suppose, by 
inquiring. My own impression is, that he was 
not. Coleridge introduced me to him in the win- 
ter of 1794-5, and to George Dyer also, from 
whom, if his memory has not failed, you might 
probably learn more of Lamb's early history than 
from any other person. Lloyd, Wordsworth, and 
Hazlitt became known to him through their con- 
nection with Coleridge. 

" When I saw the family (one evening only, 
and at that time), they were lodging somewhere 
near Lincoln's Inn, on the western side (I forget 
the street), and were evidently in uncomfortable 
circumstances. The father and mother were 
both living ; and I have some dim recollection of 
the latter's invalid appearance. The father's 
senses had failed him before that time. He pub- 
lished some poems in quarto. Lamb showed me 
once an imperfect copy : the Sparrow's Wed- 
ding was the title of the longest piece, and this 
was the author's favorite ; he liked, in his dotage, 
to hear Charles read it. 

"His most familiar friend, when I first saw 
him, was White, who held some office at Christ's 
Hospital, and continued intimate with him as long 
as he lived. You know what Elia says of him. 
He and Lamb were joint authors of the Original 
Letters of Falstaff. Lamb, I believe, first ap- 
peared as an author in the second edition of Cole- 
ridge's Poems (Bristol, 1797), and, secondly, in 
the little volume of blank verse with Lloyd (1798). 
Lamb, Lloyd, and White were inseparable in 
1798 ; the two latter at one time lodged togeth- 
er, though no two men could be imagined more 
unlike each other. Lloyd had no drollery in his 
nature ; White seemed to have nothing else. 
You will easily understand how Lamb could 
sympathize with both. 

" Lloyd, who used to form sudden friendships, 
was all but a stranger to me, when unexpectedly 
he brought Lamb down to visit me at a little vil- 
lage (Burton) near Christ Church, in Hamp- 
shire, where I was lodging in a very humble cot- 
tage. This was in the summer of 1797, and 
then, or in the following year, my correspondence 
with Lamb began. I saw more of him in 1802 
than at any other time, for I was then six months 
resident in London. His visit to this county was 
before I came to it ; it must have been either in 
that or the following year : it was to Lloyd and 
to Coleridge. 

" I had forgotten one of his school-fellows, who 
is still living — C. V. Le Grice, a clergyman at 
or near Penzance. From him you might learn 
something of his boyhood. 

" Cottle has a good likeness of Lamb, in chalk, 
taken by an artist named Robert Hancock, about 
the year 1798. It looks older than Lamb was 
at that time ; but he was old-looking. 

" Coleridge introduced him to Godwin, shortly 
after the first number of the Anti-Jacobin Mag- 



M-lat. 62. 



ROBERT SOL THEY. 



537 



a zinc and Review was published, with a carica- 
ture of Gillray's, in which Coleridge and I were 
introduced with asses' heads, and Lloyd and Lamb 
as # toad and frog. Lamb got warmed with what- 
ever was on the table, became disputatious, and 
said things to Godwin which made him quietly 
say, ' Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog ?' 
Mrs. Coleridge will remember the scene, w T hich 
was to her sufficiently uncomfortable. But the 
next morning S. T. C. called on Lamb, and found 
Godwin breakfasting with him, from which time 
their intimacy began. 

" His angry letter to me in the Magazine arose 
out of a notion that an expression of mine in the 
Quarterly Review would hurt the sale of Elia : 
some one, no doubt, had said that it would. I 
meant to serve the book, and very w T ell remem- 
ber how the offense happened. I had written 
that it wanted nothing to render it altogether de- 
lightful but a saner religious feeling. This would 
have been the proper word if any other person 
had written the book. Feeling its extreme un- 
fitness as soon as it was written, I altered it im- 
mediately for the first w T ord which came into my 
head, intending to remodel the sentence when it 
should come to me in the proof; and that proof 
never came. There can be no objection to your 
printing all that passed upon the occasion, be- 
ginning with the passage in the Quarterly Re- 
view, and giving his letter. 

"I have heard Coleridge say that, in a fit of 
derangement, Lamb fancied himself to be young 
Norval. He told me this in relation to one of 
his poems. 

" If you print my lines to him upon his Album 
Verses, I will send you a corrected copy. You 
received his letters, I trust, which Cuthbert took 
with him to town in October. I wish they had 
been more, and wish, also, that I had more to 
tell you concerning him, and what I have told 
were of more value. But it is from such frag- 
ments of recollection, and such imperfeot notices, 
that the materials for biography must, for the 
most part, be collected. 

"Yours very truly, 

"Robert Southey." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, March 12, 1836. 
" My dear H. T., 
" When I went to Lisbon the second time (in 
1800), it was for my health. An illness (the 
only one I ever had) had weakened me, and I 
was liable to sudden pulsations of the heart, 
which seemed to indicate some organic derange- 
ment. It was inferred, or rather ascertained, 
that they arose from nervous excitability, be- 
cause the moment I apprehended them they re- 
turned ; and this conclusion was confirmed by a 
circumstance which has led me to this relation. 
Going out of our sitting-room one morning, I 
happened to hear the maid draw the bed-cur- 
tains, preparatory to making the bed in the cham- 
ber opposite. From that time, while I remained 
in those lodgings, I never went out of the room 
in the early part of the day without hearing the 



same sound distinctly, though it came from with- 
in instead of without. 

" Now let me tell you a more curious circum- 
stance, of which I made a memorandum as soon 
as I returned. About two months ago I was 
going to the lake, and reading as I went. It 
was a bright, frosty day, and my Scotch bonnet 
(in which I appear like a Gaberlunzie man) af- 
forded no shelter to the eyes, but, having been 
used to wear it, I was not inconvenienced by the 
light. Just on the rising ground, where the 
view of the lake opens, I suppose the sun came 
more directly upon my eyelids, but the page 
which I was reading appeared to be printed in 
red letters. It happened ft) be a page in which 
one book of a Latin poem ended and another be- 
gan : the heading of this latter was, of course, in 
considerably larger types ; these changed their 
color first, and became red as blood ; the whole 
page presently became so, and the opposite page 
presented a confused intermixture of red and 
black types when I glanced on it, but, fixing my 
eyes, the whole became rubric also, though there 
was nothing then so vivid as the large letters of 
the heading. The appearance passed away as 
my position to the sun was altered. 

" This phenomenon never occurred to me be- 
fore, but I observed it particularly, because, if 
my memory does not deceive me, I have more 
than once read of the same thing, and always as 
of something supernatural in the history of a 
Romish saint, or a fanatic of some other denom- 
ination. According to the mood of mind in which 
it occurred, it would be taken for a manifesta- 
tion of grace cr of wrath. 

ft.'.**'.*'.--**-* 



" God bless you ! 



R.S.' 



To Herbert Hill, Esq. 

" Keswick, April 2, 1836. 
" My dear Herbert, 

« 4 * # * # # * 

James II. 's conduct in obtruding a Romish presi- 
dent upon Magdalen was not worse than that of 
the present ministry in appointing Dr. Hampden 
to the professorship of divinity. If they had giv- 
en him any other preferment, even a bishopric, it 
would have been only one proof among many that 
it is part of their policy to promote men of loose 
opinions ; but to place him in the office which he 
now holds was an intentional insult to the Uni- 
versity. In no way could the Whigs expect so 
materially to injure the Church as by planting 
Germanized professors in our schools of divinity. 
Thank God, there is too much sound learning in 
the land for them to succeed in this. Not the 
least remarkable of the many parallels between 
these times and those of Charles I. is to be found 
in the state of the clergy : from the time of the 
Reformation they had never been in so good a 
state as when the Church was for a while over- 
thrown ; and since the Restoration they have 
never been in so good a state as at present. I 
mean, that there has never been so great a pro- 
portion of learned and diligent able men : men 
whose lives are conformable to their profession. 



538 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mr at. 62 



who are able to defend the truth, and who would 
not shrink from any thing which they may be 
called upon to suffer for its sake. 

" Have you read ' Subscription no Bondage ?' 
Some one (I forget who) sent it me last year. 
Maurice* is said to be the author's name 5 an 
abler treatise I have never read. 

" I am glad that you are studying German, 
and that you sometimes write verses, not only as 
a wholesome exercise for thoughts and feelings 
which hardly find utterance in any other form, 
but also because if you ever become a prose writ- 
er, you will find the great advantage of having 
written poetry. No poet ever becomes a man- 
nerist in prose, nor falls into those tricks of style 
which show that the writer is always laboring to 
produce effect. 

" The third volume of Cowper will be pub- 
lished next week. The remaining part of the 
Life extends far into it. The dealers in weekly 
and monthly criticism appear to -think it as much 
a matter of course that I am now to be beplas- 
tered with praise as they once did that I was to 
be bespattered with abuse. On both occasions 
I have often remembered what the Moravian said 
to Wesley : Mi f rater, non adhceret vestibus. To 
make amends^ however, the Evangelical party 
have declared war against me, and I am told that 
in some places as much zeal is manifested in rec- 
ommending Grimshawe's edition as .n canvassing 
for a vacant lectureship. My main labor is over, 
but a good deal yet remains to be done in bio- 
graphical notices, some of which will probably 
form a supplementary volume. As for materials, 
I have been fed by the ravens. The information 
which I have come upon unexpectedly, or which 
has been supplied to me from various quarters to 
which no application was made, because I did not 
know that such documents existed, has been sur- 
prisingly great. 

" It would have amused me much if you and 
Edward had exhibited your skill in special plead- 
ing upon the delectable book ' The Doctor,' as 
you intended. To convince a man against his 
will, you know, is no easy matter ; and if you 
substitute knowledge for will, what must it be 
then ? That the writer has at first or second 
hand picked up some things from me, is plain 
enough ; if it be at first hand, there is but one 
man upon whom my suspicion could l'est, and he 
is very capable of having written it, which is no 
light praise. He possesses all the talents that 
the book displays, but not the multifarious sort of 
knowledge, nor are the opinions altogether such 
as he would be likely to express. So if it be his, 
he must have had assistance, and must also have 
hung out false lights. However, some friends of 
Henry Taylor's tell him that Dr. Bowring is the 
author ; not the Dr. Bowring who is now M.P., 
who has had a finger in every revolutionary pie 
for the last fifteen years (and ought, indeed, to 
be denoted as dealer in revolutions and Greek 
scrip), but a retired practitioner of that name at 
Doncaster. H. Taylor's informants know every 

* Rev. F. Maurice, Professor at King's College, London 



thing about him. The tedious chapters about 
Doncaster give some probability to this state- 
ment. You have it, however, as it came to me, 
for what it is worth ; and the next volume, per 
haps, if next there should be, may throw more 
light upon the authorship. 

" God bless you, my dear Herbert ! 

"R. S" 

To John May, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 13, 1836. 
"My dear Friend, 
" Time passes on so rapidly with me in the 
regular course of constant occupation, that it 
seems only a few days since that letter arrived 
which yours of this morning reminds me is two 
months old. * * * 

" There is no change in my poor Edith, nor is 
there likely to be any. Thank God, there is no 
suffering, not even so much as in a dream (of 
this I am fully convinced), and her bodily health 
is better than it had been for very many years. 
# # # * # 

" Only one of my daughters is with me at 
present. Kate has been prevailed on to go to 
Rydal, and if it be possible to remove poor Dora 
Wordsworth to the coast (which is her only 
chance of recovery), she will go with her. The 
loss of Miss Hutchinson, which was the greatest 
we could have sustained out of our own nearest 
kin, has drawn the bonds of affection closer be- 
tween dear Dora and my daughters, who were 
almost equally dear to the dead. 

" You will not wonder that the Life of Cowper 
was a subject better suited to my own state of 
mind at this time than almost any other could 
have been. It was something like relief to have 
thoughts, from which it is not possible that I could 
escape, diverted as it were from home. There 
are passages which I dare say you will have per- 
ceived would not have been written unless I had 
had something more than a theoretical knowledge 
of this most awful of all maladies. * * 

"I shall be very glad to see John Coleridge. 
The bishop sent me his kind remembrances from 
Demerara the other day. You ask if there be 
any likelihood of seeing me in town ? Not at 
present ; nor is it possible for me to say when it 
may be fitting for me to leave home. My pres- 
ence, though it may be little comfort to my poor 
wife, is a very great one to my daughters ; my 
spirits help to keep up theirs, and with what the y 
have to do for me in the way of transcribing, and 
the arrival of letters and packets which would 
cease during my absence, they would feel a great 
blank were they left to themselves: In her quiet- 
er moods, too, my poor Edith shows a feeling to- 
ward me, the last, perhaps, which will be utterly 
extirpated. How often am I reminded of my own 
lines, and made to feel what a woeful thing it i% 

1 When the poor flesh surviving, doth entomb 
The reasonable soul.' 

" You and I, my dear friend, have been afflict- 
ed in different ways, and both heavily. But the 



JEtat. 63. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



539 



time is not far distant when we shall have all 
losses restored, and understand that the ways of 
Providence are always merciful to those who put 
their trust in it. * # * * 

" Bedford and his cousin, Miss Page, are com- 
ing to lodge at the foot of the garden in the 
course of a fortnight. I have known him from 
the year 1788; we became familiar in 1790, 
intimate in 1791, and have kept up a constant 
and most intimate intercourse ever since. So 
you may suppose how much I shall enjoy his so- 
ciety. Mary Page, too, is the oldest of my fe- 
male friends. 

" God bless you, my dear old friend ! and be- 
lieve me always 

" Yours most affectionately, 

"Robert Southey." 

In consequence of the presence of these friends, 
whose coming my father anticipates at the close 
of the last letter, this summer passed more cheer- 
fully than those which for some time had preced- 
ed it ; nor, indeed, could any persons have more 
thoroughly enjoyed each other's society. Mr. 
Bedford, though afflicted with almost complete 
deafness, as well as other infirmities, had lost 
none of his natural cheerfulness and relish for odd 
humor and boyish jokes ; and my father was nev- 
er weary of talking into his trumpet. They had, 
indeed, both preserved up to so late a period of 
life more natural vivacity and elasticity of mind 
than falls to the lot of most persons even in youth, 
and both regarded it as a signal blessing that they 
had done so. 

The cheerfulness of the summer was further 
increased by the circumstance of another old 
"Westminster" (the Rev. Edward Levett, late 
of Hampstead) passing some months at Keswick; 
and although they had rarely met since their boy- 
ish days, this tie quickly brought them into inti- 
macy. 

Soon after their departure, my father was sur- 
prised by a subpoena to appear as a witness at 
the assizes at Lancaster, in what was commonly 
called " The great Will Case," involving a prop- 
erty called the Hornby Castle Estate. The late 
possessor, whose name was Marsden, was pre- 
sumed to have been a person of weak intellect, 
under the control of his steward, to whose son 
he had bequeathed the estate, worth from c£6000 
to c£7000 a year. Admiral Tatham, the heir- 
at-law, challenged Marsden's competency to 
make a will ; and one of the points upon which 
his counsel (Mr., now Sir Cresswell Cresswell) 
relied was the internal evidence contained in a 
series of letters purporting to be the production 
of the testator. 

For the purpose of giving opinion upon these 
letters, several literary men had been subpoenaed 
— Dr. Lingard, the historian (who had been a 
witness on a former trial, as knowing the testa- 
tor personally), Mr. Wordsworth, my father, Dr. 
Shelton Mackenzie, and others. The following 
letter shows it was decided not to examine these 
witnesses, and Mr. Wordsworth was the only one 
sworn. 



To H. Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Sept. 10, 133G. 
" My dear H. T., 

" The papers may have told you that Words- 
worth's evidence was not received. The point 
at issue was, whether certain letters produced in 
the testator's hand-writing could all be composed 
by the same person, or whether they did not im- 
ply such a difference of intellect, and contain 
such different peculiarities of spelling and style, 
as to be proofs of a long-laid scheme for defraud- 
ing the heir-at-law. 

" The argument whether this course of in- 
quiry should be gone into was raised as soon as 
W. had been sworn in the box, and was yielded 
by the plaintiff's counsel (Cresswell) — less, I 
think, in deference to the advice of the judge, 
than because he saw that, in the event of a fa- 
vorable verdict, Pollock was preparing to make 
it the plea for another trial. 

" I wish you could have seen us at a board of 
law the preceding evening; and how Pollock 
was taken aback when he heard Wordsworth 
called into the box ; and how well he recovered, 
and skillfully took his ground, though every step 
of his argument was sophistical. Wordsworth 
is now a ' Sworn Critic, and Appraiser of Com- 
position ;' and he has the whole honor to him- 
self — an honor, I believe, of which there is no 
other example in literary history. 

" We went on Tuesday, Quillinan accompany- 
ing us. On Wednesday we returned to Rydal, 
where I slept that night, and the next morning 
I walked home without the slightest fatigue. 
But when Wordsworth marvels that I can do 
this, and says that I must be very strong to un- 
dertake such a march, it shows that he is an old 
man, and makes me conscious that I am on the 
list of the elders. 

" The journey has been useful as an experi- 
ment ; and my plans are now laid for a long cir- 
cuit. About the middle of October, as soon as 
the volume of Admirals can be finished — upon 
which I go doggedly to work from this day — I 
hope to start with Cuthbert for the West of En- 
gland. We shall halt in Shropshire, and per- 
haps in Warwickshire, on the way to Bristol, 
thence to Taunton, Devonshire, and the Land's 
End. I shall show him all the scenes of my 
childhood and youth, and the few old friends who 
are left ; convey him to Tarring, and then come 
to London for two or three weeks, taking up my 
abode there with Rickman. God bless you ! 

U R. S." 

Dr. Shelton Mackenzie has kindly favored me 
with his recollections of this meeting with my fa- 
ther, of great part of which I avail myself here. 

"At our meeting on the preceding evening, 
Mr. Wordsworth gave his opinion of the letters 
to this effect, judging from external as well as 
internal evidence, that though they came from 
one hand, they did not emanate from one and the 
same mind; that a man commencing to write 
letters might do so very badly, but as he ad- 
vanced in life, particularly if, like Marsden, he 



540 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ^tat. 63. 



wrote many letters, he would probably improve 
in style ; such improvement being constant, and 
not capricious. That is, if he gradually learned 
to spell and write properly, he would not fall 
back at intervals into his original errors of com- 
position and spelling — that if once he had got out 
of his ignorance, he could not fall back into it, 
except by design — that the human mind advanc- 
es, but can not recede, unless warped by insan- 
ity or weakened by disease. The conclusion ar- 
rived at, which facts afterward proved, was, that 
the inequality in the letters arose from their be- 
ing composed by different persons, some ignorant 
and some well informed, while another person 
always copied them fairly for the post. 

" This is the sum of what Mr. Wordsworth at 
great length and very elaborately declared as 
the result he had arrived at. It was thought 
piled on thought, clear investigation, careful anal- 
ysis, and accumulative reasoning. 

" While Wordsworth was speaking, I noticed 
that Southe)' listened with great attention. Once 
or twice Wordsworth referred to him for his co- 
incidence in an argument, and Southey very la- 
conically assented. Dr. Lingard's opinion was 
already on record, and my friend and myself very 
briefly stated ours to be precisely the same as 
Wordsworth's. The next day Wordsworth was 
put into the witness-box, was sworn, and his ex- 
amination had commenced, in fulfillment of Mr. 
Cresswell's promise to the jury that they should 
hear the opinion of eminent literary characters as 
to the compound authorship of Marsden's letters. 
But Sir F. Pollock, the leader on the other side, 
objected to such evidence, alleging that they 
might as well examine a batch of Edinburgh re- 
viewers ; and that it was substituting speculative 
opinion for actual fact, besides taking from the 
jury the power of judgment founded upon opin- 
ion. After a long argument, it was decided 
that this evidence was inadmissible ; but, as the 
verdict eventually showed, the jury evidently 
thought that there was good reason why such 
evidence was set aside. 

" While a friend went for a magistrate's or- 
der for us to see the Castle (which is used as 
the prison), Southey, Wordsworth, and myself 
had a brisk conversation. 

" From the spot on which we stood (a sort of 
terrace) there was a fine view of the Irish sea, 
the country around Lancaster, and to the north 
the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, 
which last were eagerly pointed out by Words- 
worth. I hazarded the remark that an Amer- 
ican had compared these mountains with some 
in the vicinity of his own Hudson River, and this 
led to a conversation about America. ' I always 
lamented,' said Southey, ' that GifFord's anti- 
American feeling should be so prominent in the 
Quarterly ; but he was obstinate, and the more 
I remonstrated the more he persevered.' We 
spoke of American reprints of English works, 
and Wordsworth said it was wonderful what an 
interest they took in our literature — ' it was the 
yearning of the child for the parent ;' while 
Southey remarked, with a smile, ' Rather the 



yearning of the robber for his booty : they re- 
print English works, because it pays them bet- 
ter than to buy native copyrights ; and until men 
are paid, and paid well for writing, depend on it 
that writing well must be an exception rather 
than the rule.' 

" We now went to visit Lancaster Castle, 
which need not here be described. After enjoy- 
ing the fine view from the Keep, we went to see 
the Penitentiary, within the castle. Dr. Lingard 
had left us before this, and the ball of conversa- 
tion was kept up between Wordsworth, Southey, 
and myself. The principal subject was Ameri- 
can literature, with which, at that time, I was pret- 
ty well acquainted. Wordsworth could scarcely 
believe that of a three volume work, published 
here at a guinea and a half, the reprint was usu- 
ally sold in New York for two shillings — in later 
days the price has been as low as sixpence, the 
great sale making a fraction of profit worth look- 
ing for. Wordsworth expressed a strong desire 
to obtain an American reprint of any of Southey's 
works ; but Mr. Southey appeared quite indiffer- 
ent. 'I should be glad to see them,' said he. ' if 
the rogues would only give me a tithe of what the 
work of my brains may yield to them.' 

"Returning to the terrace leading to the 
courts, Wordsworth and Mr. Quillinan went into 
the town, while Southey and myself walked up 
and down for about half an hour. 'I am glad,' 
said he, ' that they would not take our evidence. 
It was nothing but matter of opinion, and if 
twenty men of letters swore one way on one day, 
twenty more would swear the reverse on the next 
day, and with equal conscientiousness.' I said 
that I suspected the offering such evidence was 
enough, as its rejection made the jury suspect 
there was a cause for not hearing it. 'Like 
enough,' said he, laughing heartily, ' that would 
be a true lawyer's trick !' 

" Southey then inquired whether some lines on 
the death of a child, which had gone the round 
of the newspapers shortly before, were not my 
composition. Learning that they were, he said, 
' The solace of song certainly does mitigate the 
sufferings of the wounded spirit. I have suffered 
deeply, and I found a comfort in easing my mind 
through poetry, even though much of what I 
wrote at such times I have not let the world see. 
It is a bitter cup,' added, he, 'but we can not ex- 
pect the ties of kindred to remain forever. One 
by one, as we live on, our friends and our rela- 
tions drop through the broken arches of the bridge 
of life.' 

" He spoke freely of his cotemporaries. Lin- 
gard he praised for true earnestness, and a desire 
to state the facts. .Another living historian he 
praised as ' one of the most learned men in Eu- 
rope.' He regretted that Robert Montgomery 
should have been as much overpraised at first as 
he was latterly abused. He eulogized the genius 
of Mary Ann Browne, then living at Liverpool, 
and said that he thought she had as much ability 
as Mrs. Hemans, with less mannerism. He said 
that the Corn-Law Rhymer was a sort of pupil 
of his own : ' he sent me his verses when he was 



jEtat. 63. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



541 



a youth ; I pointed out their defects, and he was 
not above trying to amend and remove them. 
There are parts of Elliott's poems,' added he, 
'not surpassed in the language.' 

" We spoke of Wordsworth, and he said, 'A 
clear half of what he has written will remain. 
Who can say how much of the rest of us will 
survive ? Scott, for example ; no one thinks of 
his poetry now.' I ventured to say that in Scott's 
case, as in his own, the excellence of their prose 
had thrown their poetry into the shade. ' That 
is a flattering apology,' said he ; ' but our prose 
may, from its very quantity, if from no other 
cause, have crowded down our poetry. One 
thing I do know; to write poetry is the best 
preparation for writing prose. The verse-maker 
gets the habit of weighing the meanings and 
qualities of words, until he comes to know, as if 
by intuition, what particular word will best fit 
into the sentence. People talk of my style ! I 
have only endeavored to write plain English, and 
to put my thoughts into language which every 
one can understand.' He mentioned Cobbett as 
one of the best writers of English we had yet 
possessed. ' He has a Saxon basis, derived from 
his education in the heart of an English county, 
where the Saxon roots occur once or twice in 
every sentence uttered by the peasantry. Cob- 
bett,' he added, ' has done and said many foolish 
things ; but he writes English such as every one, 
from Chaucer to Sir Thomas More, and from 
More to Cowper, can not fail to comprehend. 
He is very much in earnest, and writes without 
stopping to pick out pretty words, or round off 
polished sentences.' 

" I mentioned his Life of Nelson. ' That,' said 
he, ' was a Quarterly article, and I expanded it 
into a book. I was afraid of the sea phrases ; 
but I had no fear of making the book liked by 
the public, for I had material for ten times the 
extent I was bound to, and the man I wrote of 
lived in the nation's heart.' 

' The question of memory was touched upon, 
from my mentioning the dates of some events w r e 
spoke of. 'Now,' said he, 'I could as soon fly 
as recollect these dates. I have trusted so little 
to memory, that memory will do little for me 
when I press her. I have a habit of making 
notes of what I should treasure in my mind, and 
the act of writing seems to discharge it from the 
mind to the paper. This is as to particulars ; 
the main points of a subject I recollect very well. 1 

" To my surprise, when I inadvertently named 
Byron, he rather encouraged the subject. ' You 
think,' said he, ' that if we had been personally 
acquainted there would probably have been few 
unkind feelings between us. We did meet, more 
than once, in London society. I saw that he 
was a man of quick impulses, strong passions, 
and great powers. I saw him abuse these pow- 
ers ; and, looking at the effect of his writings on 
the public mind, it was my duty to denounce 
such of them as aimed at the injury of morals 
and religion. This was all ; and I have said so 
in print before now. It has been said that I, 
who avowed very strong opinions in my youtfi, 



should not have condemned others ; but, from my 
youth until now, my desire has been to improve 
the condition, moral, religious, and physical, of 
the great body of mankind. The means which 
I once thought best suited to effect this are not 
the means which, after forty years' constant 
thought, I would now employ. My purpose re 
mains the same as it was in youth — I would use 
different machinery.' 

" After this conversation we parted. Southey 
went to his friends at their inn, while I went to 
mine for some American reprints of English and 
Scotch magazines which I had with me. When 
I rejoined them they w r ere at luncheon. Mr. 
Wordsworth again expressed a desire to obtain 
any reprints of Southey's poems ; and Southey 
said, ' I wish they would reprint my History of 
Brazil.' I said, alluding to the size of the work, 
that this would be a heavy affair. ' Yes,' said 
he, 'it is in three thick quartos, and therefore 
quite out of the reach of common purchasers. 
It is a very curious fact that this very work has 
added some <f£l200 a year to the income of a 
commercial house in London. They claimed 
some exemption (of duties, I think he said) from 
information given them by a passage in that 
work, and thus they gain more by it in one year 
than the author can expect for the labor and re- 
search of many.' 

" Shortly after they departed, both poets kind- 
ly inviting me to correspond with them, and press 
ing me to visit them, if ever I went within ' a 
day's march' of either. I never again saw these 
poets, but enjoyed the correspondence of each. 

" The personal appearance and demeanor of 
Southey at this time (he was then aged 62) war 
striking and peculiar. The only thing in art 
which brings him exactly before rne is the mon- 
ument by Lough, the sculptor. Like many othei 
young men of the time, who had read Byron with 
great admiration, I had imbibed rather a preju- 
dice against the laureate. This was weakened 
by his appearance, and wholly removed by his 
frank conversation. He was calm, mild, and 
gentlemanly 5 full of quiet, subdued humor ; the 
reverse of ascetic in his manner, speech, or ac- 
tions. His bearing was rather that of a scholar 
than of a man much accustomed to mingle in 
general society. Indeed, he told me that, next 
to romping with his children when they were 
children, he 'enjoyed a tete-a-tete conversation 
with an old friend or a new. With one,' added 
he, ' 1 can talk of familiar subjects which we 
have discussed in former years, and with the 
other, if he have any brains, I open what to me 
is a new mine of thought. The educated Amer- 
icans whom I have conversed with always leave 
me something to think of.' 

" In any place Southey would have been point- 
ed at as 'a noticeable man.' He was tall, slight, 
and well made. His features were striking, and 
Byron truly described him as ' with a hook nose 
and a hawk's eye.' Certainly his eyes were pe- 
culiar — at once keen and mild. The brow was 
rather high than square, and the lines well de- 
fined. His hair was tinged with gray, but his 



542 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 63. 



head was as well covered with it — wavy and 
flowing — as it could have been in youth. He 
by no means looked his age : simple habits, pure 
thoughts, the quietude of a happy hearth, the 
friendship of the wise and good, the self-con- 
sciousness of acting for the best purposes, a sep- 
aration from the personal irritations which men 
of letters so often are subjected to in the world, 
and health, which up to that time had been so 
generally unbroken, had kept Southey from many 
of the cares of life, and their usually harrowing 
effect on mind and body. It is one of my most 
pleasant recollections that I enjoyed his friend- 
ship and regard." 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

JOURNEY IN THE WEST OF ENGLAND THE LIFE 

OF COWPER LITERARY ADVICE TO A LADY 

HIS SON'S PROSPECTS NEW EDITION OF HIS 

POEMS PROSPECTS OF THE COUNTRY LAMb's 

LETTERS THE DOCTOR FAILURE OF THE 

PUBLISHERS OF THE LIFE OF COWPER THANKS 

TO DR. S. MACKENZIE FOR REVIEWING THE NEW 
EDITION OF HIS POEMS CERTAINTY OF A FU- 
TURE STATE DEATH OF HIS WIFE. 1836— 

1837. 

Since the commencement of this last and bit- 
terest sorrow which had befallen my father, he 
had devoted himself wholly to the office of light- 
ening, as far as possible, the affliction both to the 
poor sufferer herself and to all his household. 
He had never quitted home, and, with the rare 
exception of a single friend, had seen no society 
whatever. 

This sort of life, however, although his health 
did not appear yet to suffer, was naturally deem- 
ed so likely to prove permanently injurious to 
him, that his friends had often and strongly urged 
him to leave home for a time, and recruit him- 
self by change of air and scene. 

But, while assenting to the desirableness of such 
a change, he had considerable difficulty in mak- 
ing up his mind to attempt it. My mother had 
become a constant object of solicitude ; his pres- 
ence was often useful, always a source of as 
much pleasure as she was capable of receiving ; 
and he knew, moreover, that in absence there 
would always be a certain amount of anxiety, 
which would materially diminish the good to be 
gained. He felt, also, the comfort his presence 
was to his daughters, and the blank which the 
absence of his continual cheerfulness would make 
to them. 

It happened, however, that the brief, enforced 
absence at Lancaster, which has just been no- 
ticed, came opportunely to decide him. He found 
that, after the momentary discomfort had passed 
away, his absence did not make any very mate- 
rial difference ; and he determined to seize the 
time present, although the year was already so 
far advanced, for a journey of considerable length, 
in which I was to be his companion. Our prog- 
ress was an extremely circuitous one ; and as 



almost every halting-place was at the house of 
some hospitable friend, it was all pure pleasure 
to me ; and, indeed, he himself enjoyed it as 
much as any one could do whose thoughts and 
heart were elsewhere : he appreciated every mi- 
nute beauty of the country we passed through 
with all his natural quickness of perception, the 
frequent meetings with old friends were a source 
of evident pleasure, and with the remembrance 
of old times his spirits seemed occasionally to 
recover their old buoyancy ; neither, indeed, could 
he help being gratified with the reception he 
every where met with. 

Our first halting-place was at Lord Kenyon's 
beautiful seat, near Oswestry, whence the fol- 
lowing letter was written, in which the reader 
will find an outline of our route. 

To Charles Swain, Esq. 

" Gredington, Oct. 27, 1836. 
" My dear Sir, 

" No compliment has ever been addressed to 
me which gratified me more than your Dedica- 
tory Sonnet, and one only which gratified me so 
much (that of Henry Taylor's Philip van Arte- 
velde) ; both for the same reason, because both 
are in themselves singularly beautiful, and I know 
that both were written with sincerity. 

" This letter is written from my first halting- 
place on a very wide circuit. Cuthbert and I 
left home on Monday, bound for the Land's End, 
from whence I shall turn back with him to Sus- 
sex, and, having deposited him there, proceed to 
London. There my purpose is to remain a fort- 
night, after which I shall perform my promise 
of visiting Neville White whenever I went again 
to town, and then make the best of my way home. 
It is an unfavorable season for making such a 
journey, but my brother, Dr. Southey, advised 
and urged me to break from home, and not rely 
too confidently upon a stook of health and gpirits 
on w T hich there were large demands. 

" Being able to do this (which I hardly ex- 
pected till a fortunate subpoena to Lancaster put 
it to the proof), I had the additional motive of 
going to examine the only collections of Cow- 
per's letters which have not been intrusted to 
me — those of Mr. Bagot, which I am to peruse 
with his son, near Birmingham, and those of 
Joseph Hill, which were bequeathed as an heir- 
loom, with a good estate, to Jekyll. I go to Mr. 
Bagot' s on Monday next, and shall have access 
to Mr. Jekyll's MSS. in London. There can be 
little doubt of my finding in these collections (es- 
pecially in the latter) materials for my supple- 
mentary volume. 

" There was a third inducement for this jour- 
ney. I wished to show Cuthbert the scenes of 
my childhood and youth, w r hich no one but my- 
self could show him, and to introduce him to a 
few old friends, all that are left to me in that 
part of England. Probably it may be my last 
journey to those parts. We hope to reach Bris- 
tol on Thursday, Nov. 3, and intend to remain a 
week there. 

"Direct to me at Mr. Cottle's, Bedminstei, 



jEtat. 63. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



543 



Bristol. Cottle published ray Joan of Arc in 
1796, and there are very few who entertain a 
warmer regard for me than he has done from that 
time. 

" The lines which I have written in Miss 

's album are on the opposite page to that 

upon which O'Connell and Joseph Bonaparte have 
inscribed their effusions. You will see that mine 
did not require any premeditation : 

" ' Birds of a feather flock together ; 
But vide the opposite page ! 
And thence you may gather I'm not of a feather 
With some of the birds in this cage.' 

" As soon as Cowper is completed, Longman 
means to commence a monthly publication of my 
poems in ten volumes. The volumes shall be 
sent you duly as they are published. Very few 
of my successors in this generation would be so 
well entitled to them as an acknowledgment of 
their merit, fewer still as a mark of personal re- 
gard. 

" Cuthbert desires his kind remembrances ; 
and believe me always, my dear sir, yours with 
sincere regard, Robert Southey." 

From Gredington we proceeded, after paying 
some visits on the way, to Bristol, where the pub- 
lisher of Joan of Arc in 1796, Mr. Cottle, hos- 
pitably entertained us. From his hands my fa- 
ther had received, when struggling with his ear- 
ly difficulties, many most substantial acts of kind- 
ness which he was always prompt to mention and 
acknowledge, and under his roof, and with his 
sisters, my mother had been left after their ro- 
mantic marriage. Here, therefore, were many 
mournful thoughts awakened, though no one 
could yield to them less, or dwell more wisely 
than he did upon every alleviation. We visited 
together all his old haunts — his grandmother's 
house at Bedminster, so vividly described in his 
Autobiography — the College Green where Miss 
Tyler had lived — the house where he was born 
— the schools he had been sent to. He had for- 
gotten nothing — no short cut — no by-way ; and 
he would surprise me often by darting down some 
alley, or thridding some narrow lane, the same 
which in his school-boy days he traversed. We 
went to Westbury to look for Martin Hall,* the 
house where he had passed one of the happiest 
portions of his life ; but no trace of it could be 
found ; and we were then told, I believe errone- 
ously, that the walls of a nunnery inclosed the 
place where it stood ; at all events, the general 
features of the place were so changed, that my 
father did not recognize the house again, if in- 
deed it was then standing. 

This was a pleasant visit, and my father's en- 
joyment was greatly enhanced by the company 
of Mr. Savage Landor, who was then residing at 
Clifton, and in whose society we spent several 
delightful days. He was one of the few men 
with whom my father used to enter freely into 
conversation, and on such occasions it was no 
mean privilege to be a listener. We also visited 



See ante, p. 104. 



Corston — his first boarding-school, and found all 
there exactly as he has described it in his Auto- 
biography and in the " Retrospect." 

I was much struck with his strong attachment 
to his native city, and his appreciation of all the 
beauties of the neighborhood ; and I have often 
wondered he did not take up his abode there or 
in the neighborhood in earlier life. 

Our next visit is described in the following 
letter : 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Bedminster, Nov. 10, 1836. 
" My dear G., 

" Right glad should I be to feel myself sum* 
ciently at rest and at leisure for writing at full 
length to you ; but little rest shall I have, and as 
little leisure, till we meet in London some six 
weeks hence. 

" We left home on Monday the 24th, crossed 
the Mersey, and got to Chester the next evening, 
and the next day reached Lord Kenyon's to din- 
ner. Gredington (his house) is in Flintshire, not 
far from old Bangor, where the monks were mas- 
sacred, and one of the small meres which are not 
uncommon in Cheshire touches upon his grounds. 
The view is very splendid : Welsh mountains in 
the distance, stretching far and wide, and the fore 
and middle ground undulated and richly wooded. 
There we remained till Friday morning, and then 
posted to Sweeny Hall, near Oswestry, where 
Mr. Parker had a party to meet me at dinner. 
I called there on Davies's mother and his two 
sisters, who are just such women as the mother 
and sisters of so thoroughly worthy a man ought 
to be. The former lives in a comfortable cottage 
which he purchased for his father some years 
ago, the two others are married ; and the pleas- 
ure of seeing these good people, and of seeing 
with what delight they heard me talk of Davies, 
would have overpaid me for my journey. 

" Saturday we reached Mr. Warter's (near 
Shrewsbury) to dinner, stayed there Sunday, and 
on Monday proceeded to Birmingham, from 
whence we took chaise for Mr. Egerton Bagot's 
at Pipe Hayes. 

# # # # * # # 

" Two mornings were fully occupied in read- 
ing Cowper's letters with him, and transcribing 
such as had hitherto been withheld. 

" At four on Wednesday the chaise which I 
had ordered at Birmingham arrived, and took us 
to the Hen and Chickens. We then flew (that 
is to say, went in a fly) about a mile out of that 
town, to drink tea with Mr. Riland, a clergyman, 
who married a sister of Robert Wolsely (your 
cotemporary at Westminster), and who has now 
and then communicated with me by letter. We 
had a pleasant evening ; after which we return- 
ed, like dutiful chickens, to rest under the Hen's 
wings. 

" Thursday we came to Bristol, and took up 
our quarters here at Bedminster with Cottle. 
Here I have been to the church which I used to 
attend with my mother and grandmother more 
than half a hundred years ago ; and I have shown 



544 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 63, 



Cuthbert my grandmother's house — what was 
once my garden of Eden. At church I was 
placed in a seat exactly opposite the spot on 
which our pew had stood ; but the whole inte- 
rior of the church had been altered. A few mon- 
uments only remained as they had been. No- 
vember 8. Tuesday, we walked with Landor 
about the finest parts of the neighborhood ; but 
the house which I inhabited for one year at West- 
bury, and in which I wrote more verses than in 
any other year of my life, has been pulled down. 
Yesterday I took the North Pole* to Corston, and 
went into the house in which I had been at school 
fifty-five years ago. 

" We go on Saturday to visit Bowles at Brem- 
hill, and shall stay there till Wednesday. 

" To-day I have a letter from home with ac- 
counts not on the whole unfavorable, but upon 
which I must not allow myself to dwell. Right 
glad shall I be, or rather right thankful (for glad- 
ness and I have little to do with each other now) 
to find myself at home again. I am well, thank 
God, and my spirits seldom fail ; but I do not 
sleep better than at home, and lose that after- 
dinner nap, which has for some time been my 
soundest and most refreshing sleep. On the 
whole, however, I expect to find myself the better 
for this journey, when I return to remain by the 
wreck. You will not wonder that I am anxious 
to be there again, and that I have a satisfaction 
in being there — miserable as it is — which it is 
impossible to feel any where else. 

" God bless you, my dear Grosvenor ! 

"R. S. 

M Our love to Miss Page." 

To Miss Katharine Southey. 

" Wells, Wednesday evening, } 
"Nov. 16, 1836. j 

" My dear Kate, 

"Look at the history of Bremhill, and you will 
see Bowles's parsonage; it is near the fine old 
church, and as there are not many better livings, 
there are few more pleasantly situated. The 
garden is ornamented in his way, with a jet- 
fountain, something like a hermitage, an obelisk, 
a cross, and some inscriptions. Two swans, who 
answer to the names of Snowdrop and Lily, have 
a pond to themselves, and if they are not duly 
fed there at the usual time, up they march to the 
breakfast-room window. Mrs. Bowles has also 
a pet hawk called Peter, a name which has been 
borne by two of his predecessors. The view 
from the back of the house extends over a rich 
country, to the distant downs, and the white horse 
may be seen distinctly by better eyes than mine, 
without the aid of a glass. # # # 

" Much as I had heard of Bowles's peculiari- 
ties, I should very imperfectly have understood 
his character if I had not passed some little time 
under his roof. He has indulged his natural 
timidity to a degree little short of insanity, yet 
he sees how ridiculous it makes him, and laughs 



An appellation given to the editor by Mr. Bedford. 



himself at follies which nevertheless he is con 
tinually repeating. He is literally afraid of every 
thing. His oddity, his untidyness, his simplicity, 
his benevolence, his fears, and his good-nature, 
make him one of the most entertaining and ex- 
traordinary characters I ever met with. He is 
in his seventy-third year, and for that age is cer- 
tainly a fine old man, in full possession of all his 
faculties, though so afraid of being deaf, when a 
slight cold affects his hearing, that he puts a 
watch to his ear twenty times in the course of 
the day. Our reception was as hospitable as 
possible, Mrs: Bowles was as kind as himself, 
and every thing was done to make us comforta- 
ble. ###*## 

" The bishop, unluckily, is at Weymouth ; he 
wrote to Bowles to say how glad he should be 
to see us ; but he will not be in Wells till this 
day week. Whether the dean (Goodenough) is 
here, the people of the inn can not tell. * 

"Tell your dear mother that I earnestly wish 
to be at home again, and shall spend no time on 
the way that can be spared. 

" Love to all. So good night; and God bless 
you ! R. S." 

The next letter gives in brief an accomit of 
great part of the journey ; and I think is not un- 
interesting, as showing his capabilities of bearing 
fatigue, and of deriving some pleasure from such 
a routine of visits as might reasonably have been 
expected to be wearisome to him. 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Linton, Dec. 7, 1836. 
" My dear R., 

"After a course as erratic as that of a comet 
which has been driven out of its way (if comets 
are liable to such accidents), here we are, in cer- 
tainly the most beautiful spot in the West of En- 
gland. I was here in 1799, alone, and on foot. 
At that time the country between Porlock and 
Ilfracombe was not practicable for wheel car- 
riages, and the inn at Linton received all trav- 
elers in the kitchen. Instead of that single pub- 
lic house, there are now several hotels, and in its 
accommodation, and in the number of good houses 
which have been erected by settlers, Linton vies 
with any watering-place in Devonshire. 

" We were within a few miles of this place a 
fortnight ago, when Poole parted with us at Hol- 
nicot, Sir T. Acland's, Somersetshire House ; but 
Sir T. persuaded us to accompany him to Killer- 
ton, that we might see the road that he has open- 
ed along the side of the Exe, and then return to 
the south coast by way of Barnstaple. At Kil- 
lerton we met Scoresby the Ceticide, now the 
Reverend, and the Earl of Devon. We paid our 
visit to Mrs. Hodson at Dawlish, and there met 
Colonel Napier, brother to the Peninsular histo- 
rian, and Mrs. Crawford, widow of the general, 
who was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo. Thursday 
last we breakfasted with Charles Hoare, the 
banker, who is uncle to both Sir Thomas and 
Lady Acland. He has a beautiful house, which 
he built himself, near Dawlish. From thence 



jEtat. 63. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



545 



Sir Thomas drove us to Mamhead, where Sir 
Robert Newman has built, and is now busily dec- 
orating, the most gorgeous mansion I have ever 
seen. Here Lord Devon met us, and took us to 
Powderham Castle. The Poor-Law Bill is work- 
ing well .here, they tell me ; and it has had the 
good effect of bringing the better kind of country 
gentlemen in contact with the farmers, who used 
to think that gentlemen knew nothing, and are 
now convinced that they are better informed than 
themselves. 

" We stayed one night at Powderham, and 
went next day to my old friend Lightfoot's, near 
Crediton ; there we spent three comfortable days 
in a parsonage, having every thing about us that 
the heart of man could desire. To-morrow we 
return to Barnstaple, and go to Mr. Buck's, the 
chief of the North Devon Conservatives, near 
Bedeford, who has offered us hospitality, and to 
show us Clovelly and Hartland. Sir Thomas 
talks of meeting us again at Bude. # * # 
At Poole's we met Mr. Cross, whose discoveries 
astonished the Wittenagemot at Bristol. You 
would like his frank, unassuming manner. * * 
We saw the storm of Tuesday, Nov. 29, from a 
house* on the beach at Dawlish, which was con- 
sidered to be in danger, if the wind had not 
changed when it did. The effect of the change 
more resembled what I suppose may be that of 
a hurricane than any thing I ever witnessed be- 
fore : it whirled the waves about, and the whole 
surface of the sea was covered with spray flying 
in all directions. On Saturday week we were 
called out to a fire which consumed a large farm- 
house, not far from Lightfoot's. It will be well 
if the ensuing week passes without our seeing a 
shipwreck ; for when the winter commences with 
storms, they seem generally to prevail through 
it, as far as my observation extends, or rather as 
far as my recollection can be trusted. 

" This wandering life is as little suited to my 
inclination as to my habits ; but it has its use in 
shaking up the system and in refreshing old rec- 
ollections. Much of what I see and hear will 
at some time or other turn to account, I hope ; 
and, moreover, it will be a good thing for Cuth- 
bert to have seen my old friends and so much of 
his own country ! 

" God bless you ! It. Southey." 

From Linton, after visiting Mr. Buck at Hart- 
land Abbey, and meeting Sir Thomas Acland at 
Bude Haven, who had ridden fast and far that he 
might welcome my father in three counties,* we 
pursued our way down the iron-bound north coast 
of Cornwall, visiting the most remarkable places. 
Tintagcbt the reputed birth-place of King Arthur 



* At Holrricot, in Somersetshire ; Killerton, in Devon- 
shire ; and Bude, in Cornwall. 

t I find this place well described in a topographical ac T 
count of Cornwall : 

" Reft from the parent land by some dire shock, 
Majestically stands an island rock, 
On whose rough brow Tintagel's donjon keep 
Sternly uprears and bristles o'er the deep : 
Her arches, portal tower, and pillars gray 
Lie scattered, all in ruinous decay. 

Mm 



(see some of the first chapters of Morte d' Arthur), 
interested him greatly ; and the rugged scene 
lacked no accompaniments of storm and tempest 
which could increase its grandeur, for we could 
hardly keep our footing while we viewed it ; and 
to have scaled the rocks which lead up to it 
would have been impossible in such weather, 
and dangerous enough at any time. 

Further down the coast we visited that sin- 
gular tract of sand which has been rendered well 
known by the discovery of the ancient British 
Church of Peranzabuloe (or St. Peran in the 
Sands), which, when we saw it, was again half 
buried. The structure itself was of the rudest 
and humblest kind; and what struck us most 
forcibly was, that the sand all around was filled 
with small fragments of human bones, indicating 
a burial-place at some distant period of far great- 
er extent than the size of the building or the pop- 
ulation of the country would have led any one to 
think necessary. I suppose, however, it had 
been an oratory, and not a parish church. We 
were told that, a few days before our visit, the 
sand shifting during a storm had exposed to view 
a row of stone coffins without covers, with the 
skeletons in them nearly perfect ; but they had 
been again buried by the last turn of the wind, 
which, indeed, was already driving the sand, 
which is exceedingly deep and loose, over the 
remains of the little church itself. 

Helston was our furthest resting-place, where 
the Rev. Derwent Coleridge was then residing ; 
from whence we visited the Land's End, with 
the wild grandeur of which my father was par- 
ticularly struck. St. Michael's Mount, in Pen- 
zance Bay, also pleased him greatly; and he 
was delighted at seeing the identical chair from 
which Rebecca Penlake was thrown, as narra- 
ted in his well-known ballad. It is situated on 
the outside of the church tower, and is evidentl} r 
part of an old lantern or place to light a beacon 
fire on. 

One other scene also which he had described 
in verse he was much pleased at now being able 
to visit for the first time, viz., the Well of St. 
Keync, near Liskeard, which we saw during a 
brief visit to the Rev. W. Farwell ; and during 
this excursion, which was impracticable on foot. 
I saw my father for the first and last time in my 
life mount on horseback. That he had ever been 
a good rider I should think very doubtful; but 
on this occasion he surpassed my expectations. 
Our Christmas was passed at Tavistock, at the 
Rev. E. Bray's, whose wife is the well-known 
novelist and the kind editress of Mary Colling's 
simple verses. My father had known her for 
some time as a not unfrequent correspondent, 
but not until now personally. A second visit to 
Mr. Lightfoot ended our western sojourn. 

And wild the scene ; from far is heard the roar 
Of billows breaking on the shingly shore ; 
And at long intervals the startling shriek 
Of the white tenants of the lofty peak ; 
Beneath in caverns raves the maddening sur^e, 
Around with ruins capp'd grim rocks emerge, 
And Desolation fills his gloomy throne, 
Raised on the fragments of an age unknown." 



546 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF iETAT. 63. 



To Miss Katharine Southey. 

" Stockleigh Pomeroy, Jan. 1, 1837. 
''My dear Daughter, 
''Whichever it be to whom this letter is due 
(for I keep ill account of such things), I begin 
with such wishes to both, and to all others at 
home, and all friends round Skiddaw or else- 
where, as the first day of the year calls forth. 

" It was some comfort to hear that your dear- 
est mother listened to my letters, and asked some 
questions ; and it is some comfort to know that 
my presence is not wanted, while it is in vain to 
wish that it were wished for. I shall be home 
by the middle of February; glad to be there, 
and glad that I have taken a journey which has 
warmed some old attachments, and been in many 
respects of use. As for Cuthbert, he declares 
that it would have been worth while to make the 
whole journey for the sake of seeing Mary Col- 
ling. Verily I never saw any person in and 
about whom every thing was more entirely what 
you could wish, and what it ought to be. She 
is the pattern of neatness and propriety, simplicity 
and good sense. Her old master, Mr. Hughes, 
is as proud of her as if she was his daughter. 
They live in a small house, the garden of which 
extends to the River Tavy, a beautiful stream ; 
and her kitchen is such a kitchen for neatness 
and comfort, that you would say at once no per- 
son who could not be happy there deserved to be 
happy any where else. Strangers (and there are 
many whom Mrs. Bray's book draws to Tavi- 
stock and Dartmoor) generally inquire for her, 
and find means to see her, and she has already a 
little library of books which have been presented 
to her by such persons. 

* * # * # # * 

;: Mr. Bray's is the only house in which I have 
eaten upon pewter since I was a child ; he has a 
complete service of it, with his crest engraved 
upon it, and bright as silver. The house (built 
for him by the Duck, as the Duke of Bedford is 
called in Tavistock) is a very good one, the gar- 
den large and pleasantly laid out ; it includes 
some of the ruins, and a door from it opens upon 
a delightful walk on the Tavy. In spite of the 
weather we had two pleasant walks, one of about 
ten miles, the other about six ; but of Dartmoor 
we could see nothing. Our time passed pleas- 
antly, Mary paying us a visit every day ; some 
more Fables in her own hand-writing will be 
among the most interesting autographs that I 
have to dispose of. 

" So much for Tavistock. I see it to great 
disadvantage. The Tavy is like our Greta in 
its better parts, the water was quite as clear; 
but snow has the effect of making water look 
dirty, and Mr. Bray compared the foam of the 
river to soap-suds; a simile not less apt than 
that of Sir Walter, who likens the foam of a dark 
stream to the mane of a chestnut horse. The 
small patches of snow on the banks looked like 
linen laid there to dry or to bleach. The beauty 
of brook and torrent scenery was thus totally de- 
.tioyed; yet I could well imagine what the coun- 



try is at a better season, and in all such scenery 
it resembles Cumberland. 

"I may fill up what remains of this paper 
with some epitaphs, which I wrote down from 
the tombs in Bremhill church-yard. The first 
two were as follows, on a Dissenter and his wife ; 
and because they were Dissenters, Bowles, in 
reference to the latter, wrote the third, on one 
of his own flock. 

<"E.W. 1800. 
" ' A loving wife, a friend sincere, 
A tender mother, sleepeth here.' 

'"W.W. 1834. 
" ' Here in the silent dust lies one 
Beloved of God. 
Redeemed he was by Christ, 
Wash'd in his precious blood, 
And faithful was his name. 
From tribulation great he came, 
In love he lived, in Christ he died ; 
His life desired, but God denied.' 

" Bowles, who loves not the Dissenters more 
than I do, wrote, in contrast to this, the follow- 
ing inscription, on a neighboring tomb-stone : * 

" ' Reader, this heap of earth, this grave-stone mark ! 
Here lie the last remains of poor John Dark. 
Five years beyond man's age he lived, and trod 
This path each Sabbath to the house of God ; 
From youth to age, nor ever from his heart * 
Did that best prayer our Savior taught depart. 
At his last hour with lifted hands he cried, 
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done ! and died.' 

" This was a hit at those who went to meet- 
ing instead of church, and never used the Lord's 
Prayer; moreover, it alluded to the Dissenter 
wishing to live longer if he could. 

" And now God bless you all ! Heartily in- 
deed do I wish myself at home ; but I am far 
from repenting of my journey. 



Your dutiful father, 



R. S. 



To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Buckland, Jan. 8, 1837. 
" My dear H. T., 
" # * * * * # # 

If I have learned to look with indifference upon 
those whom I meet in casual society, it is because 
in early life circumstances (and disposition also) 
made me retire into myself, like a snail into his 
shell ; and in later years, because so many new 
faces have come to me like shadows, and so de- 
parted. Yet I was not slow in my likings when 
young, nor has time rendered me so : it has only 
withheld me from making any advances toward 
intimacy with persons, however likeable, whom 
it is certain that I can have very few opportuni- 
ties of seeing again, and no leisure for conversing 
with by letter. 

" It is, indeed, most desirable to knit our friends 
in a circle ; and one of those hopes which, thank 
God, have in me the strength of certainties, is 
that this will be done in the next stage of our 
existence, when all the golden links of the chain 
will be refined and rendered lasting. I have 
been traveling for the last ten weeks through 
places where recollections met me at ever)' stage, 
and this certainly alone could render such recol- 
lections endurable. My faith in that future which 
can not be far off never fails. 

" God bless you ! R. S." 



<Etat. 63. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



547 



To Miss Katharine Southey. 

" Tarring, Feb. 8, 1837. 
14 My dear Kate, 
»i# # # # # * * 

Yesterday I and Karl had a walk of some four- 
teen or fifteen^miles, to the Roman encampments 
of Sisbury and Chankbury. The latter commands 
a noble prospect over the Weald. We had also 
a remarkable view of Worthing, which appeared 
like a ruined city (Balbec or Palmyra) in the dis- 
tance, on the edge of what we knew to be the 
sea, but what might as w T ell have been a desert ; 
for it was so variegated with streaks of sunshine 
and of shade, that no one ignorant of the place 
could have determined whether it were sea or 
sky that lay before us. 

"I shall come home hungry for work, for 
sleeping after dinner, and for walking with a book 
in my hand. The first thing I have to do is to 
write a preface for Cowper's Homer — little more 
than an evening's employment. Then I set 
about reviewing Mrs. Bray's book, and carefully 
reading through Joan of Arc, that it may be sent 
immediately to the press j for the first volume of 
my Poetical Works is to appear on July 11 (a 
month after Cowper is finished), and we wish to 
have two or three more through the press, so as 
to prevent all danger of delay in the publication. 
Then there are two volumes of Cowperiana to 
prepare (for which I am to have, as is fitting, 
separate pay), and two volumes more of Admi- 
rals, besides other things — enough to do, but not 
too much j for I see my way through all, and 
was never in better trim for work. 

" And now, God bless you all ! Rejoice, Baron 
Chinchilla, for I am coming again to ask of you 
whether you have every thing that a cat's heart 
can desire ! Rejoice, Tommy Cockbairn, for I 
must have a new black coat ! and I have chosen 
that it should be the work of thy hands, not of a 
London tailor. Rejoice, Echo, for the voice 
which thou lovest will soon awaken thee again 
in thy mountains ! Rejoice, Ben Wilson, for sam- 
ple clogs are to be sent into the West country, 
for the good of the Devonshire men ! R. S." 



To 



" Keswick, March, 1S37. 
" Madam,* 
" You will probably, ere this, have given up all 
expectation of receiving an answer to your letter 
of December 29. I was on the borders of Corn- 
wall when that letter was written ; it found me 
a fortnight afterward in Hampshire. During my 
subsequent movements in different parts of the 
country, and a tarriancc of three busy weeks in 
London, I had no leisure for replying to it ; and 
now that I am once more at home, and am clear- 
ing off the arrears of business which had accu- 
mulated during a long absence, it has lain un- ' 
answered till the last of a numerous file, not from ' 

! 1 

* The lady to whom this and the next letter are address- 
ed is now well known as a prose writer of no common 
powers. 



disrespect or indifference to its contents, but be- 
cause, in truth, it is not an easy task to answer 
it, nor a pleasant one to cast a damp over the 
high spirits and the generous desires of youth. 

" What you are I can only infer from your 
letter, which appears to be written in sincerity, 
though I may suspect that you have used a fic- 
titious signature. Be that as it may, the letter 
and the verses bear the same stamp, and I can 
well understand the state of mind which they in- 
dicate. What I am you might have learned by 
such of my publications as have come into your 
hands ; and had you happened to be acquainted 
with me, a little personal knowledge would have 
tempered your enthusiasm. You might have had 
your ardor in some degree abated by seeing a 
poet in the decline of life, and witnessing the ef- 
fect which age produces upon our hopes and as- 
pirations ; yet I am neither a disappointed man 
nor a discontented one, and you would never have 
heard from me any chilling sermons upon the 
text, 'AH is vanity.' 

"It is not my advice that you have asked as 
to the direction of your talents, but my opinion 
of them ; and yet the opinion may be worth lit- 
tle, and the advice much. You evidently possess, 
and in no inconsiderable degree, what Words- 
worth calls ' the faculty of verse.' I am not de- 
preciating it w T hen I say that in these times it is 
not rare. Many volumes of poems are now pub- 
lished every year without attracting public atten- 
tion, any one of which, if it had appeared half a 
century ago, would have obtained a high reputa- 
tion for its author. Whoever, therefore, is am- 
bitious of distinction in this way, ought to be pre- 
pared for disappointment. 

" But it is not with a view to distinction that 
you should cultivate this talent, if you consult 
your own happiness. I, who have made litera- 
ture my profession, and devoted my life to it, and 
have never for a moment repented of the delib- 
erate choice, think myself nevertheless bound in 
duty to caution every young man who applies as 
an aspirant to me for encouragement and advice, 
against taking so perilous a course. You will 
say that a woman has no need of such a caution 
— there can be no peril in it for her. In a cer- 
tain sense this is true ; but there is a danger of 
which I would, with all kindness and all earnest- 
ness, warn you. The day-dreams in which you 
habitually indulge are likely to induce a distem- 
pered state of mind ; and in proportion as all the 
ordinary uses of the world seem to you fiat and 
unprofitable, you will be unfitted for them with- 
out becoming fitted for any thing else. Litera- 
ture can not be the business of a woman's life, 
and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged 
in her proper duties, the less leisure will she 
have for it even as an accomplishment and a rec- 
reation. To those duties you have not yet been 
called, and when you arc you will be less eager 
for celebrity. You will not seek in imagination 
for excitement, of which the vicissitudes of this 
life, and the anxieties from which you must nol 
hope to be exempted, be your state what it may 
will brinu with them but too much. 



548 



LIFE ANd CORRESPONDENCE OF M tat. 63. 



" But do not suppose that I disparage the gift 
which you possess, nor that I would discourage 
you from exercising it. I only exhort you so to 
think of it and so to use it as'to render it condu- 
cive to your own permanent good. Write poetry 
for its own sake — not in a spirit of emulation, 
and not with a view to celebrity : the less you 
aim at that, the more likely you will be to de- 
serve, and, finally, to obtain it. So written, it is 
wholesome both for the heart and soul; it may 
be made the surest means, next to religion, of 
soothing the mind, and elevating it. You may 
embody it in your best thoughts and your wisest 
feelings, and in so doing discipline and strengthen 
them. 

" Farewell, madam. It is not because I have 
forgotten that I was once young myself that I 
write to you in this strain, but because I re- 
member it. You will neither doubt my sincerity 
nor my good will ; and, however ill what has 
here been said may accord with your present 
views and temper, the longer you live the more 
reasonable it will appear to you. Though I may 
be but an ungracious adviser, you will allow me, 
therefore, to subscribe myself, with the best wish- 
es for your happiness here and hereafter, 
" Your true friend, 

" Robert Southey." 

To the same. 

" Keswick, March 22, 1837. 
"Dear Madam, 

" Your letter has given me great pleasure, and 
I should not forgive myself if I did not tell you so. 
You have received admonition as considerately 
and as kindly as it was given. Let me now re- 
quest that, if you ever should come to these lakes 
wiiile I am living here, you will let me see you. 
You would then think of me afterward with the 
more good will, because you would perceive that 
there is neither severity nor moroseness in the 
state of mind to which years and observation have 
brought me. 

" It is, by God's mercy, in our power to attain 
a degree of self-government, which is essential to 
our own happiness, and contributes greatly to that 
of those around us. Take care of over-excite- 
ment, and endeavor to keep a quiet mind (even 
for your health it is the best advice that can be 
given you) : your moral and spiritual improve- 
ment will then keep pace with the culture of 
your intellectual powers. 

" And now, madam, God bless you ! 

" Farewell, and believe me to be your sincere 
friend, Robert Southey." 

To H. Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, March 30, 1837. 
"My dearH. T., 
" I too, as you may suppose, speculate (and 
sometimes more largely than is wise) upon Cuth- 
bert's past, present, and future. The past is past, 
and could not, I believe, all things considered, 
have been changed for the better ; for the good 
and evil of public education and of private, as 
compared with each other, are so nearly balanced, 



that it would be difficult to say on which side the 
advantages preponderate. But life is uncertain, 
and it was a great object with me, feeling that 
uncertainty, to make his boyhood happy. More- 
over, the expense of a public school would have 
cost me no little anxiety, and must have put me 
to my shifts. 

*'■####.#-•-..# 

"For the future, he knows my predilection, 
and knows also that he is just as free to choose 
his own profession as if I had none. I indulge 
in no dreams respecting my life or his, or into 
which their prolongation enters. But if he lives, 
I think he would be happier in a country parson- 
age than at the bar, or as a physician, or in a 
public office. He is free to choose. I may live 
to see his choice, but not to know the result of 
it. God bless you ! R. S." 

" If you have never read Roger North's Lives 
of the Lord-keeper Guildford and his other two 
brothers, let me reconimencPthem to you. Bat- 
ing the law matters, you will be amused by ev- 
ery thing else. There is an edition in three oc- 
tavos, published a few years ago. His Examen 
is also well worth reading by any one who wishes 
to understand our history from the Restoration to 
the Revolution. 

" The influenza is leaving me slowly, and I 
wait for milder w T eather to get out of doors." 

To the Rev. W. L. Bowles. 

"Keswick, April 25, 1837. 
" My dear Mr. Bowles, 

" I have to thank you for the honor which you 
intend me in your forthcoming edition — a very 
great honor I can not but consider it, especially 
remembering (what I shall never forget) the im- 
provement, as well as the delight, which I de- 
rived from your poems more than forty years ago, 
and have acknowledged in a general preface (just 
drawn out) to my own. The Conscript Fathers 
of the Row have set me upon a collected edition 
of them. 

" The booksellers in one respect have rendered 
me a service by accelerating what I looked for- 
ward to as a posthumous publication, for I might 
otherwise have deferred the necessary prepara- 
tions, waiting for a more convenient season, till 
it would have been too late. Indeed, it requires 
some resolution to set about a task which brings 
in review before me the greater part of my life 
— old scenes, old feelings, and departed friends. 
No doubt the reason why so many persons who 
have begun to write their own lives have stopped 
short when they got through the chapter of their 
youth is, that the recollections of childhood and 
adolescence, though they call up tender thoughts, 
excite none of that deeper feeling with which we 
look back upon the time of life when wounds heal 
slowly and losses are irreparable. 

" The mood in which I have set about this re- 
vision is like that a/man feels when he is setting 
his house in order. I waste no time in attempt- 
ing to mend pieces which are not worth mend- 
ing ; but upon Joan of Arc, which leads the way, 
as having first brought me into notice, a good 



iETAT. 63. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



549 



deal of patient labor has been bestowed. The 
faults of language have been weeded out, and as 
many othei's as it was possible to extirpate. This 
would have been a preposterous attempt if the 
poem had been of a piece before ; but it was 
written in 1793, rewritten in 1795, and mate- 
rially altered in 1797, and what has been done 
now makes the diction of the same character 
throughout. Faults enough of every other kind 
remain to mark it for a juvenile production. 

" The men who are now in power are doing 
the greatest injury they can to the Church by 
strengthening the only strong argument that can 
be brought up against the alliance between 
Church and State. They certainly overlook all 
considerations of character, station, acquirements, 
and deserts in the disposal of their preferment, 
and regard nothing but the interests of their own 
party. It will tend to confirm the American 
Episcopalians in the only point upon which they 
differ from their English brethren, and I am more 
sorry for this than for the handle which it gives 
to the Dissenters at home ; for in these dark 
times, the brightest prospect is that of the Epis- 
copal Church in America, and yet without an al- 
liance with the State, and endowments for learned 
and laborious leisure, it never can be all that a 
church ought to be. 

" I am a good hoper, even when I look dan- 
ger full in the face. We are now in great dan- 
ger of a severer dearth than any within our mem- 
ory. Here in Cumberland, at this time, there is 
scarcely the slightest appearance of spring. Last 
year the hay failed, and the sheep are now dying 
for want of food. The gardens have suffered 
Tfreatly b} r frosts, which continued till last week, 
id most of the grain which was sown in the 
rly spring is lost. The manufacturers are out 
of employ, and the cold fit of our commercial dis- 
ease is likely to be the most formidable that we 
have ever experienced. Mischief of course is at 
work in the manufacturing countries, and it will 
be tremendously aided by the New Poor-Laws, 
v hich are not more useful in some of their en- 
actments than they are inhuman in others. I 
fear, however, nothing so much as a premature 
change of ministry. Let the present men re- 
main to reap what they have sown. You and I 
can not live to see the issue of all these changes 
that are in progress, but, as an old man in this 
neighborhood said, ' mayhap we mayhear tell.' 
" God bless you, my dear sir ! Present my 
kind regards to Mrs. Bowles, and believe me, 
w ' Yours affectionately, 

" Robert Soutiiey." 

To Edward Moxon, Esq. , 

"Keswick, July 19, 1837. 
" My dear Sir, 
" I received Lamb's Letters yesterday even- 
ing, and not very wisely looked through both vol- 
umes before I went to bed, for, as you may sup- 
pose, they kept possession of me during the night. 
Of late I have seen much of myself in a way that 
thus painfully brings back the past ; Sir Walter's 
Memoirs first, then Joseph Cottle's Recollections 



of so many things which had better have been 
forgotten, and now these Memorials of poor 
Charles Lamb. What with these, and the prep- 
aration of my own poems for an edition which I 
have set about in the same mood of mind as if it 
were designed for posthumous publication, my 
thoughts and feelings have been drawn to the 
years that are past far more than is agreeable or 
wholesome. 

" I wish that I had looked out for Mr. Tal- 
fourd the letter* which Gilford wrote in reply to 
one in which I remonstrated with him upon his 
designating Lamb as a poor maniac. The words 
were used in complete ignorance of their pecul- 
iar bearings, and I believe nothing in the course 
of Gifford's life ever occasioned him so much 
self-reproach. He was a man w T ith whom I 
had no literary sympathies ; perhaps there was 
nothing upon which we agreed except great 
political questions ; but I liked him the better 
ever after for his conduct on this occasion. He 
had a heart full of kindness for all living creat- 
ures except authors ; them he regarded as a 
fishmonger regards eels, or as Isaac Walton did 
slugs, frogs, and worms. I always protested 
against the indulgence of that temper in his Re- 
view, and I am sorry to see in this last number 
that the same spirit still continues there. 

" A few remarks I will make upon these vol- 
umes as they occur to me. There was nothing 
emulous intended in Coleridge's Maid of Orleans. 
When Joan of Arc was first in the press (1795), 
he wrote a considerable portion of the second 
book, which portion was omitted in the second 
edition (1798), because his style was not in keep- 
ing with mine, and because the matter was in- 
consistent w r ith the plan upon which the poem 
had been in great part recast. All that Coleridge 
meant was to make his fragment into a whole. 

"I saw most of Lamb in 1802, when he lived 
in the Temple, and London was my place of 
abode — for the last time, God be thanked ! 

" It was not at Cambridge that Lloyd was at- 
tracted to Coleridge. He introduced himself to 
him at Bristol in 1796, resided with him after- 
ward at Stowey, and did not go to Cambridge till 
three or four years later, after his own marriage. 

"7$ "7^ * -Kr tt ^Jp ^ 

,: Remember me to Mrs. Moxon, and believe 
me always yours very truly, 

" Robert Sotjthey. 

" Remember me most kindly to Mr. Rogers 
when you see him. I am sorry that Cary has 
been so ill treated. It may be hoped that the 
archbishop may think it fitting to mark his sense 
of the transaction by giving him some preferment 

" Mr. Talfourd has performed his task as wel 
as it could be done, under all circumstances. The 
book must be purely delightful to every one. the 
very few excepted to whom it must needs recall 
melancholy recollections." 

The reader will have observed, from various 
passages in my father's letters, the extreme pains 
* See ante, p. 417 



550 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



MtAT. 64. 



and trouble he had taken to conceal the true au- 
thorship of The Doctor ; the publication of this 
book, and the mystification about it, in which he 
contrived to involve so many people, being one 
of his chief sources of amusement — indeed, his 
only recreation during his later years. 

The two first volumes had been published at 
hap-hazard, the work being so unlike any other 
that had ever appeared that he could form no an- 
ticipation of what its reception would be. With 
iiat reception (although the sale was never a 
large one) he was fully satisfied, and encouraged 
to continue it at much greater length than he at 
first intended ; indeed, had his faculties and life 
been spared, there is no knowing where it would 
have ended. 

When first he determined upon anonymous 
publication, it is certain he did not expect that 
the authorship would be so uniformly and confi- 
dently ascribed to him as proved to be the case, 
otherwise he might have hesitated at a step which 
ultimately involved him in so many statements, 
which, if not amounting to an absolute denial of 
the fact, yet sounded like it to the persons to 
whom they were written ; and in some cases his 
friends felt hurt at what he had said in pure play- 
fulness, and at being led on by his own expres- 
sions to assert, positively that they knew he was 
not the author. He was himself from the first 
determined that this should not be like the au- 
thorship of the Waverley Novels — a secret and no 
secret. The vast extent of odd and out-of-the- 
way reading manifested, the peculiar vein of hu- 
mor, the admixture (distasteful to some minds, 
delightful to others) of light topics with grave 
ones, and the strong opinions so plainly express- 
ed on political and social subjects, all combined 
to stamp him so positively as the author, to those 
who knew him personally or his writings well, 
that it required something more than a mere play- 
ful shifting off of the charge to convince them to 
the contrary. To some of these persons he ad- 
mitted it, in a way which did not commit them to 
keeping it a secret, and yet enabled them to es- 
cape acknowledging that they knew him to be the 
writer ; to others, whom he was more anxious to 
mystify, he said more than they thought he ought 
to have said. But, after all, it must be said he 
never denied the authorship in direct terms, nor 
indeed said more on the subject than is asserted 
in hundreds of cases when any secret is intended 
to be kept 5 and if the matter seemed to occupy 
more of his attention and call forth more inge- 
nuity than it was worth, it must be remembered 
it was the amusement of what would otherwise 
have been sad hours, and a relief from painful rec- 
ollections and melancholy thoughts. 

Among other expedients to put the critics and 
literary public on a wrong scent, one was to 
send all the original letters of acknowledgment 
for the first two volumes (among them an inge- 
nious one from himself) to the late Theodore 
Hook, as a person who might fairly be suspected 
of having been the writer ; and it was hoped he 
would have spoken of this hoax being passed 
upon him, and thus have given a fair pretext for 



fixing the authorship upon him. It does not ap- 
pear, however, that he took up the joke with 
any zest, or that the matter was heard of until 
the letters were found among his papers afte* 
his death. 

To H. Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Aug. 12, 1837. \ 
My 63d Birth-day. j 
" My dear H. T., 

" * * * # # # # 

I am amused to hear that before the fourth vol- 
ume could be permitted to circulate in the Book 
Club at Harrow, the chapter relating to the 
Loves of Nobs' s Sire and Dam was cut out, as 
being too loose and licentious for this virtuous 
age. O soul of Sir John Falstaff ! 

"I think of a special Inter-chapter upon the 
occasion, proposing a reform of our vocabulary ; 
for example, that as no one ventures to pronounce 
the name of a she-dog before female ears, the 
principle of decency should be carried through 
(as reformers phrase it), and we should speak of 
a she-horse, a she-cow ; he-goat and she-goat 
are in use, so ought he-sheep and she-sheep to 
be ; or Tom-sheep, as no one has objected to 
Tom-cat : then touch upon the Family Shaks- 
peare, and hint at a Family Bible upon a plan 
different from all others. 

* # # # # ' # # 

" People say they know me to be the author. 
As how ? There are two ways : one is, by be- 
ing in the secret. Now it must be presumed that 
none who are would commit so gross a breach of 
confidence as to proclaim it. The other way is. 
they know it by particular circumstances and by 
internal evidences ; their knowledge, therefore, is 
worth just what their opinion may be — no more. 

"This is certain, that some of my nearest re- 
lations and oldest friends have not been intrusted 
with the secret : in this way we have a good 
right to discredit the assertions of persons who 
show so little sense of what they ought to have 
considered a moral obligation. 

" God bless you ! R. S. 

" We dined yesterday in the bed of one of the 
Borrowdale streams. Karl, and Enroll Hill, 
Kate, Miss Muckle, Davies, and I. Just when 
we had finished our dinner came on a noble 
thunder-storm. The subject would have been 
good for a picture : rocks and umbrellas shelter- 
ed some of-us well. I was among the fortunate. 
Erroll and Davies got well soaked. We sat it 
out like so many Patiences, except that Patience, 
though she may have been in as heavy a storm, 
was never in so merry a mood. The force of 
the storm was at Armboth, about two miles from 
us, where some sheep were killed and other mis- 
chief done. Lowdore was nearly dry in the 
morning, and on our return it was in great force. 
I did not think an hour's rain could possibly have 
swollen the streams so much. God bless you ! 

" R. SoUTHEY." 

The following letter refers to some apprehen- 
sion my father had been, and indeed was then 
under, respecting the payment for his Life of 



Atat. 64. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



55] 



Cowper, and labor in editing his works, in con- 
sequence of the insolvency of the firm of Bald- 
win and Cradock, who were the publishers, and 
who had engaged him to prepare the edition. 
With his usual equanimity, however, in such 
matters, although the sum at stake was for him 
a large one, he had not suffered himself to be at 
all discomposed, and patiently awaited the result, 
which was not so favorable as he had anticipated ; 
for, in addition to much trouble, and of necessity 
some anxiety, he received c£250 less than the 
stipulated payment. 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

" Keswick, Oct. 27, 1837. 
" My dear Mrs. Hodson, 

" Happily, pecuniary assistance is not needed. 
There is reason to think I shall suffer no eventual 
loss. The price to have been paid me was 1000 
guineas. That sum not having been paid upon 
the completion of the work, the copyright rests 
with me, and the property of the edition can not 
be sold without my assignment. The sum was 
intended to cover Cuthbert's expenses through 
his University course. Even if it should be ma- 
terially diminished, or lost, it will not distress 
me. Dr. Bell left me c£l000 : that sum is vest- 
ed in the French funds, and, if need be, may be 
drawn out for this purpose. But my own opin- 
ion is, that the copyright is good security for 
payment in full. I had written good part of a 
letter in reply to yours, saying that I have no 
other concern with the publishers of my poems 
than to receive from them half the eventual prof- 
its, which half is not the lion's -half. I was writ- 
ing also playfully about The Doctor ; but it was 
an effort, and I had no heart to go on, for our 
long tragedy is drawing to its close. The 
change has been very rapid. Thank God, there 
is no suffering either of body or mind. How 
long this may last it is impossible to say. To 
all appearance she is in the very last stage of 
emaciation and weakness. There is no strength 
for suffering left ; she will probably fall asleep 
like an infant, and you may imagine what a com- 
fort it is for me to believe, as I verily do, after 
two-and-forty years of marriage, that no infant 
was ever more void of offense toward God and 
man. I never knew her to do an unkind act nor 
say an unkind word. 

" We are as well as we can be in this state. 
The event has long been to be desired — the worst 
has long been past — and when one sharp grief 
is over, we shall be thankful for her deliverance 
from the body of this death. 

" God bless you, my dear Mrs. Hodson ! 

" Robert Southey." 

To Dr. Shelton Mackenzie. 

" Keswick, Nov. 3, 1837. 
" My dear Sir, 
" I am greatly obliged to you for the effioient 
and timely assistance* which you have given to 
a publication that needs all the aid it can mus- 



Dr. S. Mackenzie had reviewed the new edition of my 



ter. Longman proposed it, not because there 
was any call for such an edition, but because he 
did not like that Galignani should have the mark- 
et to himself. My own intention was to prepare 
for a posthumous collection, which I was confi- 
dent would prove a good post-obit for my chil- 
dren. The Conscript Fathers of the Row thought 
that the present ought not to be neglected for 
prospective views, and I gave up my own opin- 
ion, thinking that they were better qualified to 
form a judgment upon such points. They then 
proposed giving only a vignette title-page. Upon 
that point I represented that any such parsimony 
would be fatal to the project ; for if they made 
the book inferior in its appearance to the other 
works which had been published in the same 
manner and at the same price, it was neither 
more nor less than a confession that they had no 
reliance upon their own speculation, and did not 
think the work in sufficient repute for them to 
venture the same outlay upon it, which was 
readily advanced upon the credit of more fash- 
ionable names. They yielded to this argument, 
and have performed their part well. 

" What I aimed at in my Prefaces was to say 
neither too little nor too much, and to introduce 
no more of my own history than was naturally 
connected with the rise and progress of the re- 
spective poems. But of this there will be a 
great deal. Many years ago I began to write 
my own Life and Recollections in letters to an 
old and dear friend. About half a volume was 
produced in this way, till it became inconvenient 
to afford time for proceeding ; and, to confess the 
truth, my heart began to fail. This, no doubt, 
is the reason why so many autobiographies pro- 
ceed little beyond the stage of boyhood. So far 
all our recollections are delightful as well as 
vivid, and we remember every thing ; but when 
the cares and the griefs of life are to be raised up, 
it becomes too painful to live over the past again. 

" Doubtful, or more than doubtful as it is 
whether I shall ever have heart to proceed with 
these letters, your advice shall have the effect of 
making me say more than I had thought of say- 
ing in these prefaces. 

" Wat Tyler is printed in the second volume, 
and in the third there will be the Devil's Walk at 
much greater length than it has ever appeared. 

" You will have your reward for refusing to 
conduct a journal that aims at a mischievous 
end. The time is fast coming when it will be 
seen that measures of true reform are to be ex- 
pected from those only one of whose chief en- 
deavors it is to preserve what is good. 

" Farewell, my dear sir ; and believe me al- 
ways very truly and thankfully yours, 

"Robert Southey." 

" Keswick, Nov. 3, 1837. 
" My dear Sir, 
"I have never seen the book to which you 

father's poems in the Liverpool paper which he conduct- 
ed, and had strongly urged him, by letter, not to be toe 
brief in his autobiographical prefaces. 



552 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 64. 



allude, but I suppose it to be that which bears 
the fictitious name of Search. The end which 
I should propose and expect from any theological 
investigation would be simply a conviction that 
Christianity is neither a fable cunningly devised, 
nor a superstition which has sprung from a com- 
bination of favoring causes, but that it is a scheme 
of Providence indicated by prophecies and proved 
by miracles. With this consent of the under- 
standing, I should be satisfied in Y 's case. 

The rest would assuredly follow in due time and 
in natural course. 

" I could agree with you that ' personal iden- 
tity unbroken by death' were little to be desired, 
if it were all — if we were to begin a new life in 
the nakedness of that identity. But when we 
carry with us in that second birth all that makes 
existence valuable, our hopes and aspirations, our 
affections, our eupathies, our capacities of happi- 
ness and of improvement — when we are to be 
welcomed into another sphere by those dear ones 
who have gone before us, and are in our turn to 
welcome there those whom w r e left on earth, 
surely, of all God's blessings, the revelation which 
renders this certain is the greatest. There have 
been times in my life when my heart would have 
been broken if this belief had not supported me. 
At this moment it is worth more than all the 
world could give. 



" Nov. 4. 
" The end can not be far off, and all is going 
on most mercifully. For several days, when I 
have supported her down stairs, I have thought 
it was for the last time ; and every night, when 
she has been borne up, it has seemed to me that 
she would never be borne down alive. Thank 
God, there is no pain, no suffering of any kind, 
and only such consciousness as is consolation. 



" God bless 



R. S. 



To Joseph Cottle, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 16,1837. 
" My dear Cottle, 

" It pleased God to release my poor dear Edith 
this morning from a pitiable state of existence, 
though we have always had the consolation of 
thinking it was more painful to -witness than to 
endure. She had long been wasting away, and 
for the last month rapidly. For ten days she 
was unable to leave her bed. There seemed to 
be no suffering till excess of weakness became 
pain, and at no time any distress of mind ; for 
being sensible -where she was and w*.th whom, 
and of the dutiful affection with which she was 
attended, she was sensible of nothing more. 

" My poor daughters have been mercifully 
supported through their long trial. Now that 
the necessity for exertion is over, they feel that 
prostration which in such cases always ensues. 
But they have discharged their duties to the ut- 
most, and they will have their reward. It is a 
blessed deliverance ! the change from life to 
death, and from death to life ! inexpressibly so 
for her. 



" My dear old friend, yours affectionately, in 
weal or in woe, Robert Southey."* 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

MELANCHOLY THOUGHTS INTENDED MOVEMENTS 

REFLECTIONS ON HIS WIFe's DEATH LET- 
TER FROM MR. BEDFORD THE COPYRIGHT BILL 

REVIEW IN THE EXAMINER HIS WIFE CON- 
TINUALLY BROUGHT TO MIND WEAK STATE OF 

HIS HEALTH AND SPIRITS MISS EDGEWORTH 

INVITATION TO C. SWAIN LETTER TO HIS 

SON ON COMMENCING A COLLEGE LIFE STATE 

OF HIS HEALTH AND SPIRITS LITERARY OC- 
CUPATIONS FROUDE's REMAINS THE DOC- 
TOR TOUR IN FRANCE RETURN HOME 

GREAT STORM SAVONAROLA CHATTERTON 

MARRIAGE WITH MISS BOWLES FAILURE OF 

MIND HIS DEATH. 1837-1843. 

I have just closed a melancholy chapter, and 
I must open another — the last — in which there 
is nothing cheerful to record. During the three 
years that my mother's afflicted state continued, 
my father had borne up wonderfully, and after 
the first shock had passed away, his spirits, 
though of course not what they had been, were 
uniformly cheerful, and he had found in the per- 
formance of a sacred duty that peace and com- 
fort which in such paths is ever to be found. But 
when the necessity for exertion ceased, his spirits 
fell, and he became an altered man. Probably 
the long-continued effort began now to tell upon 
him, and the loss of her who for forty years, in 
sickness and health, had been the constant object 
of his thoughts, now caused a blank that nothing 
could fill. "I feel," he says, in one of his let- 
ters, " as one of the Siamese twins would do if 
the other had died, and he had survived the sep- 
aration." He seemed, indeed, less able to ac- 
commodate himself to his altered circumstances 
than might have been expected from the turn of 
his mind and the nature of his pursuits. 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Nov. 20, 1837. 
"My dear H. T., 

" An ever-present sense of the uncertainty of 
all human projects does not, and indeed ought 
not, to prevent me from forecasting what course 
it may be best to pursue under any probable cir- 
cumstances. For this I have had but too much 
opportunity for some time past, and temptation 
to it as well, for it was some kind of relief from 
the present and the past. 

" About the middle of January Karl must be- 
gin his residence at Oxford. I think of giving 
him charge of Kate to London, from whence she 
will proceed to Tarring. 

" Bertha and I must winter where we are 
The house can not be left without a mistress. 

" We shall find salutary occupations enough 
till Cuthbert returns about the end of March for 

• * This is endorsed, " The last letter which Joseph Cottle 
received from his old friend Robert Soufhey." 



,Etat. 64. 



ROBERT~"SOUTHE Y. 



553 



a month's recreation. That brings me to the 
month of May. By that time my extraordinaries 
will be provided for by the Admirals (whatever 
becomes of Cowper) or by the Q. R., for which 
[ have two papers in hand (Sir T. Browne, and 
Lord Howe) . Then, too, Miss Fricker will come 
from the Isle of Man to keep Mrs. Lovel com- 
pany, and, in fact, look after the house during- the 
summer months, thus placing Bertha and myself 
at liberty. 

i; In May, then (I do not look so far forward 
without misgivings) — but if all go on well, by 
God's blessing in May — I hope to leave home 
with Bertha and our invaluable Betty, whose 
services to us for five-and-twenty years, through 
weal and woe, have been beyond all price, w T ho 
loves my children as dearly as if they were her 
own, and loved their poor mother with that sort 
of attachment which is now so rarely found in 
that relation, and served her with the most affec- 
tionate and dutiful fidelity to the last. The house 
might safely be left in her charge ; but she needs 
recruiting as much as we do. So I shall go first 
with Bertha and her into Norfolk, and pass a week 
or ten days with Neville White, discharging thus 
a visit which was miserably prevented three years 
ago. Then we go to London, making little tar- 
riance there, and that chiefly for Betty's sake, 
on whom the sight of London will not be thrown 
away. By that time Kate will have got through 
both her stay at Tarring and her visit to Miss 
Fenwick ; and depositing Bertha at Tarring, I 
think of taking Kate with me to the West. One 
friend there I have lost since my last journey : it 
must have been about this very day twelve months 
that I shook hands with him, little thinking that 
it was for the last time. But there are still some 
persons there who will rejoice to see us. Old 
as my good aunt is, she may very probably be 
living ; there is Elizabeth Charter there, and there 
is Lightfoot, with either of whom w T e should feel 
at home ; on our way back there would be Miss 
Bowdes ; and very possibly Mrs. Brown may be 
m Devonshire. 

" God bless you ! R. S. 

"It has been snowing this morning for the 
first time in the valley, but the snow having 
turned to rain, I shall presently prepare for my 
daily walk, from which nothing but snow deters 
me." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq 

" Keswick, Nov. 24, 1837. 
" My dear G., 
" This event could not have been regarded 
otherwise than as a deliverance* at any time, since 
there ceased to be a hope of mental restoration ; 
and for several weeks it was devoutly to be de- 
sired. Yet it has left a sense of bereavement 
which I had not expected to feel, lost as she had 
been to me for the last three years, and worse 
than lost. During more than two thirds of my 
life, she had been the chief object of my thoughts, 
and I of hers. No man ever had a truer help- 
mate, no children a more careful mother. No 
family was ever more wisely ordered, no house- 



keeping ever conducted with greater prudence 
or greater comfort. Every thing was left to her 
management, and managed so quietly and so 
well, that, except in times of sickness and sor- 
row, I had literally no cares. 

" I always looked upon it as conducing much 
to our happiness that we were of the same age, 
for in proportion to any perceptible disparity on 
that point, the marriage union is less complete ; 
and so completely was she part of myself, that 
the separation makes me feel like a different 
creature. While she was herself, I had no sense 
of growing old, or, at most, only such as the 
mere lapse of time brought with it : there was 
no weight of years upon me ; my heart continu- 
ed young, and my spirits retained their youthful 
buoyancy. Now, the difference of five-and-thirty 
years between me and Bertha continually makes 
me conscious of being an old man. There is no 
one to partake with me the recollections of the 
best and happiest portion of my life ; and for that 
reason, were there no other, such recollections 
must henceforth be purely painful, except when 
I connect them with the prospect of futurity. 

" You will not suppose that I encourage this 
mood of mind. But it is well sometimes to look 
sorrow in the face, and always well to understand 
one's own condition. 

" Meantime you may be assured that I shall 
not be wanting in self-management, as far as that 
can avail ; that I shall think as little as I can of 
the past, and pursue as far as possible my wonted 
course of life.* 



* I transcribe here the chief part of Mr. Bedford's ad- 
mirable reply to this letter : 

" My dear Southey, 

" Your letter, as you may suppose, is one of the highest 
interest to mo, as affording a perfect picture of your pres- 
ent state of mind and feelings ; and it is also satisfactory. 

"However much the separation may have been antici- 
pated, or, for her sake, even desirable, I am not at all sur- 
prised that you feel the sense of bereavement as you do at 
this moment, or that your recollection rather reverts to 
her in her happier days than in the last few years of sick- 
ness and helplessness. It is quite natural, and the period 
for such recollections will run its course, to be succeeded 
by a tender, a cherished, and in its effects a most consola- 
tory feeling. 

" If you and I had not resembled each other in some 
material points, we could not have maintained an un- 
broken intimacy for five-and-forty years, and when I speak 
from observation and experience of myself, I speak for 
you also. I may therefore, on these grounds, say that I 
believe few men have preserved the youth of their minds 
as long as we have. For my own part I am truly grateful 
for this, for I consider such a possession as one of Heaven's 
best blessings, inasmuch as it affords a protection against 
the evils of life, and, like youth of body, contains an elastic 
power of resistance to every blow, and encourages the 
spring and growth of hope in the very depth of misfor- 
tune. My dear Southey, I have no hesitation in believing 
that in due time you will again be such as you have been. 
You have great and happy "means within your own reach 
for attaining this desirable state, in the society of your 
own excellent children, with whom you have ever lived 
so much like a brother, that I can not believe the differ- 
ence in your mutual years can create any strong line 
of demarkation between you. You will now consider 
them with (if possible) increased love, and they will look 
to you with more reverent affection. Surely these must 
operate to break down the bar which difference of vears 
might else interpose between you. to prevent that perfect 
intercourse and fellow-feeling which will constitute so 
much of your happiness and theirs. Recollection will op- 
erate to strengthen the tie on both sides. I have often 
called to mind the last act of my dear father's life that dis- 



554 



LIFE aND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 64 



" Remember me most kindly to Miss Page. 



To H. Taylor, Esq. 

"Keswick, Dec. 2, 1337. 
" My dear H. T., 

"I have received Spring Rice's circular about 
the pensions, and take for granted that it comes 
as a mere circular, and therefore requires no an- 
swer. 

" Moore and I being coupled upon this occa- 
sion, it is not likely that our pensions will be ob- 
jected to, on either side of the House, upon the 
ground that literature, like any other profession, 
brings with it its own emoluments. But if that 
argument should be used against an enlargement 
of the copyright , which is not unlikely, it will 
be fitting that some one should state how the 
case stands in my instance : that, followed as a 
profession, with no common diligence and no or- 
dinary success, it has enabled me to live respect- 
ably (which, without the aid of my first pension, 
it would not have done), and that all the provision 
I have been able to make for my family consists 
in a life insurance, of which about three fourths 
are covered by the salary of the laureateship. 
Were I to die before Talfourd's Bill passes, the 
greater part of my poems and no little of my 
prose would be seized immediately by some ras- 
cally booksellers, as property which the law al- 
lowed them to scramble for. It is true that, as 
the law now stands, I secure a new term of copy- 
right by the corrected edition now in course of 
publication ; but these fellows would publish from 
the former copies, and thereby take in all those 
purchasers who know nothing about the difference 
between one edition and another. 

" It is well that Windham is not living, and 
that there is no one in either house on whom his 
mantle has fallen, for he would surely have taken 
the opposite side to Talfourd, and argued upon 
the folly of altering an established law for the 
sake of benefiting one or two individuals in the 
course of a century. He would ask what the 
copyrights are which would at this time be most 
beneficial to the family of the author : the Cook- 
ery Book would stand first ; within my recol- 
lection, the most valuable would have been Blair's 
Lectures, the said Blair's Sermons, Taplin's Far- 
riery, Burn's Justice, and Lindley Murray's En- 
glish Grammar. 

w *5? Tv w w -7? tJF 

" Monday, 4. 
" Thank you for the Examiners ; they shall 
be duly returned. I would never desire better 
praise, and must not complain because there is 



played consciousness, and always with such pleasure as I 
look for for you. Henry and I were standing on each side 
of the bed, with one of his hands in each of ours. He had 
long lain quite still, and only breathed, when, to our joint 
surprise, he lifted one, the disabled arm, and brought our 
two hands in union across his breast. After that he never 
moved for several hours, but passed imperceptibly to a 
state, I hope and trust, of happiness. Excuse me for this, 
but I always dwell upon the recollection of that act with 
delight, and though it be of the tenderest character, it is 
unmingled with pain. ****** 
" Ever yours, my dear Southey, 

"G. C. Bedfoed." 



more of it than is good. In the piece which they 
praise as resembling Cowper, there is nothing 
Cowperish ; and, on the other hand, in the sub- 
stitution of the general crimes of the Terrorists 
in France for the instances of Brissot and Ma- 
dame Roland, there is nothing but what is in per- 
fect accord with the pervading sentiment of the 
poem. Madame Roland's praise is left where it 
was appropriate, in the second volume. As for 
Brissot, I knew him only by newspapers, when 
his death, and that of the great body of the Gi- 
rondists with him, kept me (as I well remember) 
a whole night sleepless. But I know him now 
by two volumes of his Memoirs, which, though 
made up, are from family materials ; and I know 
him by nine volumes of his own works, and there- 
by know that he was a poor creature. And I 
know by Garat's book that the difference between 
the Brissotines and the Jacobines was that, play- 
ing for heads, the Brissotines lost the game. 
"God bless you! R. S." 

To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 14, 1837. 
" My dear H. T., 
" # # * # # # # 

It can not often have happened that any one 
should have a lost wife brought to his mind in 
the way that I am continually reminded of my 
poor Edith. Before any of my children were old 
enough to make extracts for me, it was one of 
her pleasures to assist me in that way. Many 
hundred notes in her writing (after so many have 
been made use of) are arranged among the ma- 
terials to which every day of my life I have oc- 
casion to refer, and thus she will continue to be 
my helpmate as long as I live and retain my 
senses. But all these notes bring with them the 
vivid recollection of the when, and the where. 
and the why they were made ; and whether the 
sight of her hand-writing will ever be regarded 
without emotion, is more than I can promise 
myself. 
'"God bless you! R. S." 

To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. 

" Keswick, Dec. 29, 1837. 
" My dear G., 

"I was not aware that it was so long since 
you had heard from me ; of me you could only 
have heard from H. T., with whom I have a 
pretty constant communication, owing to the 
transmission of proofs. These come thick ; thero 
has been little tinkering in the third volume, but 
the sixth, on which I am at work, requires a good 
deal, in repairing some old wefts and strays, and 
preparing prolegomena. Moreover, I am re- 
viewing Barrow's Life of Lord Howe ; so you 
see I am not idle. 

"In other respects I can give no good report 
of myself. There is every possible reason to be 
thankful for my poor Edith's release, and God 
knows I am truly thankful for it. But my spirits, 
which bore up through three trying years, and 
continued to do so while there was immediate 
necessity for exertion, show as yet no tendency 



jEtat. 64. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



555 



to recover that elasticity whicn they iost when 
the necessity ceased. Time will set all to rights. 
As ihe days lengthen, I shall be able to rise ear- 
lier, which will be a great benefit, the worst 
hours being those in which I lie awake, and they 
are many. The best are those when I am em- 
ployed, and you know I am not given to idle- 
ness ; but it behooves me to manage myself in 
this respect. Except in the main point of sleep, 
the bodily functions go on well. I walk duly and 
dutifully. But I am as much disposed to be si- 
lent in my own family now, as I ever was in com- 
pany for which I felt little or no liking ; and if 
it were not plainly a matter of duty to resist this 
propensity, I should never hear the sound of my 
own voice. 

" Nothing more has been heard of Baldwin and 
Cradock's affairs. But I must tell you what it 
will give you pleasure to hear. As soon as 
Lightfoot learned that the sum which I had (as 
I thought) provided for carrying Cuthbert through 
the University was supposed to be in danger of 
being lost, he offered to relieve me from all anx- 
iety upon that score. Knowing the sincerity of 
that offer, I am just as much obliged to him as 
if there were any necessity for accepting it. But 
Dr. Bell's legacy is available for that purpose. 
And as for my Cowperage, if it be recovered, as 
I think it will, so much the better ; if it be lost, 
it will never enter into the thoughts that keep 
me wakeful at night, or in the slightest degree 
trouble me by day. 

# # # . # # # # 

u To-day (30th) the sun shines, and it is some 
satisfaction to see that there still is a sun, for he 
has been so long among the non apparentibus, 
that if I jumped to my conclusions as eagerly as 
some of our modern philosophers, I might have 
pronounced him to be not in existence. 

" Your brother ought to reflect that though it 
is many a poor fellow's duty to expose his life 
upon deck, and to lose it there, it is no man's duty 
to die at the desk ; and, as I once heard a med- 
ical student say, when he expressed his satisfac- 
tion at having escaped being taken upon a resur- 
rectionary party, 'there is no glory in it.' The 
first duty of any man, upon whose life the hap- 
piness or the well-being of others is in great de- 
gree dependent, is to take care of it. God bless 
\vm! Our love to Miss Page. R. S." 

To Dr. Shelton Mackenzie. 

"Keswick, Jan. 25, 1838. 
" My dear Sir, 
" I am much obliged to you for your good serv- 
ices in one paper, and the Canadian news in an- 
other. It has never been my fortune to be en- 
gaged with any bookseller who made good use 
of the periodical press to promote the sale of any 
of my works. They lay out lavishly in adver- 
tisements, when a tenth part of the money so ex- 
pended would, if laid out in extracts, produce ten 
times the effect. 

" I recollect hearing of Miss Edgeworth* at 
* Dr. Mackenzie had mentioned to Miss Ldgeworfh that 



Dr. Holland's, but have no recollection of seeing 
her there ; but I very well remember seeing her 
more than once at Clifton in 1800, at which time 
her father said to me, ' Take my word for it, sir, 
your genius is for comedy.' He formed this 
opinion, I believe, from some of the Nondescripts, 
and one or two Ballads which had just then ap- 
peared in the Annual Anthology. This, I think, 
will be worth mentioning in the Preface to the 
Ballads. When you write to Miss Edge worth, 
present my thanks for her obliging message, and 
say that I am pleased at being remembered by her. 
"It is mortifying to think how few situations 
there are in this country for men of letters — 
fewer, I believe, than in any other part of civil- 
ized Europe — and what there are, leave the oc- 
cupant very little leisure to profit by the stores 
of learning with which he is surrounded. The 

editorship of the , or of any literary journal, 

would be a more agreeable office than that of a 
public librarian, in this respect that your own 
mind would have more scope ; and private libra- 
rians there are very few. Lord Spencer, I sup- 
pose, must have one as a matter of necessity. 
The only instance within my knowledge in which 
a man of letters was invited to such an appoint- 
ment not because the library was extensive 
enough to need his attendance, but because it 
was thought desirable for him, is that of Jere- 
miah Wiffen, and no doubt he owed it to his be- 
ing a native of Woburn. The Duke of Bedford 
might otherwise never have heard of him, nor 
cared for him if he had. Farewell, my dear sir. 
" Yours very truly, 

"Robert Southed " 

To Charles Swain, Esq. 

"Keswick, March 9, 1838. 
" My dear Sir, 

" Since you heard from me last I have been 
so much shaken that there is little likelihood of 
my ever being myself again. But it would be 
ungrateful indeed in me to complain, who have 
had a greater share of happiness than falls to the 
lot of one in ten thousand, and that happiness of 
a higher degree and of much longer continuance, 
with health that had scarcely ever been inter- 
rupted, and with a flow of spirits that never ebbed. 
I can not be too thankful for these manifold bless- 
ings, let the future be what it may. 

" Cuthbert comes home the first week in April 
for about a month's vacation. Can you give your- 
self a holiday, and pass with us as much of that 
month as you can spare ? I can not now climb 
the mountains with you — not for want of strength, 



my father was employed in working up materials for his 
own life, and had communicated the substance of her re- 
ply, which was as follows : 

"I thank you for telling me that Southey is engaged in 
literary biography. His Life of Nelson is one of the finest 
pieces of biography I know. I have seen its effects on 
many young minds. I had the honor of meeting Mr. 
Southey some years since, at our mutual friend's, Dr. Hol- 
land's, in London. But such is the nature of that sort of 
town intercourse, that I had not opportunity of hearing 
much of his conversation, and he none of mine ; therefore 
I can hardly presume that he remembers me. But I would 
wish to convey to him, through you, the true expression 
of my respect for his character, and admiration of his tal- 
ents, and of the use be has made of them." 



556 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



JKtat. 64. 



still less of inclination, but because of an infirm- 
ity (I know not how or when occasioned) but re- 
cently discovered, which condemns me to cau- 
tion, at least, for the rest of my life. But I shall 
be heartily glad to see you, and to make your visit 
as pleasant as I can. You were the last guesr, 
whom my dear Edith received with pleasure. 

" Most persons, I believe, are displeased with 
any alterations that they find in a favorite poem ; 
the change, whether for the better or the worse, 
balks them, as it were, and it is always un- 
pleasant to be balked. In tinkering one's old 
verses, there is a great chance of making two 
flaws where you are mending one. However, to 
my great joy, I have now done with tinkering ; 
the last pieces which required correction on the 
score of language are in that volume of Ballads 
(beginning with The Maid of the Inn), which 
come next in order of publication. I know not 
yet how the adventure is likely to turn out. The 
number struck ofF at first was 1500, which the 
publishers say will just about cover the expenses, 
leaving the profit to arise from any further use 
of the stereotype and the engravings. Some- 
thing may be expected from the occasional sale 
of separate portions, for which merely a new title- 
page will be required ; in that way the long po- 
ems may tempt purchasers by their cheapness. 
But, apart from all other considerations, I am 
very thankful that I was persuaded, against my 
inclination, and in some degree, also, against my 
judgment, to undertake such a revision of my 
poetical works. The sort of testamentary feel- 
ing with which it was undertaken may prove to 
have been an ominous one : certain it is, that if 
the task had been deferred but a few months, I 
should never have had heart to perform it, though 
it was a duty which I owe to myself and to the 
mterests of my family. 

" And now, my dear sir, God bless you ! 
" Yours with sincere regard, 

"Robert Southey." 

To C. C. Southey, Esq. 

" Keswick, Feb. 7, 1838. 
" My dear Cuthbert, 

"It is right that you should clearly understand 
what you have to reckon on for your ways and 
meaus. Two hundred a year will be a liberal al- 
lowance, probably above the average at Queen's, 
which has not the disadvantage of being an ex- 
pensive college. Whether I live or die, this is 
provided for you. If I live and do well, my cur- 
rent occupations will supply it. In any other 
event, there is Dr. Bell's legacy in the French 
Funds, even if the Cowperage should not be forth- 
coming. 

" It is an uncomfortable thing to be straitened 
in your situation ; but, for most under-graduates, 
it is far more injurious to have too much. If you 
can save from your income, I shall be glad ; and 
I have confidence enough in you to believe that 
you would have much more satisfaction in saving 
from it than you could derive from any needless 
expenditure. I do no not mean that you should 
receive less from me, if 3 r ou find that you can do 



with less, but that you should lay by the surplus 
for your own use. Next to moral and religious 
habits, habits of frugality are the most import- 
ant ; they belong, indeed, to our duties. In this 
virtue your dear mother never was surpassed. 
Had it not been for her admirable management, 
this house could not have been kept up, nor this 
family brought up as they were. God never 
blessed any man with a truer helpmate than she 
was to me in this and in every other respect, till 
she ceased to be herself. 

" I dwell upon this, not as supposing you need 
any exhortation upon the subject, for I have the 
most perfect confidence in you ; no father ever 
had less apprehension for a son in sending him 
to the University. But frugality is a virtue which 
will contribute continually and most essentially 
to your comfort ; without it, it is impossible that 
you should do well, and you know not how much 
nor how soon it may be needed. It is far from 
my intention, if I should live till you take your 
degree, to hurry you into the world, and bid you 
shift for yourself as soon as you can. On the 
contrary, there is nothing on which I could look 
forward with so much hope as to directing your 
studies after you have finished your collegiate 
course, and training you to build upon my foun- 
dations. That object is one which it would be 
worth wishing to live for. But when you take 
your degree, I, if I should then be living, shall 
be hard upon threescore and ten. My whole 
income dies with me. In its stead there would 
be (at this time) about 668000 immediately from 
the insurance, and this is all that there will be 
(except c£200 or d£300 for current expenses) till 
my papers and copyrights can be made avail- 
able. At first, therefore, great frugality will be 
required, though eventually there may be a fair 
provision for all. I make no estimate of my li- 
brary, because, if it please God that you should 
make use of the books in pursuing my course, 
they would be of more value to you than any 
sum that could be raised by dispersing them. 

"It is fitting that you should bear all this in 
mind, but not for discouragement. Your pros- 
pects, God be thanked, are better than if you 
were heir to a large estate — far better for your 
moral and intellectual nature, your real welfare, 
your happiness here and hereafter. 

" God bless you, my dear Cuthbert ! 
" Your affectionate father, 

"Robert Southey." 

To the Rev. Neville White. 

" Keswick, Feb. 14, 1838. 
" My dear Neville, 
" Long ago I ought to have written to you, but 
to you and my other friends I have as little ex- 
cuse to offer as an insolvent debtor can make to 
his creditors. Of late, indeed, I have waited not 
so much for a more convenient season as for bet- 
ter spirits and for better health. I have been 
very much out of order in many ways — old in- 
firmities reappeared and brought others in their 
train, and I could both see and feel such changes 
in myself as induced a not unreasonable appro- 



Mr at. 64. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



557 



hension that my constitution was breaking up. 
I have had recourse, under my brother's direc- 
tion, to tonics and opiates : they have quieted the 
most distressing symptoms, and abated others, 
and I hope that milder weather, when it comes, 
will rid me of what I suppose to be rheumatic 
affection in the right hip. So much for my mal- 
adies. No one can have enjoyed better health 
than I have been favored with during what has 
now not been a short life, nor has any one been 
blessed with a greater portion of happiness — hap- 
piness not to be surpassed in this world in its 
kind and degree, and continued through a long 
course of years. I never can be too thankful to 
the Giver of all good. 

" I have recovered sufficiently to be in trim 
for work, though it is hardly to be expected that 
I should do any thing with the same heart and 
hope as in former days. However, I shall do 
my best, and endeavor, by God's mercy, to take 
the remaining stage of my journey as cheerily as 
I can. 

" Remember me most kindly to your fireside ; 
and believe me always, my dear Neville, yours 
with true and affectionate regard, 

u Robert Southey." 

At this time he was laboring under apprehen- 
sion of an infirmity which, though not dangerous, 
would have prevented him taking active exercise, 
and caused him great inconvenience and discom- 
fort, and this naturally preyed somewhat on his 
spirits 5 fortunately, however, he determined at 
once to seek London advice, and went up to town 
to consult Sir B. Brodie, who quickly relieved 
his apprehension, pronouncing that there was no 
real cause for alarm. 

He consequently returned home, reassured on 
this point. 

To Miss Charter. 

"Keswick, April 11, 1838. 
" Dear Miss Charter, 
" I am much obliged to you for all the trouble 
you have taken ; trouble being, I am sorry to say, 
the only privilege accruing at present from the 
title of friend, which you have possessed with me 
for so many years, and will continue to hold 
while we retain any remembrance of the past. 

tv TV tit TV TV TV tv 

" I have now been returned a week, in which 
time I have been fully employed in writing let- 
ters and correcting proof-sheets, except yester- 
day, when great part of the clay was passed upon 
the sofa, for the sake of putting to sleep a cold 
in the head. The weather has been wet and 
stormy ; and it is better that I should keep with- 
in doors, than continue to brave all weathers, as 
I was wont to do, till I get into good condition 
again, if it please God. Shaken as I have been, 
there is still a reasonable hope of this. 

" * # Kate is at Mr. Rickman's now. 

Bertha was very busily employed during my ab- 
sence in painting and papering — making altera- 
tions which are not the less melancholy because 
it was necessary that they should be made. She 



has made a good choice in her cousin Herbert ; 
and happy man is his dole, I may say with equal 
truth. They may have long to wait before he 
gets a living ; but meantime there is hepe, with- 
out which life is but a living death. He loves 
literature, and his situation as second librarian 
at the Bodleian is favorable for literary pursuits. 
My papers may be intrusted to his care, if I 
should die before Cuthbert is old enough to super- 
intend their publication. 

TV TT TV TV TT TV TV 

" Cuthbert's vacation is only for a month. He 
must be at chapel on Sunday the 29th. I shall 
proceed the more earnestly with my work, that 
I may have the shorter time to pass in solitude 
and silence. What I have to do is to get through 
a volume of the Admirals, in which little progress 
has been made, and a reviewal of Sir Thomas 
Browne's works. My Poems require no further 
tinkering ; I have only to correct the proofs of 
the remaining three volumes, and to write the 
prefaces to them. Arranged and dated as the 
Poems now are, they communicate to those who 
have known me well much of my history and 
character; and a great deal has been reserved 
which there would have been no propriety in 
telling the public while I am in the land of the 
living. There is nothing, thank God, which I 
could wish to be concealed after my death ; but 
the less that a living author says of himself (ex- 
cept in verse), the better. God bless you, dear 
Miss Charter ! 

" Yours with sincere regard, R. S." 



To 



" Easter Monday (April 1?\ 1838. 
" My dear Sir, 
« # # # # # # * 

God forgive those who bring upon others any 
unhappiness which could be prevented by a wiser 
and kinder course of conduct. If we could be 
spared the misery which others make for us, lit- 
tle would there be but what might be borne with 
wholesome resignation as the appointment of 
Providence, qr as the proper consequence of our 
own errors and misdeeds. 

" Time will do all for you, and will probably 
not be long in doing it. With an old subject like 
me there is more to do, and of that kind that 
there is little hope it can be done before the cur- 
tain falls. I could always, when I went from 
home, leave all my habits behind me. It is a far 
different thing to feel that I have lost them — that 
my way of life is changed, the few points which 
are unchangeable serving only to make the 
change in all other respects more sensible. 

" I thank God I am well in health, having eas- 
ily got rid of a cold ; and now that all the proofs 
in your packet have been got through, and direc- 
tions given to the printer concerning the eighth 
volume, I shall make up my dispatches, set my 
clogs by the fire, and emerge from solitude ; not 
to look for society which is not to be found, nor 
to be wished for, out of a very small circle which 
every year contracts, but to take a dutiful walk. 
God bless you ! R. S." 



558 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



iETAT. 64. 



To Henry Taylor, Esq. 

" Keswick, June 10, 1838. 
11 My dear H. T., 

; Whether Hope and I shall ever become in- 
timate again in this world, except on the pilgrim- 
age to the next, is very doubtful ; nor ought it 
to be of much importance to a man in his sixty- 
fourth year. I have had a large portion of hap- 
piness, and of the highest kind : five-and-thirty 
years of such happiness few men are blessed 
with. I have drunk, too, of the very gall of bit- 
terness ; yet not more than was wholesome : the 
cup has been often administered, no doubt be- 
cause it was needed. The moral discipline 
through which I have passed has been more com- 
plete than the intellectual. Both began early; 
and, all things considered, I do not think any cir- 
cumstances could have been more beneficial to 
me than those in which I have been placed. If 
not hopeful, therefore, I am more than contented, 
artd disposed to welcome and entertain any good 
that may yet be in store for me, without any 
danger of being disappointed if there should be 
none. 

" I am very glad that Kate is to join Miss 
Fen wick ; but I must warn both Kate and Dora 
against converting dormitories into loquitories, 
and talking each other to death before they get 
to the end of their journey. God bless you ! 

"R. S." 

To the Rev. John Miller. 

"Keswick, July 21, 1838. 
" My dear Sir, 

" I was very much pleased with Bishop Jebb's 
first opinion of your Bampton Lectures, and not 
less pleased with the greater part of his more 
elaborate critique. I did not agree with him in 
any of his objections, nor has a fresh perusal of 
that critique, after reading your Preface, altered 
or even modified my first impression in the slight- 
est degree. It appears to me that you were right 
in noticing his remarks as fully as you have done, 
and that it could not have been done in a better 
spirit nor in a more conclusive manner. 

t: The publication of Froude's Remains is like- 
ly to do more harm than is capable of do- 
ing. ' The Oxford School' has acted most un- 
wisely in giving its sanction to such a deplorable 
example of mistaken zeal. Of the two extremes 
— the too little and the too much — the too little 
is that which is likely to produce the worst con- 
sequence to the individual, but the too much is 
more hurtful to the community ; for it spreads, 
and rages too, like a contagion. 

" I hear, though I have not seen, that another 
volume of The Doctor is announced. You and 
5, therefore, may shortly expect it, if the masked 
author keeps his good custom of sending it to us. 
Some letters, published in the Sheffield Mercury, 
have been collected into two small volumes, en- 
titled ; The Tour of the Don.' They contain a 
chapter which is headed ' Doncaster and the Doc- 
tor.' The writer reminds the Doncasterians of 
the visit, ' not a clandestine one,' of the worthy 



laureate to their good town, some ten years agone, 
accompanied, as some may recollect, by his love- 
ly daughter, ' the dark-eyed Bertha ;' and this he 
mentions as one of the facts which { appear in- 
dubitably to identify the author of The Doctor 
with the author of Thalaba.' The conclusion 
would not have followed, even if the premises 
had been true. But the truth upon which he 
has built a fallacious argument is, that about ten 
years ago I passed a night at Sheffield on the way 
to London. Mj daughter Edith was one of our 
traveling party ; and certainly there was nothing 
clandestine in the visit, for I wrote notes to Mont- 
gomery and to Ebenezer Elliott to come to me 
at the inn — the only time I ever saw either of 
those remarkable men. James Everett, a Meth 
odist preacher, and also a remarkable man, heard 
from one of them where I was, and volunteered 
a visit. So it was soon known that I was in 
Sheffield. It is not often that a mistake of this 
kind can so plainly be explained. ' Well,' Lati- 
mer used to say, ' there is nothing hid but it shall 
be opened.' 

" Farewell, my dear sir ; and believe me al- 
ways j T ours with sincere regard and respect, 
"Robert Southey." 

For some time my father had been meditating 
a short journey on the Continent, to which his 
friends also urged him, in the hopes it might aid 
in re-establishing his health and spirits, which, 
though both were somewhat amended, seemed 
greatly to need some change. A party of six 
was accordingly soon formed for the purpose, and 
a tour arranged, through Normandy, Brittany, 
and a part of Touraine, to terminate at Paris. 

The party consisted of Mr. Senhouse, of Neth- 
erhall, who had been with my father in Switzer- 
land in 1817 ; Mr. Kenyon, also a friend of long 
standing ; Mr. Henry Crabbe Robinson, and Cap- 
tain Jones, R.N. ; my father and myself made up 
the number. At the end of August we all met 
in London, and, crossing to Calais, commenced 
our excursion, the course of which is indicated 
in the next letter, and which proved as agreea- 
ble as favorable weather, an interesting line of 
country, and a party disposed to be pleased with 
every thing could make it. 

In all we saw my father took much interest, 
and while we were actually traveling, the change 
and excitement seemed to keep his mind up to 
its usual pitch. He bore all inconveniences with 
his wonted good humor, and his vast stores of 
historical knowledge furnished abundant topics 
of conversation. 

Still, however, I could not fail to perceive a 
considerable change in him from the time we had 
last traveled together : all his movements were 
slower, he was subject to frequent fits of absence, 
and there was an indecision in his manner, and 
an unsteadiness in his step, which was wholly 
unusual with him. 

The point in which he seemed to me to fail 
most was, that he continually lost his way. even 
in the hotels we stopped at ; and, perceiving this. 
I watched him constantly, as, although he him- 



/Etat. 65. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



559 



self affected to make light of it, and laughed at 
his own mistakes, he was evidently sometimes 
painfully conscious of his failing memory in this 
respect. 

His journal also, for he still kept up his old 
habit of recording minutely all he saw, is veiy 
different from that of former journeys — breaks 
off abruptly when about two thirds of our tour 
was completed, aivl snows, especially toward the 
close, a change n his hand-writing, which, as 
his malady crept on, became more and more 
marked, until, in some of the last notes he ever 
wrote, the letters are formed like the early efforts 
of a child. 

To John May, Esq. 

" Dieppe, Sept. 2, 1838. 
" My dear John May, 

" Thus far our journey has been in all respects 
favorable. You saw us proceeding with weath- 
er which was only too fine, inasmuch as it soon 
became hot and dusty, such weather bringing 
with it a plague of flies, who insisted upon being 
inside passengers, and whenever I was inclined 
to doze, and, indeed, could not keep awake, some 
one of the Egyptian enemies presently awakened 
me by alighting upon the most prominent feature 
of my face. We had a short and pleasant pas- 
sage the next morning, and remained one day at 
Calais for the purpose of engaging carriages for 
the journey, Kenyon having recommended that 
we should travel post, as the only means by 
wlfich we could command our own time, choose 
our own route, stop where we would, and remain 
as long as seemed good to us at any place. 
This I had found the most advisable mode when 
traveling with poor Nash and Senhouse in 1817. 

" I am now writing at Blois, on Friday, Sept. 
28. Our faces were turned homeward when we 
left Nantes on Sunday last, Sept. 23. We had 
then accomplished the two chief objects of our 
journey — that is, we had been to Mount St. Mi- 
chael's and to Carnac, the only two days concern- 
ing which there could be any solicitude concern- 
ing the state of the weather. In both instances 
we were most fortunate. We came to the mount 
during the neap tides and in a clear day, escap- 
ing thus all dangers and inconveniences that, at 
ordinary tides, the state of the weather might 
have occasioned, and fogs at any time. Cuth- 
bert and I had seen our own St. Michael's Mount 
in 1836. The French is the more remarkable, 
because of its position, which is always a waste 
either of water or of sand. The mount itself is 
not much higher, if at all, I think, than the Cor- 
nish Mount, but the superstructure of building is 
much greater, including a small fishing town, a 
large prison, a garison, houses for the governor 
and other officers, and, on the summit, a church. 
Our own mount, on the contrary, is far the more 
beautiful object, and, except a few mean houses 
at the landing-places, there is nothing to excite 
any uncomfortable reflections. The rock itself 
reminded me of Cintra in this respect, that it 
consisted in great part of rocks piled on rocks, 
and on the summit the governor's house and the 



church very much resembled in their situation 
the Penha Convent. The mount stands also in 
a small bay, and is itself a beautiful object, in a 
part of the country which is itself regarded as 
the most genial part of the West of England. 

" Another place which we were desirous of 
seeing was the great Druidical monuments, 
known by the name of Carnac, from the nearest 
village. They are the most extensive Druidical 
remains that have yet been discovered, the stones 
at the lowest computation not being fewer than 
four thousand, and extending in parallel lines 
over a great extent of country ; none of these are 
so large as those of Stonehenge, and they are all 
single stones. But there are many of considera- 
ble magnitude, and many have been destroyed be- 
fore a stop was put by authority to such destruc- 
tion, and many are built up in walls ; but there 
remains enough to astonish the beholder. 

" To-day we have seen the Castle of Amboise, 
which Louis Philippe began to repair when he 
was Duke of Orleans, but which, though it is a 
beautiful place, commanding fine views, and in 
itself a comfortable palace, there being nothing 
too large to be inconsistent with comfort, he has 
never set foot in himself. I can account for this 
only by supposing that as the very beautiful chap- 
el which they are repairing contains the intended 
mausoleum for himself and his royal family, that 
consideration may dispose him to regard it with 
a melancholy feeling, which he is not willing to 
induce. 

" To-morrow we shall see what is most worth 
seeing at Blois, and proceed after breakfast to 
Orleans, where we shall remain on Sunday. I 
should tell you that I have seen Joan of Arc's 
monument at Rouen, and the Castle of Chinon, 
and the apartment in the ruins there in which she 
had her first interview with the king ; so, when 
I shall have seen Orleans, I shall have sufficient 
knowledge of the localities to correct any mis- 
takes into which I may, indeed must, have fallen. 

" The other places of most interest which we 
have seen are Havre, by which port I propose 
returning, Honfleur, Caen, Bayeux, Granville, St. 
Malo, Nantes, Angers, Saumur, Tours. Nor- 
mandy and Bretagne we have seen satisfactorily, 
and were as much delighted with Normandy as 
we were surprised by the miserable condition 
and more miserable appearance of our Breton 
cousins : they seem not to partake in the slight- 
est degree of that prosperity which is every where 
else apparent in France. Louis Philippe is both 
Pontifex and Viafex maximus, if there be such 
a word. The roads are undergoing, at the ex- 
pense of government, a most thorough repair, 
greatly to our annoyance in traveling over them 
in the course of remaking. I know not how many 
suspension bridges we have seen, finished or in 
progress, and every large place bears evident 
marks of improvement upon a great scale. 

" I hope to be at Paris on the 4th or oth of Oc- 
tober. There our party separates : Kenyon and 
Captain Jones proceed to the Low Countries ; 
Robinson remains a while at Paris ; Cuthbert, I. 
and Mr. Senhouse make our wav bv one steam- 



560 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



jEtat. 65. 



er down the Seine to Havre, and by another from 
Havre to Southampton. From thence Cuthbert 
proceeds to London and Oxford. Senhouse to Cum- 
berland, and I to Lymington, where I shall re- 
main a few weeks with Miss Bowles, and get 
through some work, where I shall be free from 
all interruption. 

"I have had no opportunity of purchasing any 
books, there being no old book shops in any of 
the great towns through which we have passed : 
but at Paris my only business will be Jo look for 
those which I want. 

" And now, my dear old friend, God bless you ! 
Remember me to your daughters, and believe me 
always yours most affectionately, 

" Robert Southey." 

To John Rickman, Esq. 

" Buckland, Lymington, Oct., 1638. 
" My dear R., 

" I heard good accounts of you on my journey, 
and having since seen that you were present at 
the prorogation, venture to infer that you are no 
longer under the oculist's care. 

" Nothing could be more fortunate than my ex- 
pedition was in every thing. The weather was 
a* fine as it could be. During six weeks there 
was not one wet day ; what rain fell was gener- 
ally by night, and never more than sufficed for 
laying the dust and cooling the air. We got to 
Carnac. Chantrey had desired me to look for 
some small red stones,* which Buckland, or 
some of his disciples, had been much puzzled 
about, because they are not pebbles of the soil, 
and have all evidently been rubbed down to dif- 
ferent angles. Just such stones so rubbed are 
used by Chantrey's own people in polishing the 
finer parts of their statuary ; and he fancied this 
was proof that the people who erected the stones 
at Carnac must have used them for some similar 
purpose. I came to the conclusion that the Celts. 
which are so hard and so highly polished, were 
brought to that high polish by these instruments. 

" The Bretons are the most miserable people 
I have ever seen, except those inhabitants of the 
Alps who suffer with goitres, and among whom 
the Cretons are found. The}' look, indeed, as if 
they lived in an unhealthy country, and as if they 
were only half fed. Yet I know not that there 
arc any causes to render it insalubrious : it is not 
ill cultivated, and there is no want of industry in 
the inhabitants. The only cause that I can im- 
agine for their squalid appearance and their evi- 
dently stunted stature (if that cause be sufficient) 
is their extreme uncleanness. The human ani- 
mal can not thrive in its own filth, like the pig ; 
and the pig, no doubt, is a very inferior creature 
in its tame state to what it is when wild in the 
forest. 

" I never saw so many dwarfs any where as in 
Brittany — more, indeed, when traveling through 
that province than in the whole course of my life. 

* We found a number of these stones, all in one place, 
as if they had been poured out in aheap, nearly overgrown 
with grass and weeds. I brought some home, and took 
them to Sir F. Chantrey, who recognized them as of the 
same description as those he had seen before. — Ed. 



" There is one work which Mr. Telford would 
have regarded with great interest if he ever hap- 
pened to see it — the Levee, as it is called, which 
protects a large tract of country from the inun- 
dations of the Loire. This work is of such an- 
tiquity that it is not known when it was com- 
menced, but it seems first to have been taken 
up as a public work by our Henry II. Perhaps 
there is no other embankment which protects so 
great an extent of country. 

" I am finishing here the reviewal of Telford's 
book, which I hope to complete in about a week's 
time, taking care not to make it too long, and 
therefore passing rapidly over his latter works, 
and winding up in the way of a eulogium, which 
no man ever was more worthy of. 

" I derived all the benefit that I hoped for from 
my journey, and am in good condition in all re- 
spects. God bless you ! R. S." 

To Mrs. Hodson. 

" Keswick, Feb. 18, 1839. 
c; 31 y dear Mrs. Hodson, 

:: My movements last year did not extend be- 
yond Normandy and Bretagne, and when I turn- 
ed my face toward England, it was in a steam 
packet from Havre to Southampton, by good for 
tune just before that stormy weather set in, 
which, with few intervals, and those but short, 
has continued ever since. Normandy pleased me 
as much as I had expected, and my expectations 
were pitched high. We were six in company, 
and no journey could have been more prosperous 
in all respects. The weather never prevented 
us from seeing any thing that we wished, and we 
met no mishap of any kind. 

" Cuthbert and I parted when we left the steam 
packet. He made the best of his way to Oxford : 
I remained some weeks in Hampshire, and on 
returning to Keswick found my youngest daugh- 
ter suffering under a serious attack of the influ- 
enza j* an insidious disease, from which, though 
we were assured that she was well recovered, 
she has not yet regained strength. You may 
possibly have heard from the newspapers that I 
have resolved upon a second marriage. I need 
not say that such a marriage must be either the 
wisest or the weakest action of a man's life ; but 
I may say that in the important points of age, long 
and intimate acquaintance, and conformity of 
opinions, principles, and likings, no persons conld 
be better suited to each other. The newspapers, 
indeed, have stated that Miss Bowles is thirty 
years younger than me, which, if it were true, 
would prove me to be something worse than an 
old fool. 

" You will be glad to hear that I am likely to 
recover something from Baldwin and Cradock. 
The trustees of their affairs had the modesty to 
expect that I should receive a dividend of one 
shilling in the pound, to be followed by a second 
and final dividend of the same amount. But upon 
finding that I was prepared to file a bill in Chan- 



* Upon thi3 a sharp attack of pleurisy had supervened, 
and we were for some little time in alarm as to the result 
—Ed. 



/Etat. 65. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



56 1 



eery against them, they have proposed to pay me 
eight hundred pounds — a composition which I am 
advised to accept, and shall think myself fortu- 
nate when it is fairly paid. 

" This place and the surrounding country suf- 
fered greatly in the late hurricane : it was quite 
as violent as that which I witnessed at Dawlish, 
and of much longer duration. I never felt the 
house so shaken. Indeed, there were persons 
who came as soon as it was daybreak to see what 
had become of us, and whether we were buried 
in the ruins of the house. Happily, we suffered 
no serious injury, having chiefly to regret that 
the whole front of the house, which was covered 
with ivy, has been completely stripped of it. The 
havoc among the trees* has been such as the 
oldest persons do not remember to have seen or 
heard of. Few days have passed without a storm 
since the great one. The winds are piping at 
this time, and so continued is the sound that my 
head is almost as much confused by it as if I were 
at sea. The weather concerns me much more 
than the affairs of state, and I know as little of 
current literature as if there were neither maga- 
zines nor reviews. My state is the more gra- 
cious. And if there were no newspapers in the 
world, and no rail-roads, I should begin to think 
that we might hope to live once more in peace 
and quietness. 

" I heard of Landor during my last transit 
through London, and saw one of the very best 
portraits of him by a young artist that I ever re- 
member to have seen. The picture, too, was as 
good as the likeness. The artist did not succeed 
so well with Kenyon, whose head upon the can- 
vas might yery well have passed for the Duke 
of York's. 

" You will think that I am bent upon continu- 
ing in the old ways when I tell you that it is my 
intention never again to travel by a rail- way, if 
there be any means of proceeding by any other 
mode of conveyance. It is very certain that the 
rapidity of rail-way traveling, if long continued, 
has a tendency to bring on a determination of 
blood to the head : this is one of the unforeseen 
and unforeseeable results of a mode of traveling 
so unlike any thing that was ever before in use. 
Mail-coach traveling will be fast enough for me, 
if I should ever travel again after the journey to 
which I am now looking forward of four hundred 
miles, which I mean to take with no other rest 
than what is to be had in the mail. But I expect 
to doze away the time. When I was a school- 
boy there was nsthing I should have liked better 
than such a journey. 

" Present my kind remembrances to Mr. and 
Mrs. Blencowe. &c. 

" Believe me, my dear Mrs. Hodson, 
" Yours with sincere regard, 

"Robert Southey." 



* " A poplar, mentioned in the proem to the Tale of Par- 
aguay, was torn up by the roots. It had become for some 
years a mournful memorial, and though I should never 
have had heart to fell it, I am not sorry that it ha-s been 
thus removed. But do not suppose that I ever give will- 
ing admission to thoughts of unprofitable sadDess." — To 
H. Taylor, Esq., Jan. 8, 1839 

N N 



To Walter Savage Landor, Esq. 

" Buckland, March 31, 1831>. 
" My dear Landor, 

" The portrait of Savonarola is safely lodged 
at Keswick ; I should have thanked you for it 
sooner, if I had known whither to direct to you. 
I have seldom seen a finer picture or a finer face ; 
the countenance seems to bespeak credit for one 
whose character may perhaps be still considered 
doubtful. 

" Mr. C. Bowles Fripp wrote to me some time 
last year, asking me to supply an epitaph for the 
proposed monument to Chatterton. I said to 
him, in reply, that I was too much engaged to 
undertake it ; that, as far as related to Chatter- 
ton, I had done my duty more than thirty years 
ago ; that of all men, men of genius were those 
who stood least in need of monuments to perpet- 
uate their memory. Moreover, as to an epitaph, 
I never would attempt to compose any thing ol 
the kind, unless I imagined that I could do it satis- 
factorily to myself, which in this case appeared to 
me impossible. How, indeed, could the circum- 
stances of Chatterton's history be comprised in a 
monumental inscription ? It is to the credit of 
Bristol that my fellow-townsmen should show how 
different a spirit prevails among them now from 
that which was to be found there fifty years ago : 
but how this might best be effected I know not. 

" The portrait of Chatterton, which Mr. Dix 
discovered, identifies itself if ever portrait did. 
It brought his sister, Mrs. Newton, strongly to 
my recollection. No family likeness could be 
more distinctly marked, considering the disparity 
of years. 

" My daughter Bertha's marriage to her cous- 
in, Herbert Hill, is especially fortunate in this re- 
spect, that for a few years it will remove her no 
further from Keswick than Rydal. Very differ- 
ent has been her elder sister's lot ; for being, to 
all likelihood, fixed upon the coast of Sussex 
(and the very worst part of it), she has been lost 
to us ever since. I have now only one daugh- 
ter left, and my son divides the year between 
college and home. Oxford has done him no 
harm ; indeed, I never apprehended any. Re- 
duced in number as my family has been within 
the last few years, my spirits would hardly recov- 
er their habitual and healthful cheerfulness if I 
had not prevailed upon Miss Bowles to share my 
lot for the remainder of our lives. There is just 
such a disparity of age as is fitting ; we have 
been well acquainted with each other more thac 
twenty years, and a more perfect conformity of 
disposition could not exist ; so that, in resolving 
upon what must be either the weakest or the 
wisest act of a sexagenarian's life, I am well as- 
sured that, according to human foresight, I have 
judged well and acted wisely, both for myself and 
my remaining daughter. God bless you ! 

" Robert Southey '' 

On the 5th of June my father was united to 
Miss Bowles, at Boldre Church, and returned to 
Keswick with her the latter end of the following 
August. 



562 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF 



Mtat. 66 



I have now almost arrived at the conclusion 
of my task, yet what remains to be said calls up 
more painful recollections than all the rest. 

The reader need not be told that the sorrows 
and anxieties of the last few years of my father's 
life had produced, as might be expected, a very 
injurious effect upon his constitution, both as to 
body and mind. Acutely sensitive by nature, 
deep and strong in his affections, and highly 
predisposed to nervous disease, he had felt the 
sad affliction which had darkened his latter years 
far more keenly than any ordinary observer would 
have supposed, or than even appears in his letters. 
He had, indeed, then, as he expressed himself in 
his letter declining the baronetcy, been "shaken 
at the root ;" and while we must not forget the 
more than forty years of incessant mental appli- 
cation which he had passed through, it was this 
stroke of calamity which most probably greatly 
hastened the coming of the evil day, if it was 
not altogether the cause of it, and which rapidly 
brought on that overclouding of the intellect 
which soon unequivocally manifested itself. 

This, indeed, in its first approaches, had been 
so gradual as to have almost escaped notice ; 
and it was not until after the sad truth was 
fully ascertained that indications of failure (some 
of which I have already alluded to) which had 
appeared some time previously were called to 
mind. A loss of memory on certain points ; a les- 
sening acuteness of the perceptive faculties ; an 
occasional irritability (wholly unknown in him be- 
fore) ; a confusion of time, place, and person ; the 
losing his way in well-known places — all were 
remembered as having taken place when the 
melancholy fact had become too evident that the 
powers of his mind were irreparably weakened. 

On his way home in the year 1839, he passed 
a few days in London, and then his friends plainly 
saw, what, from the altered manner of the very 
few and brief letters he had latterly written, they 
had already feared, that he had so failed as to 
have lost much of the vigor and activity of his 
faculties. The' impressions of one of his most 
intimate friends, as conveyed at the time by let- 
ter, may fitly be quoted here. " I have just 
come home from a visit which affected me deep- 
ly. * * It was to Southey, who ar- 
rived in town to-day from Hampshire with his 
wife. * '* He is (I fear) much alter- 
ed. The animation and peculiar clearness of his 
mind quite gone, except a gleam or two now and 
then. What he said was much in the spirit of 
his former mind as far as the matter and mean- 
ing went, but the tone of strength and elasticity 
was wanting. The appearance was that of a 
placid languor, sometimes approaching to torpor, 
but not otherwise than cheerful. He is thin and 
shrunk in person, and that extraordinary face of 
his has no longer the fire and strength it used to 
have, though the singular cast of the features 
and the habitual expressions make it still a most 
remarkable phenomenon. Upon the whole, I 
came away with a troubled heart." * * 
After a brief account of the great trials of my 
father's late vears, the writer continues : " He 



has been living since his marriage in Hampshire, 
where he has not had the aid of his old habits 
and accustomed books to methodize his mind. 
All this considered, I think we may hope that a 
year or two of quiet living at his own home may 
restore him. His easy, cheerful temperament 
will be greatly in his favor. You must help me 
to hope this, for I could not bear to think of the 
decay of that great mind and noble nature — at 
least not of its premature decay. Pray that this 
may be averted, as I have this night."* 

On the following day the same friend writes, 
"I think I am a little relieved about Southey 
to-day. I have seen him three times in the 
course of the day, and on each occasion he was 
so easy and cheerful that I should have said his 
manner and conversation did not differ, in the 
most part, from what it would have been in for- 
mer days, if he had happened to be very tired. 
I say for the most part only though, for there 
was once an obvious confusion of ideas. He lost 
himself for a moment ; he was conscious of it, 
and an expression passed over his countenance 
which was exceedingly touching — an expression 
of pain and also of resignation. I am glad to 
learn from his brother that he is aware of his 
altered condition, and speaks of it openly. This 
gives a better aspect to the case than if he could 
believe that nothing was the matter with him. 
Another favorable circumstance is, that he will 
deal with himself wisely and patiently. The 
charm of his manner is perhaps even enhanced 
at present (at least when one knows the circum- 
stances) by the gentleness and patience which 
pervade it. His mind is beautiful even in its 
debility." 

Much of my father's failure in its early stages 
was at first ascribed by those anxiously watch- 
ing him to repeated attacks of the influenza — 
at that time a prevailing epidemic — from which 
he had suffered greatly, and to which he at- 
tributed his own feelings of weakness ; but alas ! 
the weakness he felt was as much mental as 
bodily (though he had certainly declined much 
in bodily strength), and after his return home it 
gradually increased upon him. The uncertain 
step — the confused manner — the eye once so 
keen and so intelligent, now either wandering 
restlessly, or fixed, as it were, in blank contem- I 
plation, all showed that the overwrought mind 
was worn out. 

One of the plainest signs of this was the ces- 
sation of his accustomed labors ; but, while doing 
nothing (with him how plain a proof that nothing 
could be done) , he would frequently anticipate a 
coming period of his usual industiy. His mind, 
while any spark of its reasoning powers remained,, 
was busy with its old day-dreams — the History 
of Portugal — the History of the Monastic Orders 
— the Doctor — all were soon to be taken in hand 
in earnest — all completed, and new works added 
to these. 

For a considerable time after he had ceased 
to compose, he took pleasure in reading, and the 



August 24, 1839. 



/Etat. 68. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 



563 



hamt continued after the power of comprehen- 
sion was gone. His dearly-prized books, indeed, 
were a pleasure to him almost to the end, and 
he would walk slowly round his library looking 
at them, and taking them down mechanically. 

In the earlier stages of his disorder (if the 
term may be fitly applied to a case which was 
not a perversion of the faculties, but their de- 
say) he could still converse at times with much 
of his old liveliness and energy. When the 
mind was, as it were, set going upon some 
familiar subject, for a little time you could not 
perceive much failure ; but if the thread was 
broken, if it was a conversation in which new 
topics were started, or if any argument was 
commenced, his powers failed him at once, and 
a painful sense of this seemed to come over him 
for the moment. His recollection first failed as 
to recent events, and his thoughts appeared chief- 
ly to dwell upon those long past, and as his mind 
grew weaker, these recollections seemed to re- 
cede still further back. Names he could rarely 
remember, and more than once, when trying to 
recall one which he felt he ought to know, I have 
seen him press his hand upon his brow and sadly 
exclaim, ''Memory! memory! where art thou 
gone ?" 

But this failure altogether was so gradual, 
and at the same time so complete, that I am in- 
clined to hope and believe there was not, on the 
whole, much painful consciousness of it ; and cer- 
tainly for more than a year preceding his death 
he passed his time as in a dream, with little, if 
any, knowledge if what went on around him. 

One circumstance connected with the latter 
years of his life deserves to be noticed as very 
singular. His hair, which previously was almost 
snowy white, grew perceptibly darker, and I 
think, if an}>- thing, increased in thickness and a 
disposition to curl. 

But it is time I drew a veil over these latter 
scenes. They are too painful to dwell on. 

"A noble mind in sad decay, 
When baffled hope has died away. 
And life becomes one long distress 
In pitiable helplessness. 
Methinks 'tis like a ship on shore, 
That once defied the Atlantic's roar. 
And gallantly through gale and storm 
Hath ventured her majestic form ; 
But now in stranded ruin laid, 
By winds and dashing seas decayed, 
Forgetful of her ocean reign. 
Must crumble into earth again."* 

In some cases of this kind, toward the end 
some glimmering of reason reappears, but this 
must be when the mind is obscured or upset, 
not, as in this case, apparently worn out. The 
body gradually grew weaker, and disorders ap- 
peared which the state of the patient rendered 
it almost impossible to treat properly; and, after 
ft short attack of fever, the scene closed on the 
21st of March, 1843, and a second time had we 
cause to feel deeply thankful when the change 
from life to death, or more truly from death to 
life, took place. 



* Robert Montgomery. The fourth line is altered from 
the original. 



It was a dark and stormy morning when he 
was borne to his last resting-place, at the west- 
ern end of the beautiful church-yard of Crosth- 
waite. There lies his dear son Herbert — there 
his daughters Emma and Isabel — there Edith, 
his faithful helpmate of forty years. But few 
besides his own family and immediate neigh- 
bors followed his remains. His only intimate 
friend within reach, Mr. Wordsworth, crossed 
the hills that w T ild morning to be present. 



Soon after my father's death, various steps 
were taken with a view to erecting monuments 
to his memor}' - , and considerable sums were 
quickly subscribed for that purpose, the list in- 
cluding the names of many persons, not only 
strangers to him personally, but also strongly 
opposed to him in political opinion. The result 
was that three memorials were erected. The 
first and principal one, a full length recumbent 
figure, was executed by Lough, and placed in 
Crosthwaite church, and is certainly an excel- 
lent likeness, as well as a most beautiful work 
of art. The original intention and agreement 
was that it should be in Caen stone, but the 
sculptor, with characteristic liberality, executed 
it in white marble at a considerable sacrifice. 

The following lines, by Mr. Wordsworth, are 
inscribed upon the base : 

" Ye vales and hills, whose beauty hither drew 
The poet's steps, and fixed him here ; on you 
His eyes have closed ; and ye loved books, no more 
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore, 
To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown 
Adding immortal labors of his own — 
Whether he traced historic truth with zeal 
For the state's guidance or the Church's weal, 
Or fancy disciplined by curious art 
Informed his pen, or wisdom of the heart, 
Or judgments sanctioned in the patriot's mind 
By reverence for the rights of all mankind. 
Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast 
Could private feelings meet in holier rest. 
His joys — his griefs — have vanished like a cloud 
From Skiddaw's top ; but he to Heaven was vowed 
Through a life long and pure, and steadfast faith 
Calm'd in his soul the fear of change and death." 

But this was not the only tribute to my fa- 
ther's memory paid in connection with the church 
where be had so long worshiped. The struc- 
ture itself, though not unecclesiastical in its style 
and plan, had little architectural beauty ; and the 
interior, at the time I am referring to, was much 
in the same state as ordinary country churches 
— a fiat ceiling, the stone pillars and arches cov- 
ered with whitewash, and a multitude of pews 
of all shapes, and sizes, and colors. A small 
gallery at the west end had been added a few 
years before, and a very handsome organ present- 
ed by James Stanger, Esq., of Lairthwaite, Kes- 
wick. This gentleman had taken a most active 
part in furthering the erection of the monument ; 
and rightly deeming that the introduction of a 
beautiful work of art would only show in a strong 
light the deficiencies of the structure, as well as 
moved by the pious wish to dedicate largely of 
his substance to the Church, he determined upon 
a total renovation of the building, of the heavy 
expense of which he bore by far the largest par'. 



564 



LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 



The exterior stone-work was renewed, the pi- 
lars and arches restored to their original state, 
an open roof with ornamented rafters was substi- 
tuted for the flat ceiling, the pews were taken 
away, the chancel was fitted with oak stalls beau- 
tifully carved, and the nave and aisles with uni- 
form open seats. He also presented a very hand- 
some painted east window. This good example 
was not lost, for three other painted windows and 
a beautiful communion service were presented by 
residents in the immediate neighborhood ; and a 
fourth was added by the parishioners generally, 
as a testimonial to Mr. Stanger. 

When all was completed, the monument was 
removed to its appointed place, immediately fac- 
ing the east door, and, together with the changes 
and embellishments of the church itself, forms a 
most lasting and gratifying testimonial to the 
estimation in which my father was held in the 
place where so large a portion of his life had 
been spent. 

Committees were also formed in London and 
in Bristol for the same purpose, and busts and 
tablets erected in Westminster Abbey, and in the 
Cathedral church of his native city. 



I must now make a few observations upon the 
materials which have passed through my hands 
in the preparation of this volume. I stated at 
the commencement my intention of making my 
father his own biographer, and I have endeav- 
ored to render this work consistent with itself 
throughout in its autobiographical character. 

In selecting from the masses of correspondence 
which have passed through my hands, there has 
necessarily been considerable labor and difficulty, 
the amount and nature of which can only be un- 
derstood by those who have been similarly em- 
ployed. One of my chief difficulties has been to 
avoid repetition, for the same circumstance is 
commonly to be found related, and the same opin- 
ions expressed to most of his frequent and familiar 
correspondents ; so that what a Reviewer calls 
" significant blanks and injudicious erasures" are 
very often nothing more than what is caused by 
the cutting out of passages, the substance of 
which has already appeared in some other letter, 
and, according to my judgment, more fully and 
better expressed. It may probably be observed 
that my selections from the correspondence of 
the later years of his life are fewer in proportion 
than of the former ones ; but for this several rea- 
sons may be given. A correspondence is often 
carried on briskly for a time, and then dropped al- 
most entirely, as was the case between Sir Walter 
Scott and my father, although the friendly feel- 
ings of the parties were undiminished ; in other 
cases the interchange of letters continued, though 



they contained nothing sufficiently interesting fo 
publication. With others, again, as with Mr. 
Rickman, Mr. H. Taylor, and Mr. Bedford, the 
correspondence increased in frequency, and nec- 
essarily the interest of single letters diminished, 
as it was carried on by a multitude of brief notes ; 
and this, which in these two cases resulted from 
facilities in franking, it seems likely will be so 
general a result of the New Postage System, 
that in another generation there will be no corre- 
spondences to publish. With respect to the cor 
respondence with Mr. Wynn, much to my regret, 
I was unable to procure any letters of later date 
than 1820, owing to their having been mislaid; 
since his decease they have been found and kind- 
ly transmitted to me by his son ; but, unfortunate- 
ly, it was too late for me to make any present use 
of them. 

In addition to these causes, it may also be men- 
tioned, that his correspondence with comparative 
strangers and mere acquaintances occupied a con- 
tinually increasing portion of his time. The num- 
ber of letters he received from such persons was 
very great, and almost all had to be answered, 
so that but little time was left for those letters he 
had real pleasure in writing. Every new work 
he engaged in entailed more or less correspond- 
ence, and some a vast accession for a time, and 
these letters generally would not be of interest 
to the public. The Life of Cowper involved him 
in a correspondence of considerable extent with 
many different persons : many of these letters I 
could have procured, and some were sent to me ; 
but they were not available, from the limits oi 
this work, neither would their contents be of gen- 
eral interest. I may, however, take this oppor- 
tunity of expressing my thanks to those gentle- 
men who have sent me letters of which I have 
not made any use, but for whose kindness I am 
not the less obliged. 

While, however, I have necessarily been com- 
pelled to leave out many interesting letters, I feel 
satisfied that I have published a selection abund- 
antly sufficient to indicate all the points in my 
father's character — to give all the chief incidents 
in his life, and to show his opinions in all their 
stages. I am not conscious of having kept back 
any thing which ought to have been brought for- 
ward — any thing excepting some free and un- 
guarded expressions which, whether relating to 
things or persons, having been penned in the con- 
fidence of friendship and at the impulse of the mo- 
ment, it would be as unreasonable in a reader to 
require as it would be injudicious and improper 
in an editor to publish. And if in any case I 
may have let some such expression pass by un- 
canceled, which may have given a moment's pain 
to any individual, I sincerely regret the inadvert- 
ency. 



APPENDIX. 



Extract from, Mr. William Smith's Speech in the 
House of Commons, March 14, 1817. 

"The honorable member then adverted to that 
Tergiversation of principle which the career of po- 
litical individuals so often presented. He was far 
from supposing that a man who set out in life with 
the profession of certain sentiments, was bound to 
conclude life with them. He thought there might 
be many occasions in which a change of opinion, 
when that change was unattended by any personal 
advantages, when it appeared entirely disinterest- 
ed, might be the result of sincere conviction. But 
what he most detested, what most filled him with 
disgust, was the settled, determined malignity of a 
renegado. He had read in a publication (the Quar- 
terly Preview), certainly entitled to much respect 
from its general literary excellences, though he dif- 
fered from it in its principles, a passage alluding to 
the recent disturbances, which passage was as fol- 
lows : 'When the man of free opinions commences 
professor of moral and political philosophy for the 
benefit of the public, the fables of old credulity are 
then verified; his very breath becomes venomous, 
and every page which he sends abroad carries with 
it poison to the unsuspicious reader. We have 
shown, on a former occasion, how men of this de- 
scription are acting upon the public, and have ex- 
plained in what manner a large part of the people 
have been prepared for the virus with which they 
inoculate them. The dangers arising from such a 
state of things are now fully apparent, and the de- 
signs of the incendiaries, which have for some years 
been proclaimed so plainly, that they ought, long ere 
this, to have been prevented, are now manifested 
by overt acts.' 

" With the permission of the House, he would 
read an extract from a poem recently published, to 
which, he supposed, the above writer alluded (or, at 
least, to productions of a similar kind), as constitu- 
ting a part of the virus with which the public mind 
had been infected : 

" ' My brethren, these are truths, and weighty ones : 
Ye are all equal ; Nature made ye so. 
Equality is your birth-right; when I gaze 
On the proud palace, and behold one man 
In the blood-purpled robes of royalty, 
Feasting at ease, and lording over millions ; 
Then turn me to the hut of poverty, 
And see the wretched laborer, worn with toil, 
Divide his scanty morsel with his infants, 
I sicken, and, indignant at the sight, 
Blush for the patience of humanity.' 

" He could read many other passages from these 
works equally strong on both sides ; but, if they were 
written by the same person, he should like to know 
from the honorable and learned gentleman opposite 
why no proceedings had been instituted against the 
author. The poem Wat Tyler appeared to him to 
be the most seditious book that ever was written ; 
its author did not stop short of exhorting to gen- 
eral anarchy ; he vilified kings, priests, and nobles, 
and was for universal suffrage and perfect equality. 
The Spencean plan could not be compared with it : 
that miserable and ridiculous performance did not 
attempt to employ any arguments ; but the author 
of Wat Tyler constantly appealed to the passions, 
and in a style which the author, at that time, he sup- 
posed, conceived to be eloquence. Why, then, had 
not those who thought it necessary to suspend the 



Habeas Corpus Act taken notice of this poem ? why 
had they not discovered the author of that seditious 
publication, and visited him with the penalties of 
the law ? The work was not published secretly, it 
was not handed about in the darkness of night, but 
openly and publicly sold in the face of day. It was 
at this time to be purchased at almost every book- 
seller's shop in London : it was now exposed for 
sale in a bookseller's shop in Pall Mall, who styled 
himself bookseller to one or two of the royal family. 
He borrowed the copy from which he had just read 
the extract from an honorable friend of his, who 
bought it in the usual way; and, therefore, he sup- 
posed there could be no difficulty in finding out the 
party that wrote it. He had heard, that when a 
man of the name of Winterbottom was, some years 
ago, confined in Newgate, the manuscript had been 
sent to him, with liberty to print it for his own ad- 
vantage, if he thought proper; but that man, it ap- 
peared, did not like to risk the publication, and there- 
fore it was now first issued into the world. It must 
remain with the government and their legal advis- 
ers to take what step they might deem most advisa- 
ble to repress this seditious work and punish its au- 
thor. In bringing it under the notice of the House, 
he had merely spoken in defense of his constitu- 
ents, who had been most grossly calumniated, and 
he thought that what he had said would go very far 
to exculpate them. But he wished to take this 
bull by the horns." — See Hansard's Pari. Debates, 
vol. xxxvii., p. 1088. 

A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P.,from Rob- 
ert Southey, Esq. 

J J "1817. 

" Sir, — You are represented in the newspapers 
as having entered, during an important discussion 
in Parliament, into a comparison between certain 
passages in the duarterly Review, and the opinions 
which were held by the author of Wat Tyler three- 
and-twenty years ago. It appears further, accord- 
ing to the same authority, that the introduction of 
so strange a criticism, in so unfit a place, did not 
arise from the debate, but was a premeditated thing, 
that you had prepared yourself for it by stowing the 
duarterly Review in one pocket, ana Wat Tyler 
in the other; and that you deliberately stood up for 
the purpose of reviling an individual who was not 
present to vindicate himself, and in a place which 
afforded you protection. 

" My name, indeed, was not mentioned ; but that 
I was the person whom you intended, was notori- 
ous to all who heard you. For the impropriety of 
introducing such topics in such an assembly, it is 
further stated that you received a well-merited re- 
buke from Mr. Wynn, who spoke on that occasion 
as much fc-orn his feelings toward one with whom he 
has lived in uninterrupted friendship for nearly thirty 
years, as from a sense of the respect which is due to 
Parliament. It is, however, proper that I should 
speak explicitly for myself. This was not necessa- 
ry in regard to Mr. Brougham: he only carried the 
quarrels as well as the practices of the Edinburgh 
Review into the House of Commons. But as cal- 
umny, sir, has not been your vocation, it may be 
useful, even to yourself, if I comment upon your first 
attempt. 

"First, as to the duarterly Review. You can 
have no other authority for ascribing any particular 
paper in that journal to one person or to another. 



566 



APPENDIX. 



than common report ; in following which, you may 
happen to be as much mistaken as I was when 
npon the same grounds I supposed Mr. William 
Smith to be a man of candor, incapable of grossly 
and wantonly insulting an individual. 

" The Quarterly Review stands upon its own 
merits. It is not answerable for any thing more 
than it contains. What I may have said or thought 
in any part of my life no more concerns that journal 
Uian it does you or the House of Commons ; and I 
am as little answerable for the journal as the jour- 
nal for me What I may have written in it is a 
question which you, sir, have no right to ask, and 
which certainly I will not answer. As little right 
lave you to take that for granted which you can not 
possibly know. The question, as respects the Quar- 
terly Review, is not who wrote the paper which 
happens to have excited Mr. William Smith's dis- 
pleasure, but whether the facts which are there 
stated are true, the quotations accurate, and the in- 
ferences just. The reviewer, whoever he may be, 
may defy you to disprove them. 

" Secondly, as to Wat Tyler. Now, sir, though 
vou are not acquainted with the full history of this 
notable production, yet you could not have been ig- 
norant that the author whom you attacked at such 
unfair advantage was the aggrieved, and not the 
offending person. You knew that this poem had 
been written very many years ago, in his early 
yonth. You knew that a copy of it had been sur- j 
reptitiously obtained and made public by some ' 
skulking scoundrel, who had found booksellers not 
more honorable than himself to undertake the pub- 
lication. You knew that it was published without 
the writer's knowledge, for the avowed purpose of 
insulting him, and with the hope of injuring him, if 
possible. You knew that the transaction bore upon 
its face eveiy character of baseness and malignity. 
You knew that it must have been effected either by 
robbery or by breach of trust. These things, Mr. , 
William Smith, you knew! and, knowing them as 
you did, I verily believe, that if it were possible to 
revoke what is irrevocable, you would at this mo- 
ment be far more desirous of blotting from remem- 
brance the disgraceful speech which stands upon 
record in 3-our name, than I should be of canceling 
the boyish composition which gave occasion to it. ! 
Wat Tyler is full of errors, but they are the errors j 
of youth and ignorance ; they bear no indication of 
an ungenerous spirit or of a malevolent heart. 

" For the book itself, I deny that it is a seditious j 
performance ; for it places in the mouths of the per- j 
sonages who are introduced nothing more than a j 
correct statement of their real principles. That it 
is a mischievous publication, I know, the errors j 
which it contains being especially dangerous at this | 
time. Therefore I came forward to avow it, to claim j 
it as my own property, which had never been alien- 
ated, and to suppress it. And I am desirous that 
my motives in thus acting should not be misunder- 
stood. The piece was written under the influence 
of opinions which I have long since outgrown, and 
repeatedly disclaimed, but for which I have never 
affected to feel either shame or contrition ; they 
were taken up conscientiously in early youth, they 
were acted upon in disregard of all worldly consid- 
erations, and they were left behind in the same 
straightforward course, as I advanced in years. It 
was written when Republicanism was confined to a 
very small number of the educated classes ; when 
those who were known to entertain such opinions 
were exposed to personal danger from the populace ; 
and when a spirit of anti-Jacobinism was predom- 
inant, which I can not characterize more truly than 
by saying that it was as unjust and intolerant, 
though not quite as ferocious, as the Jacobinism of 
the present day. Had the poem been published 
during any quiet state of the public mind, the act 
of dishonesty in the publisher would have been the 
same ; but I should have left it unnoticed, in full 
confidence that it would have been forgotten as 
speedily as it deserved. But in these times it was 
incumbent upon me to come forward as I have done. 



It became me to disclaim whatever had been erro- 
neous and intemperate in my former opinions, as 
frankly and as fearlessly as 1 once maintained them. 
And this I did, not as one who felt himself in any 
degree disgraced by the exposure of the crude and 
misdirected feelings of his youth (feelings right in 
themselves, and wrong only in their direction), but 
as one whom no considerations have ever deterred 
from doing what he believed to be his duty. 

" When, therefore, Mr. William Smith informed 
the House of Commons that the author of Wat Ty- 
ler thinks no longer upon certain points as he did in 
his youth, he informed that legislative assembly of 
nothing more than what the author has shown dur- 
ing very many years in the course of his writings — 
that while events have been moving on upon the 
great theater of human affairs, his intellect has not 
been stationary. But when the member for Nor- 
wich asserts (as he is said to have asserted) that 1 
impute evil motives to men merely for holding now 
the same doctrines which I myself formerly profess- 
ed, and when he charges me (as he is said to have 
charged me) with the malignity and baseness of a 
renegade, the assertion and the charge are as fake 
as the language in which they are conveyed is 
coarse and insulting. 

" Upon this subject I must be heard further. The 
Edinburgh Review has spoken somewhere of those 
vindictive and jealous writings in which Mr. Southey 
has brought forward his claims to the approbation of 
the public. This is one of those passages for which 
the editor of that review has merited an abatement 
in heraldry, no such writings ever having been writ- 
ten; and, indeed, by other like assertions of equal 
veracity, the gentleman has richly entitled himself 
to bear a gore sinister tenne in his escutcheon. Few 
authors have obtruded themselves upon the public 
in their individual character less than I have done. 
My books have been sent into the world with no 
other introduction than an explanatory Preface as 
brief as possible, arrogating nothing, vindicating 
nothing; and then they have been left to their fate. 
None of the innumerable attacks which have been 
made upon them has ever called forth, on my part, 
a single word of reply, triumphantly as I might have 
exposed my assailants, not only for their ignorance 
and inconsistency, but frequently for that moral tur- 
pitude which is implied in willful and deliberate mis- 
statement. The unprovoked insults which have 
been leveled at me, both in prose and rhyme, never 
induced me to retaliate. It will not be supposed 
that the ability for satire was wanting, but, happily, 
I had long since subdued the disposition. I knew 
that men might be appreciated from the character 
of their enemies as well as of their friends, and I 
accepted the hatred of sciolists, coxcombs, and prof- 
ligates, as one sure proof that I was deserving well 
of the wise and of the good. 

" It will not, therefore, be imputed to any habit 
of egotism, or any vain desire of interesting the pub- 
lic in my individual concerns, if I now come forward 
from that privacy in which, both from judgment and 
disposition, it would have been my choice to have 
remained. While among the mountains of Cumber- 
land I have been employed upon the Mines of Brazil, 
the War in the Peninsula, and such other varieties 
of pursuit as serve to keep the intellect in health by 
alternately exercising and refreshing it ; my name 
has served in London for the very shuttlecock of dis- 
cussion. My celebrity for a time has eclipsed that 
of Mr. Hunt the orator, and may perhaps have im- 
peded the rising reputation of Toby the sapient 
pig. I have reigned in the newspapers as para- 
mount as Joanna Southcote during the last month of 
her tympany. Nay, columns have been devoted to 
Mr. Southey and Wat Tyler which would otherwise 
have been employed in bewailing the forlorn con- 
dition of the Emperor Napoleon, and reprobating the 
inhumanity of the British cabinet for having design- 
edly exposed him, like Bishop Hatto, to be devour- 
ed by the rats. 

" That I should ever be honored by such a delicate 
investigation of my political opinions was .vhat 1 



APPENDIX. 



567 



never could have anticipated, even in the wildest 
dreams of unfledged vanity. Honor, however, has 
been thrust upon me, as upon Malvolio. The verses 
of a boy, of which he thought no more than of his 
school exercises, and which, had they been publish- 
ed when they were written, would have passed 
without notice to the family vault, have not only 
beeu perused by the lord chancellor in his judicial 
office, but have been twice produced in Parliament 
for the edification of the Legislature. The appetite 
for slander must be sharp-set when it can prey upon 
such small gear! As, however, the opinions of Mr. 
Southey have not been thought unworthy to occupy 
so considerable a share of attention, he need not ap- 
prehend the censure of the judicious if he takes part 
in the discussion himself, so far as briefly to inform 
the world what they really have been, and what 
they are. 

" In my youth, when my stock of knowledge con- 
sisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Ro- 
man history as is acquired in the course of a regular 
scholastic education — when my heart was full of 
poetry and romance, and Lucan and Akenside were 
at my tongue's end, I fell into the political opinions 
which the French Revolution was then scattering 
throughout Europe; and following these opinions 
with ardors*wherever they led, I soon perceived the 
inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to 
the inequalities of property, and those more fearful 
distinctions which the want of moral and intellectual 
culture occasions between man and man. At that 
time and with those opinions, or rather feelings (for 
their root was in the heart and not in the under- 
standing), I wrote Wat Tyler, as one who was im- 
patienc of ' all the oppressions that are done under 
the sun.' The subject was injudiciously chosen, and 
it was treated as might be expected by a youth of 
twenty, in such times, who regarded only one side 
of the question. There is no other misrepresenta- 
tion. The sentiments of the historical characters 
are correctly stated. Were I now to dramatize the 
sams story, there would be much to add, but little 
to alter. I should not express these sentiments less 
strongly, but I should oppose to them more enlarged 
views of the nature of man and the progress of so- 
ciety. I should set forth with equal force the op- 
pressions of the feudal system, the excesses of the 
insurgents, and the treachery of the government; 
and hold up the errors and crimes which weit then 
committed as a warning for this and for future ages. 
I should write as a man, not as a stripling ; with the 
same heart and the same desires, but with a rip- 
ened understanding and competent stores of knowl- 
edge. 

" It is a fair and legitimate inference, that no per- 
son would have selected this subject, and treated it 
in such a manner at such a time, unless he had, in 
a certain degree, partaken of the sentiments which 
are expressed in it ; in what degree he partook them 
is a question which it requires more temper as well 
as more discretion to resolve than you, sir, have 
given any proof of possessing. This can only be 
ascertained by comparing the piece with other 
works of the same author, written about the same 
time or shortly afterward, and under the influence 
of the same political opinions ; by such a comparison 
it might be discerned what arose from his own feel- 
ings, and what from the nature of dramatic composi- 
tion. Bat to select passages from a dramatic poem, 
and ascribe the whole force of the sentiments to the 
writer as if he himself held them, without the slight- 
est qualification, is a mode of criticism manifestly 
absurd and unjust. Whether it proceeded in this 
instance from excess of malice, or deficiency of judg- 
ment, is a point which they who are best acquainted 
with Mr. William Smith may be able to determine. 

" It so happens that sufficient specimens of Mr. 
Southey 's way of thinking in his youth are before 
the world, without breaking open escritoires, u-: 
stealing any more of his juvenile papers which he 
may have neglected to burn. The poem to which, 
with all its faults, he is indebted for his first favor- 
able notice from the public, may possibly have been 



honored with a place in Mr. William Smith's library, 
as it received the approbation of all the dissenting 
journals of the day. It is possible that their recom- 
mendation may have induced him to favor Joan of 
Arc with a perusal, and not improbably in a mood 
which would indulge its manifold demerits in style 
and structure for the sake of its liberal opinions. 
Perhaps, too, he may have condescended to notice 
the minor poems of the same author, sanctioned as 
some of these also were at their first appearance by 
the same critical authorities. In these productions 
he may have seen expressed an enthusiastic love of 
liberty, a detestation of tyranny wherever it exists 
and in whatever form, an ardent abhorrence of all 
wicked ambition, and a sympathy not less ardent 
with those who were engaged in war for the defense 
of their country and in a righteous cause — feelings 
just as well as generous in themselves. He might 
have pe'reeived, also, frequent indications that, in 
the opinion of the youthful writer, a far happier sys- 
tem of society was possible than any under which 
mankind are at present existing, or ever have ex- 
isted since the patriarchal ages — and no equivocal 
aspirations after such a state. In all this he might 
have seen something that was erroneous and more 
that was visionary, but nothing that savored of in 
temperance or violence. I insist, therefore, that in 
asmuch as Wat Tyler may differ in character from 
these works, the difference arises necessarily from 
the nature of dramatic composition. I maintain that 
this is the inference which must be drawn by every 
honest and judicious mind ; and I affirm that such an 
influence would be strictly conformable to the fact. 
" Do not, however, sir, suppose that I shall seek 
to shrink from a full avowal of what my opinions 
have been : neither before God nor man am I asham- 
ed of them. I have as little cause for humiliation in 
recalling them, as Gibbon had when he related how 
he had knelt at the feet of a confessor; for while I 
imbibed the Republican opinions of the day, 1 escap- 
ed the Atheism, and the leprous immorality which 
generally accompanied them. I can not, therefore, 
join with Beattie in blessing 

1 The hour when I escaped the wrangling crew, 
From Pyrrho's maze and Epicurus' sty,' 

for I was never lost in the one, nor defiled in the 
other. My progress was of a different kind. From 
building castles in the air to framing commonwealths 
was an easy transition; the next step was to realize 
the vision; and in the hope of accomplishing this, I 
forsook the course of life for which I had been de- 
signed, and the prospects of advancement, which 1 
may say, without presumption, were within my 
reach. My purpose was to retire with a few friends 
into the wilds of America, and there lay the founda- 
tions of a community upon what we believed to be 
the political system of Christianity. It matters not 
in what manner the vision was dissolved. I am not 
writing my own memoirs, and it is sufficient simply 
to state the-fact. We were connected with no clubs, 
no societies, no party. The course which we would 
have pursued might have proved destructive to oar- 
selves, but as it related to all other persons, never 
did the aberrations of youth take a more innocent 
direction. 

" I know, sir, that you were not ignorant of this 
circumstance : the project, while it was in view, was 
much talked of among that sect of Christians to which 
you belong: and some of your friends are well ac- 
quainted with the events of my life. What, then, I 
may ask, did you learn concerning me from this late 
surreptitious publication? Nay, sir, the personal 
knowledge which you possessed was not needful for 
a full understanding of the political opinions which 
I entertained in youth. They are expressed in 
poems which have been frequently reprinted, and 
are continually on sale; no alterations have ever 
been made for the purpose of withdrawing, conceal- 
ing, or extenuating them. I have merely affixed to 
every piece the date of the year in which it was 
written— and the progress of years is sufficient to 
explain the change. 



568 



APPENDIX. 



" You, Mr. William Smith, may possibly be ac- 
quainted with other persons who were Republicans 
in the first years of the French Revolution, and who 
have long since ceased to be so, with as little im- 
peachment of their integrity as of their judgment; 
yet you bring it as a heinous charge against me, 
that," having entertained enthusiastic notions in my 
youth, three-and-twenty years should have produced 
a change in the opinions of one whose life has been 
devoted to the acquirement of knowledge. 

" You are pleased, in your candor, to admit that I 
might have been sincere when I was erroneous, and 
you, who are a professor of modern liberality, are 
not pleased to admit that the course of time and 
events may have corrected me in what was wrong, 
and confirmed me in what was right. True it is 
that the events of the last five-and-twenty years 
have been lost upon you ; perhaps you judge me by 
yourself, and you may think that this is a fair crite- 
rion : but I must protest against being measured by 
any such standard. Between you and me, sir, there 
can be no sympathy, even though we should some- 
times happen to think alike. We are as unlike in 
all things as men of the same time, country, and rank 
in society can be imagined to be ; and the difference 
is in our mind and mold, as we came from the Pot- 
ter's hand. 

"And what, sir, is the change in the opinions of 
Mr. Southey, which has drawn upon him the pon- 
derous displeasure of William Smith? This was a 
point upon which it behooved you to be especially 
well informed before you applied to him the false 
and insolent appellation which you are said to have 
used, and which I am authorized in believing that 
you have used. He has ceased to believe that old 
monarchical countries are capable of Republican 
forms of government. He has ceased to think that 
he understood the principles of government, and the 
nature of man and society, before he was one-and- 
twenty years of age. He has ceased to suppose 
that men who neither cultivate their intellectual nor 
their moral faculties can understand them at any 
age. He has ceased to wish for revolutions even in 
countries where great alteration is to be desired, 
because he has seen that the end of anarchy is 
military despotism. But he has not ceased to love 
liberty with all his heart, and with all his soul, and 
with all his strength ; he has not ceased to detest 
tyranny wherever it exists, and in whatever form. 
He has not ceased to abhor the wickedness of am- 
bition, and to sympathize with those who are engag- 
ed in the defense of their country and in a right- 
eous cause ; if, indeed, he had, he might have been 
sure of the approbation, not only of Mr. William 
Smith, and of those persons who were, during the 
war, the sober opponents of their country's cause, 
but of the whole crew of ultra Whigs and anarchists, 
from Messrs. Brougham and Clodius down to Cob- 
bett, Cethegus, and Co. 

" Many were the English who wished well to the 
French at the- commencement of their revolution; 
but if any of those Englishmen have attached the 
same interest to the cause of France through all the 
changes of the Revolution — if they have hoped that 
Bonaparte might succeed in the usurpation of Portu- 
gal and Spain, and the subjugation of the Continent 
—the change is in them, in their feelings and their 
principles, not in me and in mine. At no time of 
my life have I held any opinions like those of the 
Bonapartists and Revolutionists of the present day ; 
never could I have held any communion with such 
men in thought, word, or deed; my nature, God be 
thanked! would always have kept me from them 
instinctively, as it would from toad or asp. Look 
through the whole writings of my youth, including, 
if you please, Wat Tyler — there can be no danger 
that its errors should infect a gentleman who has 
called upon the attorney-general to prosecute the 
author; and he would not be the woi - se were he 
to catch from it a little of the youthful generosity 
which it breathes. I ask you, sir, in which of those 
writings I br>v« appealed to the base or the malig- 

:i.!t f.vii... . of mankind; and I ask you whether 



the present race of revolutionary writers appeal to 
any other? What man's private character did I 
stab 1 Whom did I libel ? Whom did I slander ? 
Whom did I traduce ? These miscreants live by 
calumny and sedition; they are libelers and liars by 
trade. 

" The one object to which I have ever been de- 
sirous of contributing according to my power, is the 
removal of those obstacles by which the improve- 
ment of mankind is impeded ; and to this the whole 
tenor of my writings, whether in prose or verse, 
bears witness. This has been the pole-star of my 
course ; the needle has shifted according to the 
movements of the state vessel wherein I am em- 
barked, but the direction to which it points has al- 
ways been the same. I did not fall into the error 
of those who, having been the friends of France 
when they imagined that the cause of liberty was 
implicated in her success, transferred their attach- 
ment from the Republic to the military tyranny in 
which it ended, and regarded with complacency the 
progress of oppression because France was the op- 
pressor. ' They had turned their faces toward the 
east in the morning to worship the rising sun, and 
in the evening they were looking eastward still, ob- 
stinately affirming that still the sun was there."* 
I, on the contrary, altered my position a| the world 
went round. For so doing, Mr. William Smith is 
said to have insulted me with the appellation of ren- 
egade ; and if it be indeed true that the foul asper- 
sion passed his lips, I brand him for it on the fore- 
head with the name of slanderer. Salve the mark 
as you will, sir, it is ineffaceable ! You must bear 
it with you to your grave, and the remembrance 
will outlast your epitaph. 

" And now, sir, learn what are the opinions of the 
man to whom you have offered this public and noto- 
rious wrong ; opinions not derived from any conta- 
gion of the times, nor entertained with the unreflect- 
ing eagerness of youth, nor adopted in connection 
with any party in the state, but gathered patiently, 
during many years of leisure and retirement, from 
books, observation, meditation, and intercourse with 
living minds who will be the light of other ages. 

" Greater changes in the condition of the country 
have been wrought during the last half century 
than an equal course of years had ever before pro- 
duced. Without entering into the proofs of this prop- 
osition, suffice it to indicate, as among the most ef- 
ficient causes, the steam and the spinning engines, 
the mail-coach, and the free publication of the de- 
bates in Parliament: hence follow, in natural and 
necessary consequence, increased activity, enter- 
prise, wealth, and power; but, on the other hand, 
greediness of gain, looseness of principle, half knowl- 
edge (more perilous than ignorance), vice, poverty, 
wretchedness, disaffection, and political insecurity. 
The changes which have taken place render other 
changes inevitable ; forward we must go, for it is 
not possible to retrace our steps ; the hand of the 
political horologe can not go back, like the shadow 
upon Hezekiah's dial ; when the hour comes, it must 
strike. 

"Slavery has long ceased to be tolerable in Eu- 
rope ; the remains of feudal oppression are disap- 
pearing even in those countries which have im 
proved the least; nor can it be much longer endur- 
ed that the extremes of ignorance, wretchedness, 
and brutality should exist in the very center of civ- 
ilized society. There can be no safety with a pop- 
ulace half Luddite, half Lazzaroni. Let us not de- 
ceive ourselves. We are far from that state in which 
any thing resembling equality would be possible ; 
but we are arrived at that state in which the ex- 
tremes of inequality are become intolerable. They 
are too dangerous, as well as too monstrous, to be 
borne much longer. Plans which would have led 
to the utmost horrors of insurrection have been pre 
vented by the government, and by the enactment 
of strong but necessaiy laws. Let it not, however 
be supposed that the disease is healed because the 

* I quote my own words, written in lcC3. 



APPENDIX. 



569 



oleer rnny skin over. The remedies by which the 
body politic can be restored to health must be slow 
in their operation. The condition of the populace, 
physical, moral, and intellectual, must be improved, 
or a Jacquerie, a Bellnm Servile, sooner or later, will 
be the result. It is the people at this time who 
stand in need of reformation, not the government. 

"The government must better the condition of the 
populace ; and the first thing necessary is to pre- 
vent it from being worsened. It must no longer 
suffer itself to be menaced, its chief magistrate in- 
sulted, and its most sacred institutions vilified with 
impunity. It must curb the seditious press, and 
keep it curbed. For this purpose, if the laws are 
not at present effectual, they should be made so ; 
nor will they then avail, unless they are vigilantly 
executed. I say this, well knowing to what obloquy 
it will expose me, and how grossly and impudently 
my meaning will be misrepresented; but I say it, 
because, if the licentiousness of the press be not 
curbed, its abuse will most assuredly one day occa- 
sion the loss of its freedom. 

" This is the first and most indispensable measure, 
for without this all others will be fruitless. Next in 
urgency is the immediate relief of the poor. I differ 
toto ccelo from Mr. Owen, of Lanark, in one main 
point. To build upon any other foundation than re- 
ligion is building upon sand. But I admire his prac- 
tical benevolence ; I love his enthusiasm ; and I go 
far with him in his earthly views. What he has 
actually done entitles him to the greatest attention 
and respect. I sincerely wish that his plan for the 
extirpation of pauperism should be fairly tried. To 
employ the poor in manufactures is only shifting the 
evil, and throwing others out of employ by bringing 
m;>re labor and more produce of labor into a market 
which is already overstocked. 

" Wise and extensive plans of foreign coloniza- 
tion contribute essentially to keep a state like En- 
gland in health ; but we must not overlook the great- 
er facility of colonizing at home. Would it not be 
desirable that tracts of waste land should be pur- 
chased with public money, to be held as national 
domains, and colonized with our disbanded soldiers 
and sailors, and people who are in want of employ- 
ment, dividing them into estates of different sizes, 
according to the capability of the speculators, and al- 
lotting to every cottage that should be erected there a 
certain proportion of ground ? Thus should we make 
immediate provision for those brave men whose serv- 
ices are no longer required for the defense of their 
country ; thus should we administer immediate re- 
lief to the poor, lighten the poor-rates, give occupa- 
tion to various branches of manufacture, and provide 
a permanent source of revenue, accruing from the 
increased prosperity of the country. There never 
was a time when every rood of ground maintained 
its man ; but surely it is allowable to hope that 
whole districts will not always be suffered to lie 
waste while multitudes are in want of employment 
and of bread. 

" A duty scarcely less urgent than that of dimin- 
ishing the burden of the poor-rates, is that of provid- 
ing for the education of the lower classes. Govern- 
ment must no longer, in neglect of its first and para- 
mount duty, allow them to grow up in worse than 
heathen ignorance. They must be trained in the 
way they should go; they must be taught to 'fear 
God and keep his commandments, for this is the 
whole duty of man.' Mere reading and wi'iting will 
not do this: they must be instructed according to 
the established religion ; they must be fed with the 
milk of sound doctrine, for states are secure in pro- 
portion as the great body of the people are attached 
to the institutions of their country. A moral and re- 
ligious education will induce habits of industry; the 
people will know their duty, and find their interest 
and their happiness in following it. Give us the 
great boon of parochial education, so connected with 
the Church as to form part of the establishment, and 
we shall find it a bulwark to the state as well as to 
the Church. Let this be done; let savings' banks 
be g morally introduced ; let new channels for in- 



dustry be opened (as soon as the necessities of the 
state will permit) by a liberal expenditure in public 
works, by colonizing our waste lands at home, and 
regularly sending off our swarms abroad, and the 
strength, wealth, and security of the nation will be 
in proportion to its numbers. 

"Never, indeed, was there a more senseless cry 
than that which is at this time raised for retrench- 
ment in the public expenditure, as a means of alle- 
viating the present distress. That distress arises 
from a great and sudden diminution of employment, 
occasioned by many coinciding causes, the chief of 
which is, that the wai'-expenditure of from forty to 
fifty millions yearly has ceased. Men are out of 
employ : the evil is, that too little is spent, and, as 
a remedy, we are exhorted to spend less. Every 
where there are mouths crying out for food, because 
the hands want work; and at this time, and for this 
reason, the state-quack requires further reduction. 
Because so many hands are unemployed, he calls 
upon government to throw more upon the public 
by reducing its establishments and suspending its 
works. O lepidum caput ! and it is by such heads 
as this that we are to be reformed ! 

"'Statesmen,' says Mr. Burke, 'before they value 
themselves on the relief given to the people by the 
destruction (or diminution) of their revenue, ought 
first to have carefully attended to the solution of this 
problem: Whether it be more advantageous to the 
people to pay considerably and to gain in proportion, 
or to gain little or nothing and to be disburdened of 
all contribution.' And in another place this great 
statesman says, 'The prosperity and improvement 
j of nations have generally increased with the increase 
of their revenues; and' they will both continue to 
grow and flourish as long as the balance between 
what is left to strengthen the efforts of individuals, 
and what is collected for the common efforts of the 
state, bear to each other a due reciprocal proportion, 
and are kept in a close correspondence and commu- 
nication.' This opinion is strikingly corroborated by 
the unexampled prosperity which the country en- 
joyed during the war — a war of unexampled ex- 
penditure ; and the stupendous works of antiquity, 
the rains of which at this day so mournfully attest 
the opulence and splendor of states which have long 
ceased to exist, were in no slight degree the causes 
of that prosperity of which they are the proofs. In- 
stead, therefore, of this senseless cry for retrench- 
ment, which is like prescribing depletion for a pa- 
tient whose complaints proceed from inanition, a lib- 
eral expenditure should be advised in works of pub- 
lic utility and magnificence ; for if experience has 
shown us that increased expenditure during war, 
and a proportionately increasing prosperity, have 
been naturally connected as cause and consequence, 
it is neither rash nor illogical to infer that a liberal 
expenditure in peace upon national works would 
produce the same beneficial effect without any of 
the accompanying evil. Money thus expended will 
flow like chyle into the veins of the state, and nour- 
ish and invigorate it. Build, therefore, our monu- 
ments for Trafalgar and Waterloo, and let no paltry 
considerations prevent them from being made worthy 
of the occasion and of the country — of the men who 
have fought, conquered, and died for us — of Nelson, 
of Wellington, and of Great Britain ! Let them be 
such as may correspond in splendor with the actions 
to which they are consecrated, and vie, if possible, 
in duration with the memory of those immorta 
events. They are for after ages : the more mag 
nificent they may be, the better will they manifest 
the national sense of great public services, and the 
more will they excite and foster that feeling in 
which great actions have their root. In proportion 
to their magnificence, also, will be the present bene- 
fit, as well as of future good ; for they are not like the 
Egyptian pyramids, to be raised by bondsmen under 
rigorous task-masters ; the wealth which is taken 
from the people returns to them again, like vapors 
which are drawn imperceptibly from the earth, but 
distributed to it in refreshing dews and fertilizing 
showers. What bounds could imagination set. to 



570 



APPENDIX. 



the welfare and glory of this island, if a tenth part, 
or even a twentieth, of what the war expenditure 
has been, were annually applied in improving and 
creating harbors, in bringing our roads to the best 
possible state, in colonizing upon our waste lands, in 
reclaiming fens and conquering tracts from the sea, in 
encouraging the liberal arts, in erecting churches, in 
building and endowing schools and colleges, and 
war upon physical and moral evil with the whole 
artillery of wisdom and righteousness, with all the 
resources of science, and all the ardor of enlighten- 
ed and enlarged benevolence ? 

"It is likewise incumbent upon government to 
take heed lest, in its solicitude for raising the nec- 
essary revenue, there should be too little regard for 
the means by which it is raised. It should beware 
of imposing such duties as create a strong tempta- 
tion to evade them. It should be careful that all its 
measures tend as much as possible to the improve- 
ment of the people, and especially careful nothing 
be done which can tend in any way to corrupt them. 
It showi reform its prisons, and apply some remedy 
to the worst grievance which exists — the enormous 
expenses, the chicanery, and the ruinous delays of 
the law. 

" Machiavelli says that legislators ought to sup- 
pose all men to be naturally bad; in no point has 
that sagacious statesman been more erroneous. Fit- 
ter it is that governments should think well of man- 
kind ; for the better they think of them, the better 
they will find them, and the better they will make 
them. Government must reform the populace, the 
people must reform themselves. This is the true 
reform, and compared with this all else is flocci, 
naiici, nihili, pili. 

" Such, sir, are, in part, the views of the man 
whom you have traduced. Had you perused his 
writings, you could not have mistaken them; and I 
am willing to believe that if you had done this, and 
formed an opinion for yourself, instead of retailing 
that of wretches who are at once the panders of 
malice and the pioneers of rebellion, you would 
neither have been so far forgetful of your parlia- 
mentary character, nor of the decencfes between 
man and man, as so wantonly, so unjustly, and in 
such a place, to have attacked one who had given 
you no provocation. 

"Did you imagine that I should sit down quietly 
under the wrong, and treat j-our attack with the 
same silent contempt as I have done all the abuse 
and calumny with which, from one party or the 
other, anti-Jacobins or Jacobins, I have been assail- 
ed in daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly publi- 
cations, since the year 1796, when I first became 
known to the public ? The place where you made the 
attack, and the manner of the attack, prevent this. 

"How far the writings of Mr. South ey may be 
found to deserve a favorable acceptance from after 
ages, time will decide ; but a name which, whether 
Worthiby or not, has been conspicuous in the literary 
history of its age, will certainly not perish. Some 
account of his life will always be prefixed to his 
works, and transferred to literary histories and to 
the biographical dictionaries, not only of this, but of 
other countries. There it will be related that he 
lived in the bosom of his family, in absolute retire- 
ment; that in all his writings there breathed the 
same abhorrence of oppression and immorality, the 
same spirit of devotiou, and the same ardent wishes 
for the amelioration of mankind ; and that the only 
charge which malice could bring against him was, 
that as he grew older his opinions altered concerning 
the means by which that amelioration was to be effect- 
ed; and that, as he learned to understand the insti- 
tutions of his country, he learned to appreciate them 
rightly, to love, and to revere, and to defend them. 
It will be said of him, that in an age of personality 
he abstained from satire, and that during the course 
of his literary life, often as he was assailed, the only 
occasion on which he ever condescended to reply 
was when a certain Mr. William Smith insulted him 
in Parliament with the appellation of renegade. On 
„uat occasion it will be said that he vindicated him- 



self as it became him to do, and treated his calum- 
niator with just and memorable severity. Whether 
it shall be added that Mr. William Smith redeemed 
his own character by coming forward with honest 
manliness and acknowledging that he had spoken 
rashly and unjustly, concerns himself, but is not of 
the slightest importance to me. 

" Robert Southey. '" 



Tico Letters concerning Lord Byron, published in 
Southey' s Essays, 2 vols., Murray, 1832. 

'•Having, in the preface of my 'Vision of Judg- 
ment,' explained the principle upon which the meter 
of that poem is constructed, I took the opportunity 
of introducing the following remarks : 

" ' I am well aware that the public are peculiarly 
intolerant of such innovations, not less so than the 
populace are of any foreign fashion, whether of fop- 
pery or convenience. Would that this literary in- 
tolerance were under the influence of a saner judg- 
ment, and regarded the morals more than the man- 
ner of a composition — the spirit rather than the 
form! Would that it were directed against those 
monsti-ous combinations of horrors and mockery, 
lewdness and impiety, with which English poetry 
has, in our days, first been polluted ! For more than 
half a century English literature had been distin- 
guished by its moral purity — the effect, and, in its 
itm-n, the cause of an improvement in national man- 
ners. A father might, without apprehension of evil, 
have put into the hands of his children any book 
which issued from the press, if it did not bear, ei- 
ther in its title-page or frontispiece, manifest signs 
that it was intended as furniture for the brothel. 
There was no danger in any work which bore the 
name of a respectable publisher, or was to be pro- 
cured at any respectable bookseller's. This was 
particularly the case with regard to our poetry. It 
is now no longer so ; and woe to those by whom the 
offense cometh! The greater the talents of the 
offender, the greater is his guilt, and the more en- 
during will be his shame. Whether it be that the 
laws themselves are unable to abate an evil of this 
magnitude, or whether it be that they are remissly 
administered, and with such injustice that the celeb- 
rity of an offender serves as a privilege whereby he 
obtains impunity, individuals are bound to consider 
that such pernicious works would neither be pub- 
lished nor written, if they were discouraged, as they 
might and ought to be, by public feeling. Every 
person, therefore, who purchases such books, or ad- 
mits them into his house, promotes the mischief, and 
thereby, as far as in liim lies, becomes an aider and 
abettor of the crime. 

"'The publication of a lascivious book is one of 
the worst offenses which can be committed against 
the well-being of society. It is a sin, to the conse- 
quences of which no limits can be assigned, and 
those consequences no after repentance in the writ- 
er can counteract. Whatever remorse of conscience 
he may feel when his hour comes (and come it must !) 
will be of no avail. The poignancy of a death-bed 
repentance can not cancel one copy of the thousands 
which are sent abroad ; and as long as it continues 
to be read, so long is he the pander of posterity, 
and so long is he heaping up guilt upon his soul in 
perpetual accumulation. 

" ' These remarks are not more severe than the 
offense deserves, even when applied to those im- 
moral writers who have not been conscious of any 
evil intention in their writings, who would ^knowl- 
edge a little levity, a little warmth of coloring, and 
so forth, in that sort of language with which men 
gloss over their favorite vices, and deceive them- 
selves. What, then, should be said of those for 
whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton 
youth can no longer be pleaded, but who have writ- 
ten in sober manhood and with deliberate purpose ? 
Men of diseased* hearts and depraved imaginations, 

* " Summi poetce in omni poelarum saculo viri fueruut 



APPENDIX. 



57J 



who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own 
unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against 
the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating 
that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and 
bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, la- 
bor to make others as miserable as themselves, by 
infecting them with a moral virus that eats into the 
soul ! The school which they have set up may prop- 
erly be called the Satanic School ; for, though their 
productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their las- 
civious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loath- 
some images of atrocities and horrors which they 
delight to represent, they are more especially char- 
acterized by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious 
impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of 
hopelessness wherewith it is allied. 

'"This evil is political as well as moral; for, in- 
deed, moral and political evils are inseparably con- 
nected. Truly has it been affirmed by one of our 
ablest and clearest reasoners,t that " the destruc- 
tion of governments may be proved, and deduced 
from the general corruption of the subjects' man- 
ners, as a direct and natural cause thereof, by a 
demonstration as certain as any in the mathemat- 
ics." There is no maxim more frequently enforced 
by Machiavelli than that, where the manners of a 
people are generally corrupted, there the govern- 
ment can not long subsist: a truth which all history 
exemplified; and there is no means whereby that 
corruption can be so surely and rapidly diffused as 
by poisoning the waters of literature. 

"'Let rulers of the state look to this in time! 
But, to use the words of South, if "our physicians 
think the best way of curing a disease is to pamper 
it, the Lord in mercy prepare the kingdom to suffer 
what. He by miracle only can prevent!" 

" ' No apology is offered for these remarks. The 
subject led to them ; and the occasion of introducing 
them was willingly taken, because it is the duty of 
every one, whose opinion may have any influence, 
to expose the drift and aim of those writers who are 
laboring to subvert the foundations of human virtue 
and of human happiness.' 

"Lord Byron, in his next "publication, was pleas- 
ed to comment upon this passage in the ensuing 
words : 

" ' Mr. Southey, too, in his pious preface to a poem, 
whose blasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of 
Wat Tyler, because it is equally absurd with that 
sincere production, calls upon the " Legislature to 
look to it," as the toleration of such writings led to 
the French Revolution — not such writings as Wat 
Tyler, but as those of the " Satanic School." This 
is not true, and Mr. Southey knows it to be not true. 
Every French writer of any freedom was persecu- 
ted : Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel 
and Diderot were sent to the Bastile, and a per- 
petual war was waged with the whole class by the 
existing despotism. In the next place, the French 
Revolution was not occasioned by any writings. 



prnbi; in 7iostris id vidimus et videmns ; neque alius est 
error a veritate longius qudm magna ingenia magnis nc^ 
cessario corrumpi viti is. Secundo plerique posthabent pri- 
mum, hi malignitate, Mi ignorantia; et quum aliqucm i?i- 
veniunt styli morumque vitiis notatum, nee inficetum tarn en 
nee in libris edendis parcum, eum stipant, predicant occu- 
pant, amplccluntur. Si mores aliquarUulum vellet corrigere, 
si stylum curare paululum, si fervido ingenio temper are, si 
mora tantillum interponere, turn in gens nescio quid et vcrc 
epicum, quadraginta annos natus, procuderet. Ignorant 
verd febriculis non indicari vires, impatientiam ab imbecil- 
litate non differre ; ignorant a levi homine et inconstante 
multa fortasse scribi posse plusquam mediocria, nihil com- 
position, arduum, atcrnum." — Savagius Landor, De Cultu 
atque Usu Latini Sermonis. This essay, which is full of 
fine critical remarks and striking thoughts felicitously ex- 
pressed, reached me from Pisa, while the proof of the 
present sheet was before me. Of its author (the author 
of Gebir and Count Julian) I will only say in this place, 
that to have obtained his approbation as a poet, and pos- 
sessed his friendship as a man, will be remembered among 
the honors of my life, when the petty enmities of this 
generation will be forgotten, and its ephemeral reputa- 
tions shall have passed away. t South. 



" ' Itdfe the fashion to attribute every thing to the 
Fi encn^,evolution, and the French Revolution to 
every thing but its real cause. That cause is obvi- 
ous. The government exacted too much, and the 
people could neither give nor bear more. Without 
this, the encyclopedists might have written their 
fingers off without the occurrence of a single altera- 
tion. 

" ' And the English Revolution (the firstr, I mean), 
what was it occasioned by '? The Puritans were 
surely as pious and moral as Wesley or his biogra- 
pher. Acts — acts on the part of government, and 
not writings against them, have caused the past con- 
vulsions, and are leading to the future. 

" ' I look upon such as inevitable, though no revo- 
lutionist. I wish to see the English Constitution re- 
stored, and not destroyed. Born an aristocrat, and 
naturally one by temper, with the greater part of 
my present property in the funds, what have i" to 
gain by a revolution 1 Perhaps I have more to lose 
in every way than Mr. Southey, with all his places 
and presents for panegyrics and abuse into the bar- 
gain. But that a revolution is inevitable, I repeat. 
The government may exult over the repression of 
petty tumults ; these are but the receding waves, 
repulsed and broken for a moment on the»shore, while 
the great tide is still rolling on, and gaining ground 
with every breaker. Mr. Southey accuses us of at- 
tacking the x*eligion of the country ; and he is abet- 
ting it by writing lives of Wesley ! One mode of 
worship is merely destroyed by another. There 
never was, nor ever will be, a country without a re- 
ligion. We shall be told of France again ; but it 
was only Paris and a frantic party which for a mo- 
ment upheld their dogmatic nonsense of theophilan- 
thropy. The Church of England, if overthrown, will 
be swept away by the reclaimers, and not by the 
skeptics. People are too wise, too well-informed, 
too certain of their own immense importance in the 
realms of space ever to submit to the impiety of 
doubt. There may be a few such diffident specula- 
tors, like water in the pale sunbeam of human rea- 
son, but they are very few ; and their opinions, with- 
out enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, can never 
gain proselytes, unless, indeed, they are persecuted : 
that, to be sure, will increase any thing. 

" ' Mr. S., with a cowardly ferocity, exults over 
the anticipated "death-bed repentance" of the ob- 
jects of his dislike, and indulges himself in a pleas- 
ant " Vision of Judgment," in prose as well as verse, 
full of impious impudence. What Mr. S.'s sensa- 
tions or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving 
this state of existence, neither he nor we can pre- 
tend to decide. In common, I presume, with most 
men of any reflection, /have not waited for a "death- 
bed" to repent of many of my actions, notwithstand- 
ing the "diabolical pride" which this pitiful rene- 
gado, in his rancor, would impute to those who scorn 
him. 

" 'Whether, upon the whole, the good or evil ot 
my deeds may preponderate, is not for me to ascer- 
tain ; but as my means and opportunities have been 
greater, I shall limit my present defense to an as- 
sertion (easily proved, if necessary), that I, "in my 
degree," have done more real good in any one given 
year, since I was twenty, than Mr. Southey in the 
whole course of his shifting and turncoat existence. 
There are several actions to which I can look back 
with an honest pride, not to be damped by the cal- 
umnies of a hireling. There are others to which I 
recur with sorrow and repentance ; but the only act 
of my life, of which Mr. Southey can have any real 
knowledge, as it was one which brought me in con- 
tact with a near connection of his own. did no dis- 
honor to that connection nor to me. 

" ' I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies 
on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, 
which he scattered abroad on his return from Switz- 
erland, against me and others. They have done him 
no good in this world ; and if his creed be the right 
one, they will do him less in the next. What MS 
" death-bed" may be, it is not my province to pred- 
icate ; let him settle it with his Maker, as I must do 



572 



APPENDIX. 



with mine. There is something at onceafccrous 
and blasphemous in this arrogant scribb^F of all 
works, sitting down to deal damnation and destruc- 
tion upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the 
Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on 
Martin the Regicide all shuffled together in his writ- 
ing-desk. One of his consolations appears to be a 
Latin note from a work of Mr. Landor, the author of 
" G-ebir," whose friendship for Robert Southey will, 
it seems, " be an honor to him when the ephemeral 
disputes and ephemeral reputations of the day are 
forgotten."' 

"'I, for one, neither envy him "the friendship" 
nor the glory in reversion which is to accrue from it, 
like Mr. Thelusson's fortune, in the third and fourth 
generation. This friendship will probably be as 
memorable as his own epics, which (as I quoted to 
him ten or twelve years ago in "English Bards'*) 
Porson said "would be remembered when Homer 
and Virgil are forgotten, and not till then." For the 
present I leave him.' " . 

The foregoing passage, which has here been given 
at length, called forth the first of the ensuing letters. 

LETTER I. 

To the Editor of the Courier. 

" Keswick, Jan. 5, 1822. 

" Sir, — Having seen in the newspapers a note re- 
lating to myself, extracted from a recent publication 
of Lord Byi-on's, I request permission to reply through 
the medium of your journal. 

" I come at once to his lordship's charge against 
me, blowing away the abuse with which it is froth- 
ed, and evaporating a strong acid in which it is sus- 
pended. The residuum, then, appears to be, that 
' Mr. Southey, on his return from Switzerland (in 
1817), scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to 
be such, against Lord Byron and others.' To this I 
reply with a direct and positive denial. 

" If I had been told in that country that Lord By- 
ron had turned Turk or monk of La Trappe — that 
he had furnished a harem or endowed a hospital, I 
might have thought the report, whichever it had 
been, possible, and repeated it accordingly, passing 
it, as it had been taken, in the small change of con- 
versation, for no more than it was worth. In this 
manner I might have spoken of him as of Baron Ge- 
rambe, the Green Man, the Indian Jugglers, or any 
other figurante of the time being. There was no 
reason for any particular delicacy on my part in 
speaking of his lordship ; and, indeed, I should have 
thought any thing which might be reported of him 
would have injured his character as little as the 
story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guil- 
ford — that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He may 
ride a rhinoceros, and though every one would stare, 
no one would wonder. But making no inquiry con- 
cerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no 
curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. 
When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaint- 
ances on my return, it was of the flying-tree at Alp- 
nach, and the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne 
— not of Lord Byron. 1 sought for no staler sub- 
ject than St. Ursula. 

" Once, and only once, in connection with Switz- 
erland, I have alluded to his lordship ; and as the 
passage was curtailed in the press, 1 take this op- 
portunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review, 
speaking incidentally of the 'Jungfrau,' I said 'it 
was the scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met 
the Devil and bullied him, though the Devil must 
have won his cause before any tribunal, in this 
world or the next, if he had not pleaded more fee- 
bly for himself than his advocate, in a cause of can- 
onization, ever pleaded for him.' 

" With regard to the others, whom his lordship ac- 
coses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a 
party of his friends, whose names I found written in 
the album at Mont Auvert, with an avowal of athe- 
ism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment 
in the same language, underneath it. Those names, 
with that avowal and the comment, I transcribed in 



my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance on my 
return. If I had published it, the gentleman in ques- 
tion would not have thought himself slandered by 
having that recorded of him which he has so often 
recorded of himself. 

" The many opprobrious appellations which Lord 
Bjnron has bestowed upon me, I leave as I find them, 
with the praises which he has bestowed upon him- 
self. 
" ' How easily is a noble spirit discern'd 

From harsh and sulphurous matter that flies out 
In contumelies, makes a noise, and stinks.' 

Ben Jonson. 
But I am accustomed to such things ; and so far from 
irritating me are the enemies who use such weap- 
ons, that when I hear of their attacks, it is some sat- 
isfaction to think they have thus employed the ma- 
lignity- which must have been employed somewhere, 
and could not have been directed against any person 
whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The 
vipei*, however venomous in purpose, is harmless 
in effect while it is biting at the file. It is seldom, 
indeed, that 1 waste a word or a thought upon those 
who are perpetually assailing me. But abhorring 
as I do the personalities which disgrace our current 
literatui-e, and averse from controversy as I am, 
both by principle and inclination, I make no profes- 
sion of non-resistance. When the offense and the 
offender are such as to call for the whip and the 
branding-iron, it has been both seen and felt that I 
can inflict them. 

"Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently 
produced by an infliction of this kind, not by hear- 
say reports of my conversation four years ago, trans- 
mitted him from England. 

" The cause may be found in certain remarks upon 
the Satanic School of Poetry, contained in my pref- 
ace to the Vision of Judgment. Well would it be for 
Lord Byron if he coulcT look back upon any of his 
writings with as much satisfaction as I shall always 
do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. 
Many persons, and parents especially, have express- 
ed their gratitude to me for having applied the brand- 
ing-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Ed- 
inburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honorable feel- 
ing by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distin- 
guished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has 
imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give 
him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity : I be- 
lieve he was equally incapable of comprehending 
a worthier motive, or inventing a worse; and, as I 
have never condescended to expose, in any instance, 
his pitiful malevolence, I thank him for having in 
this stripped it bare himself, and exhibited it in its 
bald, naked, and undisguised deformity. 

"Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventur- 
ed to bring the matter of those animadversions into 
view. He conceals the fact that they are directed 
against authors of blasphemous and lascivious books ; 
against men who, not content with indulging their 
own vices, labor to make others the slaves of sensu- 
ality like themselves ; against public panders, who, 
mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to de- 
stroy the cement of social order, and to carry profa- 
nation and pollution into private families and into the 
hearts of individuals. 

" His lordship has thought it not unbecoming in 
him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word 
scribbler pass ; it is an appellation which will not 
stick like that of the Satanic School. But, if a scrib- 
bler, how am I one of all work ? I will tell Lord 
Byron what I have not scribbled, what kind of work 
I have not done : 

"I have never published libels upon my friends 
and acquaintances, expressed my sorrow for those 
libels, and called them in during a mood of better 
mind, and then reissued them when the evil spirit, 
which for a time had been cast out, had returned and 
taken possession, with seven others more wicked 
than himself. I have never abused the power, of 
which every author is in some degree possessed, to 
wound the character of a man or the heart of a 
woman. I have never sent into the world a book to 



APPENDIX. 



.573 



which I did not dare affix my name, or which I fear- 
ed to claim in a court of justice, if it were pirated 
by a knavish bookseller. I have never manufactur- 
ed furniture for the brothel. None of these things 
have I done ; none of the foul work by which liter- 
ature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My 
hands are clean ! There is no damned spot upon 
them ! no taint, which all the perfumes of Arabia 
will not sweeten ! 

"Of the work which I have done it becomes me 
uot here to speak, save only as relates to the Sa- 
tanic School, and its Coryphteus, the author of Don 
Juan. I have held up that school to public detesta- 
tion as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and 
the domestic morals of the country. I have given 
them a designation to which their founder and leader 
answers. I have sent a stone from my sling which 
has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have 
fastened his name upon the gibbet for reproach and 
ignominy, as long as it shall endure. Take it down 
who can ! 

" One word of advice to Lord Byron before I con- 
clude. When he attacks me again, let it be in 
rhyme. For one who has so little command of him- 
self, it will be a great advantage that his temper 
should be obliged to keep tune. And while he may 
still indulge in the same rankness and violence of in- 
sult, the meter will, in some degree, seem to lessen 
its vulgarity. Robert Southey." 

LETTER H. 

To the Editor of the Courier. 

" Keswick, Dec. 8, 1824. 

" Sir, — On a former occasion you have allowed 
me, through the channel of your journal, to contra- 
dict a calumnious accusation as publicly as it had 
been preferred; and though, in these days of slan- 
der, such things hardly deserve refutation, there are 
reasons which induce me once more to request a 
similar favor. 

"Some extracts from Captain Medwin's recent 
publication of Lord Byron's Conversations have been 
transmitted to me by a friend, who, happening to 
know what the facts are which are there falsified, 
is of opinion that it would not misbecome me to state 
them at this time. I wish it, however, to be distinct- 
ly understood, that in so doing I am not influenced 
by any desire of vindicating myself; that would be 
wholly unnecessary, considering from what quarter 
the charges come, I notice them for the sake of lay- 
ing before the public one sample more of the prac- 
tices of the Satanic School, and showing what cred- 
it is due to Lord Byron's assertions. For that his 
lordship spoke to this effect, and in this temper, I 
have no doubt, Captain Me^win having, I dare say, 
to the best of his recollection, faithfully performed 
the worshipful office of retailing all the effusions of 
spleen, slander, and malignity which were vented 
in his presence. Lord Byron is the person who suf- 
fers most by this ; and, indeed, what man is there 
whose character would remain uninjured, if every 
peevish or angry expression, every sportive or ex- 
travagant sally, thrown off in the unsuspicious and 
imagined safety of private life, were to be secretly 
noted down and published, with no notice of circum- 
stances to show how they had arisen, and when no 
explanation was possible ? One of the offices which 
has been attributed to the Devil is that of register- 
ing every idle word. There is an end of all confi- 
dence or comfort in social intercourse if such a prac- 
tice is to be tolerated by public opinion. When I 
take these Conversations to be authentic, it is be- 
cause, as far as I am concerned, they accord, both 
in matter and spirit, with what his lordship himself 
had written and published ; and it is on this account 
only that I deem them worthy of notice — the last 
notice that I shall ever bestow upon the subject. 
Let there be as many ' More last Words of Mr. Bax- 
ter' as the 'reading public' may choose to pay for, 
they will draw no further reply from me. 

" Now, then, to the point. The following speech 
is reported by Captain Medwin as Lord Byron's : ' I 



am glad Mr. Southey owns that article* " Foliage," 
which excited my choler so much. But who else 
could have been the author? Who but Southey 
would have had the baseness, under pretext of re- 
viewing the work of one man, insidiously to make it 
a nest-egg for hatching malicious calumnies against 
others ? I say nothing of the critique itself on " Fo- 
liage ;" but what was the object of that article ? I 
repeat, to vilify and scatter his dark and devilish in- 
sinuations against me and others. Shame on the 
man who could wound an already bleeding heart — 
be barbarous enough to revive the memory of an 
event that Shelley was perfectly ignorant of, and 
found scandal on falsehood ! Shelley taxed him with 
writing that article some years ago; and he had the 
audacity to admit that he had treasured up some 
opinions of Shelley ten years before, when he was 
on a visit to Keswick, and had made a note of them 
at the time.' 

" The reviewal in question I did not write. Lord 
Byron might have known this if he had inquired of 
Mr. Murray, who would readily have assured him 
that I was not the author ; and he might have known 
it from the reviewal itself, wherein the writer de- 
clares in plain words that he was a cotemporary of 
Shelley's at Eton. I had no concern in it, directly 
or indirectly ; but let it not be inferred that in thus 
disclaiming that paper, any disapproval of it is in- 
tended. Papers in the Quarterly Review have been 
ascribed to me (those on Keats's Poems, for exam- 
ple), which I have heartily condemned both for their 
spirit and manner. But for the one in question, its 
composition would be creditable to the most distin- 
guished writer ; nor is there any thing either in the 
opinions expressed, or in the manner of expressing 
them, which a man of just and honorable principles 
would have hesitated to advance. I would not have 
written that part of it which alludes to Mr. Shelley, 
because, having met him on familiar terms, and part- 
ed with him in kindness (a feeling of which Lord 
Byron had no conception), would have withheld mt 
from animadverting in that manner upon his conduct 
In other respects, the paper contains nothing that I 
would not have avowed if I had written, or subserib 
ed, as entirely assenting to, and approving it. 

"It is not true that Shelley ever inquired of me. 
whether I was the author of that paper, which pur 
porting, as it did, to be written by an Etonian of hi.* 
own standing, he very well knew I was not. But 
in this part of Lord Byron's statement there may bt 
some mistake, mingled with a great deal of malig- 
nant falsehood. Mr. Shelley addressed a letter to 
me from Pisa, asking if I were the author of a criti- 
cism in the Quarterly Review upon his Revolt of 
Islam, not exactly, in Loi'd Byron's phrase, taxing 
me with it, for he declared his own belief that I was 
not, but adding that he was induced to ask the ques- 
tion by the positive declaration of some friends in 
England that the article was mine. Denying, in my 
reply, that either he or any other person was enti- 
tled to propose such a question upon such grounds, 
I nevertheless assured him that I had not written 
the paper, and that I had never, in any of my writ- 
ings, alluded to him in any way. 

" Now for the assertion that I had the audacity to 
admit having treasured up some of Shelley's opin- 
ions when he had resided at Keswick, and having 
made notes of them at the time. What truth is 
mixed up with the slander of this statement I shall 
immediately explain, premising only, that as the 
opinion there implied concerning the practice of 
noting down familiar conversation is not applicable 
to me, I transfer it to Captain Medwin for his own 
especial use. 

"Mr. Shelley having, in the letter alluded to, 
thought proper to make some remarks upon my opin- 
ions, I took occasion, in reply, to comment upon his. 
and to ask him (as the tree is known by its fruits) 
whether he had found them conducive to his own 



* A volume of poems by Mr. Leigh Hunt. The reader 
who may be desirous of referring to the article will find 
it in vol. xviii. of the Quarterly Review, p. 324. — R. S. 



574 



APPENDIX. 



happiness, and the happiness of those with whom 
he had been most nearly connected. This produced 
a second letter from him, written in a tone partly of 
justification, partly of attack. I replied to this also, 
not by any such absurd admission as Lord Byron 
has stated, bat by recapitulating to him, as a prac- 
tical illustration of his principles, the leading circum- 
stances of his own life, from the commencement of 
his career at University College. Trie earliest facts 
I stated upon his own authority, as I had heard them 
from his own lips ; the latter were of public notori- 
ety. Here the correspondence ended. On his part 
it had been conducted with the courtesy natural to 
him; on mine, in the spirit of one who was earnest- 
ly admonishing a fellow-creature. 

" This is the correspondence upon which Lord By- 
ron's misrepresentation has been constructed. It is 
all that ever passed between us, except a note from 
Shelley, some years before, accompanying a copy of 
his Alastor, and one of mine in acknowledgment of 
it. I have preserved his letters, together with cop- 
ies of my own ; and if I had as little consideration 
for the feelings of the living as Captain Medwin 
has displayed, it is not any tenderness toward the 
dead* that would withhold me now from publishing 
them. 

"It is not likely that Shelley should have commu- 
nicated my part of this corcespondence to Lord By- 
ron, even if he did his own. Bearing testimony, as 
his heart did, to the truth of my statements in every 
point, and impossible as it was to escape from the 
conclusion which was then brought home, I do not 
think he would have dared produce it. How much 
or how little of the truth was known to his lordship, 
or with which of the party at Pisa the insolent and 
calumnious misrepresentations conveyed in his lord- 
ship's words originated, is of little consequence. 

" The charge of scattering dark and devilish insin- 
uations is one which, if Lord Byron were living, I 
would throw back in his teeth. 'Me he had assailed 
without the slightest provocation, and with that un- 
manliness, too, which was peculiar to him; and in 
this course he might have gone on without giving 
me the slightest uneasiness, or calling forth one an- 
imadversion in reply. When I came forward to at- 
tack his lordship, it was upon public, not upon pri- 
vate grounds. He is pleased to suppose that he had 
mortally offended Mr. Wordsworth and myself many 
vears ago, by a letter which he had written to the 
Ettrick Shepherd. ' Certain it is,' he says, 'that I 
did not spare the Lakists in it, and he told me that 
he could not resist the temptation, and had shown it 
to the fraternity. It was too tempting ; and as I 
could never keep a secret of my own (as you know), 
much less that of other people, I could not blame 
him. I remember saying, among other things, that 
the Lake poets were such fools as not to fish in their 
own waters. But this was the least offensive part 
of the epistle.' No such epistle was ever shown to 
Mr. Wordsworth or to me ; but I remember (and 
this passage brings it to my recollection) to have 
heard that Lord Byron had spoken of us in a letter 
to Hogg, with some contempt, as fellows who could 
neither vie with him for skill in angling nor for prow- 



* In the preface to his Monody on Keats, Shelley, as I 
have been informed, asserts that I was the author of the 
criticism in the Quarterly Review upon that young man's 
poems, and that his death was occasioned by it. There 
was a degree of meanness in this (especially considering 
the temper and tenor of our correspondence) which I was 
not then prepared to expect from Shelley, for that he be- 
lieved me to be the author of that paper I certainly do not 
believe. He was once, for a short time, my neighbor. I 
met him upon terms, not of friendship indeed, but certain- 
ly of mutual good will. I admired his talents ; thought 
that he would outgrow his errors (perilous as they were) ; 
and trusted that, meantime, a kind and generous heart 
would resist the effect of fatal opinions which he had tak- 
en up in ignorance and boyhood. Herein I was mistaken. 
But when I ceased to regard him with hope, he became 
to me a subject for sorrow and awful commiseration, not 
of any injurious or unkind feeling ; and when I expressed 
myself with just severity concerning him, it was in direct 
communication to himself. — R. S. 



ess in swimming. Nothing more than this came tt 
my hearing ; and I must have been more sensitive 
than his lordship himself could I have been offended 
by it. But if the contempt which he then express- 
ed had equaled the rancor which he afterward dis 
played, Lord Byron must have known that I had the 
Jlocci of his eulogium to balance the nana, of his 
scorn, and that the one would have nihili-jnlifed 
the other, even if I had not well understood the 
worthlessness of both. 

"It was because Lord Byron had brought a stig- 
ma upon English literature that I accused him; be- 
cause he had perverted great talents to the worst 
purposes ; because he had set up for pander-gen- 
eral to the youth of Great Britain as long as his 
writings should endure ; because he had committed 
a high crime and misdemeanor against society, by 
sending forth a work in which mockery was mingled 
with horrors, filth with impiety, profligacy with se- 
dition and slander. For these offenses I came for- 
ward to arraign him. The accusation was not made 
darkly, it was not insinuated, nor was it advanced 
under the cover of a review. I attacked him open- 
ly in my own name, and only not bj' his, because he 
had not then publicly avowed the flagitious produc- 
tion by which he will be remembered for lasting in- 
famy. He replied in manner altogether worthy of 
himself and his cause. Contention with a generous, 
honorable opponent leads naturally to esteem, and 
probably to friendship; but, next to such an antag- 
onist, an enemy like Lord Byron is to be desired — 
one who, by his conduct in the contest, divests him- 
self of every claim to respect; one whose baseness 
is such as to sanctify the vindictive feeling that it 
provokes, and upon whom the act of taking venge- 
ance is that of administering justice. I answered 
him as he deserved to be answered, and the effect 
which that answer produced upon his lordship has 
been described by his faithful chronicler, Captain 
Medwin. This is the real history of what the pur- 
veyors of scandal for the public are pleased some- 
times to announce in their advertisements as ' By- 
ron's Controversy with Southey !' What there was 
' dark and devilish' in it belongs to his lordship ; and 
had I been compelled to resume it during his life, 
he who played the monster in literature, and aimed 
his blows at women, should have been treated ac 
cordingly. 'The Republican Trio,' says Lord By- 
ron, ' when they began to publish in common, were 
to have had a community of all things, like the An- 
cient Britons — to have lived in a state of nature, 
like savages, and peopled some island of the blessed 

with children in common, like . A very pretty 

Arcadian notion!' I may be excused for wishing 
that Lord Byron had published this himself; but, 
though he is responsible for the atrocious falsehood, 
he is not for its posthumous publication. I shall 
only observe, therefore, that the slander is as worthy 
of his lordship as the scheme itself would have been. 
Nor would I have condescended to have noticed it 
even thus, were it not to show how little this ca- 
lumniator knew concerning the objects of his unea- 
sy and restless hatred. Mr. Wordsworth and I were 
strangers to each other, even by name, at the time 
when he represents us as engaged in a satanic con- 
federacy, and we never published any thing in com- 
mon. 

" Here I dismiss the subject. It might have been 
thought that Lord Byron had attained the last de- 
gree of disgrace when his head was set up for a sign 
at one of those preparatory schools for the brothel 
and the gallows, where obscenity, sedition, and blas- 
phemy are retailed in drams for the vulgar. There 
remained one further shame — there remained this 
exposure of his private conversations, which has 
compelled his lordship's friends, in their own de- 
fense, to compare his oral declarations with his writ- 
ten words, and thereby to demonstrate that he was 
as regardless of truth as he was incapable of sus 
taining those feelings suited to his birth, station, and 
high endowments, which sometimes came across his 
better mind. Robert Sotitkey " 



APPENDIX. 



575 



THE GRIDIRON. 



A PINDARIC ODE. 



Broiling is best; bear witness, gods and men! 

Awake, my pen ; 

Promoted from some goose or gander's pinion 

To be tbe scepter wherewithal I sway 

The Muses' wide dominion ! 

And thou, my spirit, for a loftier flight 

Than ere the Theban eagle gain'd, prepare ; 

Win with strong impulse thine ethereal way, 

Till from the upper air, 

Subjected to thy sight, 

Regions remote and distant ages lie, 

And thine unbounded eye 

All things that are on earth or were in time descry. 

2. 

Broiling is best; from Jove begin the strain, 

High-thundering Jupiter, to whom belong 

The Gridiron and the song. 

Whence came the glorious Gridiron upon earth ? 

O daughter of Mnemosyne, relate 

When, where, and how the idea uncreate, 

That from all ages in the all-teeming mind 

Had slept confined, 

Received in happy hour its formal birth. 

Say, Muse, for thou canst tell 

Whate'er to gods or men in earliest days befell : 

Nor hath Oblivion in her secret cell, 

Wherein with miserly delight 

For aye by stealth 

She heaps her still accumulating wealth, 

Aught that is hidden from thy searching sight. 

3 - 

'Twas while the Olympian gods 
Were wont among yet uncorrupted nations 
To make from time to time their visitations, 
Disdaining not to leave their high abodes 
And feast with mortal men : 
Tn Britain were the heavenly guests convened ; 
Its nymphs and sylvan gods assembled then, 
From forest and from mountain, 
From river, mere, and fountain ; 
Thither Saturnian Jove descended ; 
With all his household deities attended ; 
And Neptune with the oceanic train, 
To meet them in his own beloved isle, 
Came in his sea-car sailing o'er the main. 
In joy that day the heav'ns appear'd to smile, 
The dimpled sea to smile in joy was seen, 
In joy the billows leap'd to kiss the land ; 
Yea, joy like sunshine fill'd the blue serene, 
Joy smooth'd the waves, and sparkled on the sand ; 
Winds, woods, and waters sung with one consent ; 
The cloud-compelling Jove made jovial weather, 
And earth, and sea, and sky rejoiced together. 



The sons of Britain then, his hearty hosts, 

Brought forth the noble beef that Britain boasts, 

To please, if please they might, their mighty guest. 

And Jove was pleased, for he had visited 

Men who on fish were fed, 

And those who made of milk their only food, 

A feeble race, with children's meat content, 

Whey-blooded, curd complexion'd. But this sight 

Awaken'd a terrestrial appetite 

That gladden' d his dear heart. The chief 

Of gods and men approving view'd 

The Britons and their beef; 

His head ambrosial in benignant mood 

He bent, and with a jocund aspect bless'd 

The brave Boophagi, and told them broil'd was best. 



He touch'd his forehead then, 

Pregnant this happy hour with thought alone, 

Not riving with parturient throbs, as when 

Panoplied Pallas, struggling to come forth, 

Made her astonish'd Mater-pater groan, 



And call on Vulcan to release the birth. 
He call'd on Vulcan now, but 'twas to say 

That in the fire and fume-eructant hill 

The sweltering Cyclops might keep holiday, 

For his own will divine, 

Annihilant of delay, 

Should with creative energy fulfill 

The auspicious moment's great intent benign. 

So spake the All-maker, and before the sound 

Of that annunciant voice had pass'd away, 

Behold upon the ground, 
Self-form'd, for so it seem'd, a Gridiron lay 



It was not forged by unseen hands, 

Anticipant of Jove's commands. 

Work worthy of applause, 

And then through air invisibly convey'd, 

Before him upon Earth's green carpet laid. 

Jove in his mind conceived it, and it was ; 

But though his plastic thought 

Shaped it with handle, feet, and bars, and frame, 

Deem not that he created it of naught. 

Nothing can come of nothing : from the air 

The ferrean atoms came ; 

The air, which, poising our terraqueous ball, 

Feeds, fosters, and consumes, and reproduces alL 

7. 
Now the perfect Steak prepare i 
Now the appointed rites begin ! 
Cut it from the pinguid rump, 
Not too thick and not too thin ; 
Somewhat to the thick inclining, 
Yet the thick and thin between, 
That the gods, when they are dining, 
May commend the golden mean. 
Ne'er till now have they been ble?c'd 
With a beef-steak duly dress'd ; 
Ne'er till this auspicious morn 
When the Gridiron was born. 



Gods and demigods alertly 

Vie in voluntary zeal : 
All are active, all are merry, 

Aiding, as they may, expertly, 
Yet in part the while experi- 
mentally the expected meal. 
Then it was that call'd to birth, 
From the bosom of the earth, 
By Apollo's moving lyre, 
Stones, bituminous and black, 
Ranged themselves upon the hearth 
Ready for Hephaestus' fire : 
While subjacent fagots crack, 
Folds of fog-like smoke aspire, 
Till the flames with growing strength 
All impediment subdue, 
And the jetty gloss at length 
Is exchanged for Vulcan's hue. 
Now with salt the embers strew, 
In faint explosion burning blue. 
All offending fumes are gone, 
Set, oh set the Gridiron on ! 



But who is she that there 

From Jove's own brain hath started into life? 

Red are her arms, and from the elbow bare ; 

Clean her close cap, white and light, 

From underneath it not a hair 

Straggles to offend the sight. 

A fork bidented, and a trenchant kniie. 

She wields. I know thee ! yes, I know thee now 

Heiress of culinary fame ; 

Clothed with pre-existence thou ! 

Dolly of the deathless name ! 

Thy praise in after days shall London speak, 

O kitchen queen, 

Of pearly forehead thou, and ruby cheek! 

And many a watery mouth thy chops will bless, 

Unconscious they and thou alike, I ween. 



576 



APPENDIX. 



That thou hadst thus been ante-born to dreis 
For Jupiter himself the first beef-steak. 

10. 
O Muse divine, of Jove's own line, expound 
That wonderful and ever-only birth 
Like which the womb of Possibility 
(Aye-and-all-teerning though it be) 
Hath brought no second forth. 
What hand but thine, O Muse divine, can sound 
The depth of mysteries profound 
Sunk in arcanal ages and in night? 
What but thy potential sight, 
Piercing high above all height, 
Reach them in the abyss of light ? 

11. 

It were ignorance or folly 

To compare riiis first-born Dolly 

With Athene ever young : 

Gray-eyed, grave, and melancholy, 

In her strength and in her state, 

When from her cranial esg the goddess sprung 

Full-fledged, in adamantine arms connate. 

Verily produced was she 

In her immortality : 
This of Dolly was a fan- 
tastic birth, or, rather, man- 
ifestation soon to be 
Revoked into non-entitv. 



Thus far, apparently, is completed; that which 
follows is transcribed from loose slips of paper. 

Anticipating all her wishes, 

Spirits come with plates and dishes. 

Can more be needed ? Yes, and more is here. 

Swifter than a shooting-star, 

One to distant Malabar 

Speeds his way, and, in a trice, 

Brings the pungent Indian spice. 

Whither hath Erin's guardian genius fled ? 

To the Tupinamban shore 

This tutelary power hath sped ; 

Earth's good apples thence he bore, 

One day destined to abound 

On his own Hibernian ground, 

Praties to be entitled then, 

Gift of gods to Irishmen. 

* * if * 

And strike with thunder from my starry seat 
Those who divorce the murphies from the meat. 

* * * * 

Bring me no nectar, Hebe, now, 

Nor thou, boy Ganymede ! 

He said, and shook his smiling brow, 

And bade the rock with porter flow — 

The rock with porter flow'd. 

Not such as porter long hath been 

In these degenerate days, I ween; 

But such as oft, in days of yore, 

Dean of St. Peter's, in thy yard, 

Though doors were double lock'd and barr'd, 

I quaff 'd as I shall quaff no more; 

Such as loyal Whitbread old, 

Father of the brewers bold, 

From his ample cask? preferrd 

When he regaled the kins-, the good King Georce 

the Third. 

* * * * 

Far more than silver or than gold 
The honest pewter pot he prized, 
And drank his porter galvanized. 

* * * * 

Teetotallers, avaunt, and ye who feed, 

Like grubs and snails, on root, or stem, or weed ; 

Nor think 

That by such diet and such drink 

Britain should rule the main. 



LIST OF THE PUBLICATIONS OF ROBERT SOUTHET 
ESQ. 

1. Poems by R. Southey and R. Lovell 1 vol 
Cottle, 1794. 

2. Joan of Arc. 1 vol. 4to. Cottle, 1795. 

3. Letters from Spain and Portugal. 1 vol Cot 
tie, 1797. 

4. Minor Poems. 2 vols. Cottle, 1797-1799 

5. Annual Anthology. 2 vols. Big?s and Cottle 
1799-1800. 

6. Thalaba. 2 vols. Longman, 1801. 

7. Chatterton's Works, edited bv R. Southey and 
J. Cottle. 3 vols. 1802. 

8. Amadis of Gaul. 4 vols. Longman, 1803. 

9. Metrical Tales and other Poems. 1 vol. 1805. 

10. Madoc. 1 vol. 4to. Longman, 1805. 

11. Palmerin of England. 4 vols. Lous-man, 1807. 

12. Specimens of English Poets. 3 vols. Lon<>. 
man, 1807. ° 

13. Letters from England, by Don Manuel Espri- 
ella. 3 vols. Lonsrnan, 3 807. 

1-1. Remains of Henry Kirke White, edited by R. 
Southey. 2 vols. Longman and others, 1807. 
15. Chronicle of the Cid. 1 vol. 4to. Longman, 



1808 
16 
17 
18 
19 



Curse of Kehama. 1 vol. 4to. Longman, 1810. 
Omniana. 2 vols. Longman, 1812. 
Life of Nelson. 2 vols. "Murray, 1813. 
Roderic, the Last of the Goths. 1 vol. 4to 
Longman, 1814. 

20. Carmen Triumph ale and Carmina Aulica. 1 
vol. Longman. 1814. 

21. Minor Poems (re-arranged, &c). 3 vols. Long- 
man, 1815. 

22. Lay of the Laureate. 1 vol. Longman, 
1816. 

23. Specimens of later British Poets. 

24. Pilgrimage to Waterloo. J vol. Lonsman, 
1816. 

25. Morte d' Arthur. 2 vols. 4to. Loneman, 1817. 

26. Letter to William Smith. A Pamphlet. Mur- 
ray. 1817. 

27. History of Brazil.' 3 vols. 4to. Lonsrnan, 
1810-1817-1819. 

28. Life of Wesley. 2 vols. Longman, 1820. 

29. Expedition of Orsua. lvol. Longman. 1821. 

30. A Vision of Judgment. 1 vol. 4to. Longman, 
1821. 

31. Book of the Church. 2 vols. Murray, 1824. 

32. Tale of Paraguay. 1 vol. Longman, 1825. 

33. Vindicise Ecclesiae Anglicanse. 1 vol. Mur- 
ray, 1826. 

34. History of the Peninsular "War. 3 vols. 4to. 
Murray, 1822-1824-1832. 

35. Lives of Uneducated Poets — Prefixed to Vers- 
es by John Jones. 1 vol. Murray, 1829. 

36. All for Love and the Legend of a Cock and a 
Hen. 1 vol. Longman, 1829. 

37. Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of 
Society. 2 vols. Murray, 1829. 

38. Life of John Bunyan.for an Edition of the Pil- 
grim's Progress. Murray and Major, 1830. 

39. Select Works of British Poets, from Chaucer 
to Jonson, edited with Biographical Notices. 1 vol. 
Long» an, 1831. 

40. Naval History of Endand. 4 vols, and part 
of the 5th, in Larduer's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Long- 
man, 1833-1840. 

41. The Doctor, &c. 7 vols. Longman. Vols. 6 
and 7, edited bv the Rev. J. Wood Waiter, 1834- 
1547. 

42. The Life and Works of Cowper. Edited. 15 
vols. Baldwin and Cradock, 1835-1837. 

43. Collected Edition of his Poems. 10 vols. 
Lonsrnian, 1837, 1838. Also complete in 1 volume. 
1547~ 

44. Common-place Book, 1st, 2d, and 3d Series. A 
fourth is announced. Edited by the Rev. J. Wood 
Warter. Longman. 

45. Oliver Newman, and other Fragments. Ed 
itcd bv the Rev. H. Hill. 1 vol. Longman, 1845. 



APPENDIX. 



57: 



Contributions to Periodical Literature. 
Articles communicated by Robot Southev to the first four 
volumes of the Annual Review. 
Vol. T. (1808). 
Bauer's Account of Commodore Hilling's Expedi- 
tion to the Northern part of Russia. 

tizie'a Voyages from Montreal, fcc. 
Fischer's Travel's in Spain. 

bi's Travels in Sweden, 
Guthrie's Travels in tlie Crimea. 

Pallaa'a Travels in the S. Provinces o\ Russia. 

Olivier*! Travels in Turkey. 

Wrangbam's Poems. 

Poetry by the Author of Cebir.* 

vot. n. (1803). 

Burner's History o( Discoveries in the South Sea. 

Clarke's Progress of Maritime Discovery. 

ivels in Bombay. 
Grandpa's Voyage to Bengal. 
Daviess Travels in America. 
Muirhoad's Travels in the Low Countries. 
New Military Journal. 
Win man's Travels in Turkey. 
Malthas on the Principles ol' Population. 
Transactions of the Missionary Society. 
Mylo's History of the Methodists. 
Godwin's Life of Chaucer. 
Ritson's Ancient Bnglish Romances. 
Mant's Life of J. Warter. 
Hayley's Poems. 
Kirke White's Clifton Grove. 
Lord Btrangford'a Camoens. 
Owen Cambridge's Works. 

Vol. I1L (1804). 
Barrow's Travels. 
Barrow's China. 

Froissarfa Chronicles. 

Address from the Society for the Suppression of 
Vice. 

rod's Life of Darwin. 
Scon's Sir Tristram. 
Cupid turned \ olunteer. 

Falconer's Shipwreck. 

Churchill's Poems. 

Crowe's Lewesdon Hill. 

Transactions of the Missionary Society. 

Vol. IV.(1805). 

Bniee's Travels to the Source of the Nile. 

Clarke's Naufragia. 

Present State o( Peru. 

Griffith's Travels. 

Roseoe's Life of Leo X. 

Cayley's Life of Sir Walter Raleigh. 

Tisbauh's Anecdotes of Frederic the Great. 

GreSWell's Memoirs of Angelus Politianus. 
Ellis's Specimens of Early Metrical Romances. 
Todd's Spenser. 
Bowles's Spirit of Discovery. 
Hayley's Ballads. 
Boyd's Penance of Hugo. 
Report on the Poems ol' Ossian. 
The Historical part of the Edinburgh Annual Reg- 
ister for 1808, 1809, and L810. 

Articles contributed to the Quarterly Review from L808 

to 1838 ; viz. : * 
No. 1. Baptist Mission in Iudia. 
9. Portuguese Literature. 

3. South Sea Missionaries. 

— Lord Valencia's Travels. 

4. Holmes's American Annuals. 

5. Life of Nelson. Enlarged afterward, and 

published separately. 

6. Veeson'S Resilience at Tongataboo. 

— Graham's Georgics. 

7. Observador Portuguez. On the French Oc- 

cupation of Portugal. 

* My father reviewed Gobir in the Critical tJeview. I 
regret that I can not eMain a list of his contrihutious to 
that periodical.— Ed. 

Oo 



No. 8. Faroe Islands. 

— On the Evangelical Sects. 

11. Bell and Lancaster. Enlarged afterward, 

and published separately. 
19, The Inquisition. 

— Montgomery's Poems. 

l;>. Sir G. Mackenzie's Iceland. 
i i. French Revolutionists. 

15. Lander's Count Julian. 

— D'Israeli's Calamities id' Authors. 

in. On the Manufacturing System and the Poor. 
lib Bogue and Rennet's Histoiy o( the Dissent 

era, 
91. Nieobar Islands. 

— Montgomery's World before the Flood. 
99-93. Chalmers's British Poets. 

93. Forfaes's Oriental Memoirs. 

24. Lewis and Clarke's Travels in North Amor. 

tea. 

— Remains o( Barrel Roberts. 

95. Miot's French Expedition to Egypt 

96-97. Life of Wellington. 

9& Alfieri. 

99. Madame La Roche Jacquelin's Memoirs. 

— On the Pooi/ 

30. Ali Bey's Travels in Morocco. 

— Foreign Travelers in England. 

31. Parliamentary Reform. 

:;•:. Coster's Travels in Brazil. 

— Rise and Progress of Disaffection. 
33. Mariner's Tonga Islands. 

35, hope de VasjCk. 
39. Evelyn's Memoirs. 

— On the Means of improving the Teopie. 
•11. Copy-right Act 

49, Cemeteries and Catacombs of Paris. 
43. Monastic Institutions. 

45. Coxe's Life of Marlborough. 

16. New Churches. 

48. Life ©fW. Huntington. S. S. 

50. Life o( Cromwell. 
59. Dobri /holler. 

53. Camoens. 

55 Gregoire's History of Religious Sects. 

56. Gregoire's History of Theophilanthropists, 

57. Burnet's Own Times. 

58. Dwighfs Travels in New England. 
61. New Churches. 

69, Life of Hayley. 

— Mrs. Baillie's Lisbon. 

63. Church Missionary Society. 

64. Life of Bayard. 

65. Roman Catholic Church and Waldeuses. 

66. Scour Nalivite. 
t>7. Sumatra. 

68. Britten's Cathedral Antiquities. 

69. Dr. Sayers's Poems. 

— Head's Journey across the Pampas. 

?■:. Butler's Reply concerning Scour Nativite. 

?;!. llallam's Constitutional History of England. 

?i. Emigration Report. 

75. Ledyard's Travels. 

— Chronological History of the West Indies. 
7b'. Roman Catholic Question and Ireland. 

77. Elementary Education, and the new Colleges 

in London. 

78. Burtees'S History of Durham. 
81. State of Portugal 

B8. Poems by Lucretia Davidson. 

— Smyth's Lite of Captain Beaver. 
83. Head's Forest Scenes in Canada. 
85. Ellis's Polynesian Researches. 
86". Negro New Testament. 

87. Dymond's Essays on Morality. 

— Moral and Political Stale of US Nation. 

88. Life of Oberlin. 

89. Babeouf's Conspiracy. 

90. Doctrine de St. Simon. 

91. Life and Death of Lord E. Fitzcerald. 

93. Mary Colling. 

94. Lord Nugent's Life of Hampden. 

!'.">. Prince Polignaa and the Three Davs. 
97. Life of Felix NeiF. 



578 



APPENDIX. 



No. 113. Mawe's Voyage down the Amazon, and 

Captain Smyth. 
118. Mrs. Bray's Tamar and Tavy, and Sir Geo. 

Head's Home Tour. 
123. Barrow's Life of Lord Howe. 
126. Life of Telford. 

In the Foreign Quarterly Review. 
Barantes's History of the Dukes of Burgundy. 
On the Spanish Moors. 
Life of Ignatius Loyola. 



PRINCE POLIGNAC TO R. SOUTHEY, ESQ. 

" Ham, ce 14 7bre, 1832. 
" Monsieur, — J'ai appris, par l'interrnediare d'un 
ami a qui je suis tendrement attache, que vous vous 
occupiez en ce moment d'un travail relatif aux cir- 
constances qui ont accompagne la lutte que le trone 
des Bourbons a eu a soutenir dans les derniers jours 
de Juillet, 1830, vous proposant pour but, dans ce 
travail, de rectifier les erreurs qu'une calomnie vie- 
torieuse a cherche a propager dans le public. 

"Personne mieux que vous, monsieur, ne pent ac- 
complir si noble tache, et avec plus d'espoir de suc- 
ces ; votre talent bien connu, vos principes, vos sen- 
timents genereux feront obtenir a la verite ce tri- 
omphe que la force et les passions du moment ont 
pu seules lui arracher. 

" Quant a moi, dont le nom se trouve necessaire- 
ment associe au drame revolutionnaire dont la mal- 
heureuse France a offert le spectacle a TEurope, il 
me serait impossible de vous peindre tous les elans 
de ma reconnaissance ; ceux-la seuls peuvent en 
mesurer l'etendue qui, habitues a etudier le coaur 
humain, comprendront ce que le mien a du souffrir 
en me voyant, en face d'un peuple egare et irrite, 
force de garder le silence. J'ai du accepter — ainsi 
que je le mandais a un de mes amis, a une epoque 
peu eloignee de celle ou nous sommes — j'ai du ac- 
cepter tous les genres d'accusation qu'on a voulu 
entasser sur ma tete. Je me suis considere comme 
le chef d'un vaisseau, au moment d'un grand nau- 
frage ; le vaisseau, e'etait la Royaute exilee qu'on 
cherchait encore a atteindre en me frappant ; j'ai 
garde pour moi les coups qu'on lui reservait; l'equi- 
page, e'etait mes collegues ; un devoir imperieux 
m'imposait l'obligation de ne pas compromettre leur 
surete ; je me suis tu lorsque cette surete pourait 
etre compromise. L'histoire, j'ose le dire, ne retrace 
pas une situation plus compliquee que celle dans la- 
quelle je me suis trouve; jamais plus de sentimens 
de divei-se nature froisses et brises, n'ont torture le 
eoeur d'un homme ; jamais l'honneur ne desarma 
mieux sa victime. 

" Ces moments cruels sont passes sans doute ; le 
temps est venu calmer l'irritation des esprits ; les 
evenements qui se sont succedes ont pu desiller bien 
des yeux, desabuser bien des esprits, et Ton pour- 
rait se demander, si le moment ne serait pas enfin 
arrive de reveler les mysteres du passe et de pre- 
senter quelques explications devenues«necessaires 
pour ma justification. 

"Je pourrais faire a cette question une reponse 
affirmative ; mais j'ajouterai que je ne saurais etre 
la personne chargee d'une semblable tache ; ma pre- 
sence dans la lice reveillerait des amours propres, 
raviverait des ressentiments presque eteints ; elle 
pourrait troubler ce repos momentaire que la lassi- 
tude du mal entraine souvent apres lui. II est des 
circonstances ou le bon citoyen doit meme savoir ac- 
cepter les efFets de la calomnie par amour pour la 
paix. La posterite, ou peut-etre de mon temps en- 
core, la plume de quelque main amie expliquera mon 
silence ; il sera compris par l'homme de bien. 

" D'aillem-s, le langage et les actes de ceux qui 
se sont faits mes accusateurs out deja commence ma 
justification, et celle-la, au moins, n'a aucun des in- 
convenients que je viens de signaler. 

"En effet, quelques-uns d'entr'eux reprochent aux 
ministres de Charles X. d' avoir viole la charte de 
1814, en faisant une fausse application de Particle 
14 renferme dans cette meme charte ; mais eux, 



qu'ont-ils fait le 29 Juillet, 1830, apres que les fa- 
meuses ordonnances furent retires par Charles X. ? 
ils briserent la charte toute entiere ; ils detronerent 
le souverain a qui ils avaient prete serment de fide- 
lite, qui, d'apres cette charte, etait irresponsable, et 
dont la personne devait etre inviolable ; ou bien, ils 
ne cherchaient alors qu'un pretexte pour detruire la 
charte qu'ils invoquaient et pour renverser le trone 
qu'ils entouraient de leurs serments; et, dans ce cas, 
il y avait hypocrisie de leur part, ou bien les repro- 
ches qu'ils dirigent aujourd'hui contre les ministres 
de Charles X. doivent retomber sur eux ; car, en 
supposant que les ministres de ce monarque aient 
fait une fausse interpretation de l'article 14, leurs 
accusateurs ont fait plus, ils ont brise une charte et 
une couronne. 

"D'autres, par leurs aveux, justifient d'une ma- 
niere plus eclatante encore les ordonnances de 
Charles X. Ils declarent qu'il y a eu, sous la re- 
stauration, une conspiration permanente contre les 
Bourbons ; ils en nomment les chefs, ils en indiquent 
et la marche et le but, lequel etait, disent ils, de ren- 
verser a la fois et le trone et la charte,; ils se van- 
tent d'avoir, dans les derniers temps 'du regne des 
Bourbons, rendu tout gouvernement impossible ; 
e'est ainsi, qu'en revelant leur anciens projets, qui, 
au reste, etaient bien connus du gouvernement en 
1830, ils disculpent le souverain qu'ils ont detrone, 
puisqu'ils prouvent qu'il n'a agi que dans un but de 
defense personnelle et pour repousser des attaqces 
qui menacoient le trone et la tranquillite publiquo. 

"II suffirait done aujourd'hui, pour justifier Chark-fj 
X. et ses conseillers, d'enregistrer les aveux qui 
remplissent les colonnes des journaux Francais 
L'histoire impartiale se chargera sans doute de oe 
soin. 

"Dans une brochure que j'ai publiee au com- 
mencement de cette annee, et que je prie la per- 
sonne qui a la bonte de vous transmettre cette let- 
tre, de vouloir bien vous faire passer, j'ai prouve la 
legalite des ordonnances du 27 Juillet, 1830 ; j'ai 
meme prouve que les adversaires de la couronnw 
avaient, soit dans leurs discours a la tribune parle 
mentaire, soit dans leurs ecrits, interprete le sens 
de l'article 14 de l'ancienne charte de la meme ma- 
niere que 1' avait interprete la couronne en 1830. Or, 
que disait cet article 1 giie le roi pourrait faire des 
ordonnances pour la sureti de Vetat. Qui oserait 
dire aujourd'hui que l'etat n' etait pas alors en dan- 
ger ? qui pourrait nier que le trone ne fut, a cette 
epoque, mine de tous cotes, et qu'une revolution «ne 
menacat la France 1 mais les passions frappent et 
ne raisonnent pas. 

" Vous excuserez, monsieur, la longueur des de- 
tails dans lesquels je suis entre ; j'ai cru devoir vous 
les soumettre, sachant que votre judicieux discerne- 
ment et votre impartialite vous portent a ne pas ja- 
ger des causes seulement par leurs efiets, ni a vous 
laisser seduire par des apparences trompeuses. Je 
terminerai cette lettre par quelques observations sur 
la note que vous avez entre les mains, intitulee Note 
sur quelques circonstances relatives aux evenements 
de Juillet, 1830. 

" De graves erreurs, a ce qu'il me semble, se sont 
propagees concernant le nombre de troupes confiees 
au Marechal Due de Raguse, lors fles troubles qui 
eclaterent a Paris vers la fin de Juillet, 1830. Vous 
pouvez maintenant juger combien sont erronnees les 
bruits qu'on s'est plu a repandre a ce sujet. Une 
simple observation suffit pour en demontrer la faus- 
sete. N'est-il pas evident, en effet, que, si le Due 
de Raguse n'eut eu a sa disposition que cinq a six 
mille hommes, comme on la pretendu, il y eut eu, de 
sa part, une coupable imperitie a adopter le plan 
qu'il suivit le 28 Juillet, au moment ou l'lnsurrection 
avait acquis son plus haut degre d'intensite. Ce plan 
consistait, comme on le sait, a diviser ses troupes en 
trois colonnes, lesquelles devaient traverser Paris 
dans sa plus grande longueur, puis se repandre dans 
les rues nombreuses de la capitale. L'exccutiou 
de ce plan me parut meme audacieux ; les resultats 
n'en furent point heureux ; la plus grande partie des 
troupes, ainsi divisees en petits corps epars dans des 



APPENDIX 



579 



rues etroites, earent beaucoup de peine a revenir 
sur leurs pas, et a surmonter les obstacles et les 
dangers qui s'opposaient a leur retour. Q,uoiqu'il 
en soit, on ne peut, sans faire injure aux talents 
militaires, ou aux sentiments de loyaute et de fide- 
lite du Marechal Due de Raguse, supposer que, dans 
l'etat dc fermentation generate dans laquelle se trou- 
vait alors la capitale, il eut ose tenter Texecution 
d'un semblable plan avec cinq, huit, et meme dix 
mille bommes ; cependant il la tenta ; done, il crut 
que les forces qu'il commandait etaient suffisantes 
pour en assurer la reussite. 

" Ce n'est point tout, apres la journee du 28 la 
seule, on peut le dire, dans laquelle les rues de Paris 
furent le theatre d'une lutte sanglante, puisque le 
lendemain matin la capitale fut evacuee, le Due de 
Raguse, malgre la resistance opiniatre qu'il^ avait 
rencontree, dit hautement a mes collegues, a moi- 
meme et a d'autres officiers presens, qu'il se main- 
tiendrait un mois dans la position qu'il occupait alors ; 
cette position etait le Louvre, les Tuileries, les deux 
quais de la riviere et les Boulevards : il ajouta 
qu'elle itait inexpugnable, et insista pour que j'en 
donnasse connaissance au roi, ce que je fis aussitot. 
II est done hors de doute, qu'a. cette epoque, le Due 
de Raguse avait encore la ferme conviction, que ses 
forces etaient suffisantes pour s'opposer aux efforts 
de l'insurrection, bien que toutes les troupes, qui des 
divers points de la division militaire placee sous son 
commandement se dirigeaient sur Paris, ne l'eussent 
point encore rejoint. 

" Ainsi voila. deux faits averes, incontestables, l'un 
desquels s'est passe avant Taction et I'autre apres 
Taction, qui, sans autre commentaire, prouvent l'ab- 
surdite des bruits que des journaux Francais et 
etrangers se sont plus a accreditor relativement a 
Tinsuffisance des forces qui furent confiees au Due 
de Raguse, au mois de Juillet, 1830. 

" Le 29 Juillet, au matin, Paris fut tout-a-coup 
evacue, presque sans coup ferir; je cessai d'etre 
rainistre, et de prendre par consequent part aux 
evenements qui se sont succedes : qu'elles furent 
les c-aascc de cette retraite precipitee, qui livra la 
capitale aux insurges et la monarchie a ses enne- 
mis, e'est a Thistoire qu'il appartient de les appro- 
fondir : quant a moi je les ignore encore. 

" II n'est peut-etre pas inutile, monsieur, que je 
previenne une objection qui pourrait etre faite a 
deux assertions contenues dans la note qui vous a 
ete transmise, et qui, au premier abord, semblent se 
contredire. II y est dit, au commencement de la 
2me page, que, dans le court delai de trois semaines 
qui s'ecoula^depuisle moment ou le principe des or- 
douuances fut arrete, et celui ou elles furent sig- 
uees, tout mouvement considerable de troupes deve- 
nait impossible : plus loin, a-peu-pres a la septieme 
page, il est dit, au contraire, que dans I'espace de 
huit ou dix jours, une force d 'environ cinquante-cinq 
a soixante millc hommes se serait trouvie sous les 
murs de Paris. Ces deux assertions, quoique con- 



tradictoires en apparence, ne le sont cependant pas 
II suffit, pour s'en assurer, de refiechir a quelle 
epoque se rapportent les mouvements militaires 
auxquels Tune et Tautre de ces assertions fait allu- 
sion. La premiere epoque se rapporte a un temps 
qui precedait les evenements de Juillet, auquel 
temps il etait important de ne pas eveiller Tatten- 
tion publique, ni celle des journaux, sur des ^place- 
ments de troupes que le gouvernement n'eut pu ex- 
pliquer, et qui eut pu faire naitre des soupcons sur 
la nature des mesures qu'on voulait adopter ; la se- 
conde epoque se rapporte, au contraire, a un temps 
subsequent a. l'insurrection de Paris. Toutes les pre- 
cautions indiquees ci-dessus devenaient alors inn- 
tiles : a la premiere epoque, les mouvements de 
troupes devaient se combiner avec la surete de 
quelques localites importantes qui exigeaient une 
surveillance speciale, telles que Lyon, Rouen, 
Nantes, Bordeaux, &c, qu'on ne pouvait laisser de- 
pourvues de forces militaires. On jugea meme pru- 
dent d'augmenter, dans le courant de Juillet, le nom- 
bre de troupes qui etaient alors en garnison dans 
quelques-unes des villes que je viens de citer. A 
Tautre epoque, au contraire, tout devait ceder de- 
vant la necessite de sauver ?a capitale. On pouvait, 
on devait meme negliger la surete de quelques points 
moins importans. Enfin, a la premiere epoque, les 
mouvements de troupes ne pouvoient s'operer que 
regulierement, etapes par etapes, ce qui les rendai- 
ent difficiles et lents, tandis, qu'a Tautre epoque, la 
rapidite de ces mouvements en faisait seule le me- 
rite : Tordre etait donne aux troupes de s'avancer a 
marches forcdes ; les etapes etoient doublees ; on 
eut pu meme, au besoin, transporter les troupes en 
chariots. 

" J'ai cru, monsieur, devoir vous donner ces expli- 
cations, qui furent devenues inntiles si le redacteur 
de la note que vous avez entre les mains eut mieux 
exprime sa pensee ; les details qu'elle contient se- 
ront rapportes avec plus de developpement dans un 
travail qui se prepare, mais dont la publication doit 
etre encore ajournee ; et e'est a vous, monsieur, que 
je serai redevable du premier essai qui aura ete 
tente d'eclairer le public sur des circonstances peu 
connues des uns et calomnieusement interpretees 
par les autres : une semblable tache ne pouvait etre 
entreprise par une plume plus eloquente, plus habile, 
ni qui fit mieux presager le succes. 

" C'est avec regret, monsieur, que je me suis vu 
force d'emprunter une main etrangere pour tracer 
les lignes que j'ai Thonneur de vous addresser ; mais 
la faiblesse de mes yeux et d'autres incommodites 
inherentes a la position dans laquelle je me trouve 
en ce moment, m'en ont fait une necessite. Je n'ai 
pas, cependant, voulu terminer ma lettre sans char- 
ger moi-meme de vous reiterer Texpressions de ma 
vive reconnaisance, ni sans vous prier d'agreer ici 
Tassurance de mes sentimens d'estime et de haute 
consideration. Le Prince de Polignac. 

"To Dr. Southey, &c, &c, &c." 



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